“I wanted the house to have a voice,” says Catherine Harper, author of the North Fork-centric I Am the House. With precision, passion and conviction, Harper has produced a historical page-turner within a literary time machine.

“I woke up one morning with the ending of a book in my mind,” she recalls. “Over breakfast, I shared the idea with my husband.” While she had an ending, there were not yet any characters or a plot. They would come later. Another striking decision: Readers would need to adjust to the house “speaking” to them in the first person.

But a historical fiction novel like Harper’s is more than a novel. It is a journey through several time periods, as the primary setting and main character are the same. “One’s got to listen to a house,” says Harper, a Long Island native with a passion for historic preservation. “I wanted the house to have a voice.”

It should come as no surprise that Harper and her husband, Robert, have restored several properties on Long Island and one in New York City. When it comes to property, Harper’s directive calls on one to have insight. To examine the structure for clues as to how former inhabitants may have lived under the same roof.

“My job as a historical fiction writer is to tell a compelling story,” she emphasizes. “My job is not so much to inform about what actually happened as it is to imagine what happened.” This is her premise, from which the reader is taken on a journey into the local past, each vignette set in a different time period within and around the same house inhabited by an assortment of characters.

While the saga is compelling and Harper peppers the story with the right amounts of tension, emotion and anticipation, at other times she writes in what can only be described as a soothing tone. She also shows a sharp ability to create seemingly living, breathing characters from what are often scant historical records. As the story progresses, one can simultaneously trace the evolution of the town, often through key historic events and periods as well as via the inhabitants. Some of the periods covered include the British Occupation; “After the Crash,” which covers the impact of the Great Depression (1929) on the area; as well as the Gold Rush (1848-1862), when tales of sudden wealth captivated inhabitants from the opposite coast. The chapter devoted to North Fork life during the Civil War features one of the book’s most touching scenes, when a wife prepares a lock of her hair to be taken by her husband, who has enlisted in the Union Army. Characters range from the quasi-famous Major Joseph Harrington, commander of the British Army assigned to the area, to the not-so-famous, like Richard and Seth Merritt, co-owners of the Railroad Avenue barbershop in the 1920s, and Presbyterian Church pastor the Rev. James Trowbridge Hamlin (1860s).

‘The magic of a passport to another era’

“There are clues to be read,” says Harper when asked how she gives an inanimate object — i.e., a house — a voice and virtual life of its own. “There may be signs that a door once existed. Why was it there? Where did it lead?” In 1989, she and her husband bought a home that was a “heck of a wreck.” The couple sensed that it was missing a tower. Discovering an old postcard of the house proved the couple was right. The tower, which was used to help provide ventilation, had burned in 1948, as described in her aptly titled chapter, “The Fire.”

“Historical fiction offers the magic of a passport to another era,” notes Harper, who uses the term “house empath” in her work — one who maintains a sensitivity to the history of their surroundings while preserving and presenting it, often in a new way, to others. “There are other ways of looking at things,” she adds. “Those who perceive more than the apparent reality have a gift.”

On the pragmatic side, in addition to examining architecture, Harper engaged in a painstaking amount of research, studying historical records and newspaper accounts as she reconstructed and resuscitated many lives to tell her story. The old-time graphics at the beginning of each chapter, which are refreshingly concise, also help set the mood, as the book features no photographs with the exception of the sepia-toned cover.

“Those who neglect history are shortsighted,” says Harper. “It enriches us and provides a sense of purpose,” before adding that “people are often seduced by prevailing voices.” Her book is rich in elements of time and reflections on nearly forgotten eras. “One can move forward with knowledge of the past. When we know where we come from, we can more easily understand the present.”

Appropriately, the house has the last word as the book sadly closes with the admission that, annually, hundreds of historic homes are lost due to a variety of factors, from extreme weather to demolition and neglect. This leads her to pose the poignant question: “If a historic house is not worth saving, what is?” Harper has given us much to consider.

Joseph J. Finora is the author of Red Like Wine, the North Fork Harbor Vineyard Murders. He is completing another novel.