Today my historical novels come home, however many were unsold when my publisher s closed his doors this summer. It will seem strange to have all those friends of mine here in such quantity, but they are quite welcome. I know them well -- Rose herself and her mother, Silas Hibbard who turned to drink in his grief, young Charles who listens at keyholes and under windowsills, Abby who worries about everyone being happy. And then there's Miss Harty, the best of teachers in the close-mouthed New England of the late 19th century. She was named for the first grade teacher who saved me from boredom when I started school in Amherst, Massachusetts. And Aunt Nell, who breaches custom and gives her brother-in-law a piece of her mind when he needs it. And so many others, including the charming Newton Barnes who sits behind Rose in school and can't stop thinking about her.
Naturally I would rather not hang onto all of these books forever, so we'll be selling them from here from now on.
Salesmen we are not. Milt's even worse at it than I am -- so much so that whenever we ran a classified ad for something we no longer wanted (like a sailboat), we didn't let him near the customers. He was forever talking them out of buying.
I won't do that. I will recommend both books for good reading, as good presents for anyone from 12 to 112, as a delight for grandmothers who may have been raised by a person like Rose, as education for those who want to see inside a New England farm in the late 19th century.
In these books, I have fictionalized my grandmother, who actually did raise her brother and sister and cope with her father and her schoolwork and the chickens. She never told us her teen years sucked, but they must have. And in the end, I think she would like the life I created for her from dribs and drabs of reality and plenty of imagination.
Naturally I would rather not hang onto all of these books forever, so we'll be selling them from here from now on.
Salesmen we are not. Milt's even worse at it than I am -- so much so that whenever we ran a classified ad for something we no longer wanted (like a sailboat), we didn't let him near the customers. He was forever talking them out of buying.
I won't do that. I will recommend both books for good reading, as good presents for anyone from 12 to 112, as a delight for grandmothers who may have been raised by a person like Rose, as education for those who want to see inside a New England farm in the late 19th century.
In these books, I have fictionalized my grandmother, who actually did raise her brother and sister and cope with her father and her schoolwork and the chickens. She never told us her teen years sucked, but they must have. And in the end, I think she would like the life I created for her from dribs and drabs of reality and plenty of imagination.