An Absence So Great (Portrait of the Heart Series) Did photography replace an absence in her life or expose the truth of her heart’s emptiness? While Growing in confidence as a photographer, eighteen-year old Jessie Ann Gaebele’s personal life is at a crossroads. Hoping she’s put an unfortunate romantic longing behind her as “water under the bridge” she exiles herself in 1911 to Milwaukee to operate photographic studios for those owners who have fallen ill with mercury poisoning. But even a job she loves can’t keep painful memories from seeping into her heart when the shadows of a forbidden love threaten to darken the portrait of her life. (Portrait of the Heart Series, Book 2, ©2010)