Author James Purdy met the novel's protagonist, Chicago painter Gertrude Abercrombie, in 1935, when she was attending the University of Chicago. Abercrombie was known as the "queen of bohemian artists". A prolific writer, Purdy's many works were deeply influenced by his close friendship with Gertrude and the "underground meetings" she organized. We can characterize these invitations organized by Gertrude Abercrombie as the American adaptation of Gertrude Stein's salon meetings in Paris. Percy Heath, Sonny Rollins, Erroll Garner, Dizzie Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Max Roach and Sarah Vaughan, who were among the regular guests of these musical gatherings that lasted until the wee hours of the morning on weekends, later became famous as masters of jazz. At these parties, where master jazz musicians performed improvised bebop and jazz music, Gertrude often accompanied the music on her piano. These gatherings contributed greatly to Purdy's writing and were as influential on his writing as the King James Bible and Shakespeare, which he studied intensively from an early age. Purdy also occasionally stayed at Gertrude's "dilapidated" mansion with members of the Modern Jazz Quartet. The moments of awakening and enlightenment of some of the main characters in Purdy's novels are deeply influenced by Purdy's relationships with Gertrude Abercrombie and the jazz musicians, the musical world they created and the success they achieved from humble origins. His friendship with Gertrude gave Purdy the opportunity to express small-town America and to carve out a unique place for himself in the literary world with works that gave voice to the deprived and adrift worlds of the countryside. After meeting jazz masters and, most importantly, Billie Holiday during this period, Purdy was transformed from a lost youth prone to rebellion into the kind of dignity that would make him a world-renowned writer. Moreover, by establishing relationships with magical realist painters in Abercrombie's circle, such as Karl Priebe, Ivan Albright, John Wilde and Dudley Huppler, Purdy expanded his visual memory and enabled the magical realism movement to create its own literary derivative.