In Bohemia
A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Kindness
The day her fiancé died suddenly of a heart attack
Katie Swenson retreated to “Bohemia,” the third-floor loft that the couple had renovated in their home in Wellesley, Mass., and began to write. A visceral account of grief and the profound kindness that resonates around it, this is also the story of her hundred-year-old house, named the “Scarab” after the Egyptian symbol for rebirth, and the two courageous women who built it a century earlier—Wellesley College professors Katharine Lee Bates, author of “America the Beautiful,” and her partner Katharine Coman. Parallel lives unfold in the magical Bohemia, where Coman died, where Bates mourned, and where Swenson wrote and wrote through that first searing year, held up by their spirits. Told with rare emotional power, In Bohemia is a meditation on love, family, and community, and inspires us to be our best selves.
Illustrations by Zoe Miller @fontfully
“I am not sure why writing emerged as my first instinct…
but once I started, I could not stop. What follows are those unfiltered emotions. I wrote my first poem on my iPhone, furiously typing with both thumbs, sitting in my bed at about midnight in a blur of shock and pain, tears streaming down my face…. I wrote straight through to the end, barely stopping to breathe. When I was done, I sent it in an email to myself and cuddled with the girls until we fell asleep.
When I got up the next morning…
I corrected a typo or two and posted it to Facebook. I had one thought (if you could even call it a thought), and that was expressing my love. It was all I could think about, and the complete and utter pain of Tommy being gone.”
Writing Through Grief To Come Out The Other Side
The writing is cleansing me, letting my memories caress me.
The beauty, purity, and reality of our love fill me. I read through hundreds of pages of text messages, sweet nothings, back-and-forth tugs—grocery lists, departure and arrival times. But mostly love taps, consistent and constant expressions of love, and gratitude for the love we felt so palpably, again and again. Respect, admiration, excitement for each other... Just love. It makes me feel like I do get to start over
Reviews & Accolades
“It was an honor to experience the Scarab and its renovations, and to then read about Katie’s life in this home - it’s happiness, history, and sorrow. She has honored home, the women who built it - Katherine Bates and Katherine Coman, her family, and her love. In Bohemia is a beautiful book and story, and tribute to love.”
Marcia Cross, American Actress - Beyond the Curtain of Night (2021), Desperate Housewives (2004-2012), and Melrose Place (1992-1997)
“The gabled old New England house known as Scarab has twice, a century apart, sheltered and nurtured extraordinary loves, both tragically cut short. For Katie Swenson, grief is a final act of love, intensely, devastatingly, blissfully enacted through memory and writing. This beautiful book is a house rebegot by absence, its sturdy timbers holding up against devastating loss, its rooms radiant with a generous, exemplary, and unending love.”
Francisco Goldman, Author, Say Her Name
“In Bohemia is a beautiful and deeply moving exploration of how houses, hearts and lives intertwine and change — in this case, over the course of more than a century of love, laughter and loss. Swenson’s home was built at the beginning of the 20th century by Katharine Lee Bates to create new ways of living for a household of women. What she shows is that with wisdom, perseverance, and good design, those same spaces can be given new meaning as the story of the house and its occupants continue to unfold.”
Alice T. Friedman, Wellesley College, Grace Slack McNeil Professor of the History of American Art and McNeil Program for Studies in American Art Director
Illustration by Zoe Miller @fontfully
“It is often said that the essential quality of all good art is truth. This is the truest book I have ever read. The ideas that began to flow from Katie Swenson's cracked open heart on the worst day of her life - and continued since - are nothing short of remarkable, and have deeply impacted everyone who has read them. This is a book about grief, but as much, about joy. It is a book about death, and about the beauty of life. It is a book about spaces - in our lives, in our relationships, in our homes, and in our hearts - and also a guide to seeing space not as inherently empty, but full, pulsing with life and magic and possibility. You will instantly feel in this lovely and gut-wrenching prose, forged in the fire of unflinching loss, that In Bohemia is mainline to the truth about life itself.”
Holly Sorensen, Writer/Producer/TV Show Runner - Make It Or Break It (2009-2012) and Step Up: High Water (2018-2019)
"Grief hasn't made Katie Swenson a remarkable writer, but in chronicling the discovery--and sudden death--of the love her life, Tommy Niles, and in researching the story of the two remarkable women who built a life together in her gabled, one-hundred-year-old house in Massachusetts, she becomes one. What else can you say about a writer who calls death a 'disappointment' and sums it up this way: 'The thing you want is not.' In Bohemia is a literary act of love."
Benjamin Anastas, author of the memoir Too Good to Be True
“In Bohemia is a stunning piece of writing — the kind of writing that can only come from a very deep, unencumbered place, the kind of writing that is only possible from a human being so stripped down by grief that she can’t help but tell the truth about who we are and what actually matters. It made me think about the gifts I give on a daily basis — some intentional, some just the inevitable byproducts of who I am temperamentally. Usually, I read something like this and start thinking about the areas in my life where I want to be more intentional and the friends I want to reach out to more. But reading Katie’s words about this incredible man had a surprising effect on me. I felt at peace. I felt that whatever I am already doing for the people I love, whoever I am already being, is the gift. I’m sure I could do it better, more lovingly, with less irritation, but that’s not the point. The point is being myself, spending real time, and giving permission to those I love to be themselves. That insight, however long I can hold on to it, is Katie’s gift to me.”
Courtney E. Martin, Author, The New Better Off, Do It Anyway, and Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters
Remember What Is Important
“Having lived with great love and also great grief, I felt awakened by Katie Swenson’s words, thinking about my father, but even more so thinking about my marriage. I wrote my wife a letter this morning, just to say hello, outside of the frenzy of our day, and before thinking again about this insane quarantine with our almost-one and four-year-old. In Bohemia inspired me to write to her, to refocus some energy beyond this sort of mind-numbing amount of anxiety we are confronted with from the news, to pivot this moment of anxiety into being better to each other.”
-Dan Murphy, writer, Sao Paulo, Brazil
On Finding Love Again
“Sometimes I fantasized about being single again, un-partnered, completely on my own—no one to answer to. Then in reading In Bohemia, I felt the intimacy of partnership, and I felt overwhelmed with emotion, thankful that I have a loving partner that makes life easier, better, and more complete… Katie Swenson’s writing so vulnerably about her love and loss reminds me to be grateful for the love I have.”
-Anonymous, Denver, CO
On Finding Oneself
“Recently, since moving abroad, I have struggled with a sadness that I hadn't anticipated. I grieved the loss of a life that I had become so familiar with. I grieved the lack of close friendships, as I have yet to find connections here due to lockdown. I grieved the distance between my family and the time that I'm not spending with them. I grieved a sense of self that has felt lost without those family and friends who have always surrounded and supported me. In Bohemia gave me an appreciation of a strong new emotional awareness. The book pushed me to be more reflective and to better understand (and cherish) the things in life that matter the most. Life is short and every moment counts. Katie Swenson’s words reminded me that the relationships in our lives are those that have lasting impact.”
-Katie Burgoyne, London
Knowing We Are Not Alone In Grief
“My eldest son was dealing with a serious illness this year and the optimism and desire within In Bohemia’s pages helped me to understand and explore the essence of love and connection, even in the face of such grief, were very inspiring to me.”
-A mother, Washington, D.C.
