Emma Lewis

Emma Kermott Lewis fell ill of tuberculosis when Harry was three, and Dr. E.J. placed her in a sanatorium in Arizona the following winter. The climate seemed to help her condition, and she returned to Sauk Centre for the summer. But the following winter her condition worsened, and from then on her decline was inexorable. The doctor-father, fearful of contagion, would have kept the child from her room. There was the whispered conspiracy of the sickroom, the worried adult faces, the palpable sense of something dark and terrifying about to happen. Then, in the words of the Sauk Centre Avalanche:

On Thursday last, June 25, after a noble struggle for life, the spirit of Mrs. E. J. Lewis took its flight, and the gloom and desolation attendant settled over a happy household. . . . Her family, consisting of her husband and three boys aged 15, 13 and 6 years, are deeply afflicted.

Emma had been an important presence in Sinclair Lewis's infancy, and in death she became an important absence in his life. An inner void opened up where once was her tenderness. He later said he could not remember her, but in his subconscious lurked a lost child-alternately withdrawn and hostile. His sixth-grade teacher, Evelyn Pribble, left a glimpse of him as "somehow not alive to the world around himself. . . . He didn't apply himself to his school work and seemed to be indifferent about his grades," which were near the bottom of the class.