books

Three Books and an Audiobook Ahead

Winter is full of itself, at least in my part of the world. Snow the other day, howling winds, and more snow last night and today. I will be out shoveling after I post this piece. This has been a good time to concentrate on getting three books ready for their release. Three, really? Yes, and each is a different genre. Throw in an audiobook I narrated. And this doesn’t count the new book I am writing. Yes, I have been a busy author.

Here’s the lowdown.

THE TWIN JINN AND THE ALCHEMY MACHINE

This month, a release date to be announced, I will release the second in my magical realism series for middle grade readers featuring a family of jinn aka genies. My son Ezra created the artwork for the cover you see above.

Jute and Fina Jinn, brother and sister, and their parents, Mira and Elwin, are enchanted beings who move to a small town. They go to a school, where their parents hope they will learn more about people. The twins must pretend to be ordinary 11-year-olds, but they are impatient with the human version of the world. Who could blame them? They have the power to fly, be invisible, and use spells. Humans don’t.

Without their parents knowing, Jute and Fina create an alchemy machine for a science fair project. Their machine does indeed turn any metal into gold, but it also brings unwanted attention, especially from their former master who is desperate to find them.

THE SWANSON SHUFFLE

I began writing The Swanson Shuffle in 1999. Since then, I’ve made numerous revisions and oh-so-many queries. No more begging. It’s time to get this story out there to readers. And that’s what will happen in late March. Here’s a quick look.

Two years out of college, Bia Fernandes leaves a dead-end job to work and live in a psychiatric halfway house, where she learns more than she expects from its ex-patients — just as the Watergate scandal in the U.S. comes to a head in 1974.

Swanson House is a derelict mansion that will be torn down for a highway coming through a dying mill town in Massachusetts. The state, which is clearing out its mental hospitals, hires untrained staff like Bia to help people make the transition. The residents work menial jobs, take meds, and interact like family. The three other staff members at Swanson have their own problems, especially one who gets too close to the people they’re supposed to help.

Bia’s only previous experience was visiting her grandfather in a state mental hospital and talking somebody down from a bad acid trip. But where others have failed, Bia has it in her to help what the staff member she replaced called dented cans. She tries to see the good in them.

FINDING THE SOURCE: EIGHTH IN THE ISABEL LONG MYSTERY SERIES

Isabel Long’s next case comes from yet another unlikely source: a homeless man who approaches her outside a restaurant to say his mother was murdered 43 years ago and the case was never solved. Tom McKenzie was 12 when he found his mother’s body in their home.

Abby McKenzie was a well-liked person, who owned a secondhand bookstore and had a knack of finding valuable books for cheap. Actually, a signed first edition of The Great Gatsby is key to this case. Among the suspects are an avid book collector, a town official prone to stalking women, and her ex-husband’s second wife.

Besides the case’s age, Isabel finds other complications. The murder happened in the small town of Dillard, where Isabel would have to deal once again with a corrupt police chief who openly despises her. And many of the people connected to this case are dead. But Isabel is up to the challenge.

PROFESSOR GROOVY AND OTHER STORIES AUDIOBOOK

This audiobook is a collection of four stories I recorded in my son Nate Livingston’s Mudroom Sound Studio. Lenora Dias, her college hippie friends, and a notorious professor try to make sense of life during the late sixties. This was inspired by my experiment with the counterculture when I was in college. It’s a prequel of sorts to the novel Peace, Love, and You Know What. Just waiting for ACX to review the audiobook. Then I will announce its availability.

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North Fairhaven Girl, Uncategorized

North Fairhaven Girl: 3

In a recent post, I wrote about my experiences at Oxford School, especially with my fourth-grade teacher who gave me so many opportunities to write. Thanks, Mrs. Darwin. Then in fifth grade I was able to take my writing to another level in a class taught by Donald H. Graves, or Mr. Graves as we kids called him.

That year, a few students from each of our town’s elementary schools were selected to attend an enrichment program held Wednesday afternoons at the Rogers School. We had two classes: advanced science and creative writing. I bet you can guess which class inspired me. And I give Mr. Graves’ approach to creative writing full credit for that.

Mr. Graves used prompts to teach us fifth-graders about similes, metaphors, and other figures of speech. His approach was a deeper way for me to express myself in writing. He compiled what my classmates and I wrote in a mimeographed pamphlet.

Here is a piece I wrote called The Tornado. It’s a little over the top, but keep in mind, I was 10. I recall Mr. Graves called my parents to talk with them about it. I have held onto the typed and handwritten versions all these years. 

The winds of torment strike the grey sky with evil destructive movements. Its path tears the world apart with its wind. The sun struggles to set the sky afire with its golden sunshine, but is shoved aside to hide with the clouds. Trees sweep the winds hoping for mercy. The sea of grass bows at the sight of this evil destruction. Fields of corn are whipped and left to die for they would not bow and worship him. Mountain tops are bitten off piece by pieces until it too will follow with the others and bow to worship, but the proud mountains stand tall as ever in trying to hold back the winds. The winds of evil torment goes on to finish his evil scheme.

I so looked forward to Wednesday afternoons when a parent drove us to Rogers School and then brought us back at the end of the day. This program was also an opportunity for me to meet students from other parts of our town who would later be my classmates at junior high and high school.

Frankly, I had to wait until I was in college to get anything similar to what Mr. Graves taught me. I found it limiting to write what the teachers expected of me in English classes.

According to his obituary I found online, Donald H. Graves, who died in 2010 at age 80, lived a life filled with interests and accomplishments. (That’s the photo used in the obit.) He served in the Coast Guard, and then taught at East Fairhaven Elementary School before he became its principal. Later, he went into the ministry and was a professor at the University of New Hampshire. In 1976 he founded the Writing Process Laboratory at UNH where he remained until he retired in 1992. His research with elementary children at Atkinson Academy inspired his first book: Writing: Teachers & Children at Work. He wrote 25 more. Many of Mr. Graves books are available on Amazon.

When I started writing novels as an adult, I reached out to Mr. Graves after I found him online, sending a note to thank him. He responded and sent me a few of the books he wrote.

This passage came from his obit: “Don was internationally known for his work in children’s writing. His deep conviction that children wanted to write pervaded his teachings and radically changed expectations for what young children could accomplish if they were treated as writers.”

Yes, that’s what happened to me. And I tried to do the same whenever I had an opportunity to teach writing. Thank you, Mr. Graves.

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The Twin Jinn

Two Days of Magic

THE TWIN JINN AT HAPPY JACK’S CARNIVAL OF MYSTERIES FREE ON KINDLE

Alas, I don’t have magical powers although I truly wish I did. So, instead I created magical characters in a book for middle-grade readers — The Twin Jinn at Happy Jack’s Carnival of Mysteries. And I want to cast a little magic on young readers by making the Kindle version free Feb. 1 and 2. Just click on the link above. No tricks. Just magic.

By the way, the second in the series — The Twin Jinn and the Alchemy Machine — will be out next month. Two more are in the works. I’ll tell you more in the near future.

My own childhood was filled by imaginative play with my sister. One of us would think up a fantasy to play with the start: “Let’s pretend.…” Another outlet was reading — spending hours and hours lost in those words. 

When I became a mother, I enjoyed watching my children do the same. (My son, Ezra, created the illustration for the cover, which I believe captures the playfulness of the characters.

Actually, the words “let’s pretend” is the motivation behind my fiction. I sit in front of my laptop and let my imagination take over whether I am writing for adult or young readers. 

My genies or jinn, as I prefer to call them, don’t live in lamps. In The Twin Jinn at Happy Jack’s Carnival of Mysteries, they perform a magic act in a traveling carnival. People may think they are doing tricks like human magicians, but jinn have many powers such as being invisible, flying, casting spells, oh, the list goes on. 

The twins are Jute and Fina, brother and sister who are 11 by human age but 111 by jinn age. They are sweet but mischievous and like so many siblings, competitive. Their parents, Jeffer and Mira, are protective, but that’s because they tricked their evil master into letting them go. Yes, he’s searching for them.

This series has a lot of what entertained me as a book-reading child: genies, magic, and family. Now I offer it to middle-grade readers, those who read to children, and perhaps adults who want a little magical realism in their lives.

Here’s the link again: The Twin Jinn at Happy Jack’s Carnival of Mysteries.

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Hilltown Postcards

Hilltown Postcard: WW II Refugee House in Cummington

Let me tell you about one of the favorites stories I wrote as a reporter — a minister’s successful efforts to bring World War II refugees to the hilltown of Cummington. That began 85 years ago.

The Rev. Carl Sangree was an avowed pacifist, but when he realized he could not stop that war, he chose to help those who fled its violence. With the backing of other churches, Sangree turned a modest home he and his wife owned on Cummington’s Main Street into a haven known as The Little Red House — the color it was painted then — or the Refugee House.

A woodblock print of the Refugee House created by Gustav Wolf, an artist who stayed there.

Over 40 refugees were brought to the hostel — doctors, lawyers, writers, professors, journalists, business owners, musicians, and artists. They were Jews or people who had bravely spoken out against the Nazis, so their lives were in danger. Two young boys were later placed with a family in Heath. One refugee had a letter of reference from Thomas Mann. Julius Boehm was on the Austrian Olympic Ski Team.

Sangree relied on churches in Boston and New York to refer the refugees. He drove to those cities and brought the people back to Cummington for what was supposed to be a temporary stay. The refugees were there to acquire a means of making a living, mainly in the arts and crafts field. Studio space and materials was provided in the house’s barn. A market for what they made was supported by other churches.

Out of respect, the refugees attended Sangree’s services at the nearby Village Congregational Church even though many were Jews. (He also preached at the West Cummington Congregational Church.)

For several years, I was the hilltown reporter for the Daily Hampshire Gazette, covering three neighboring towns — Cummington, Chesterfield, and Worthington plus any regional news in the newspaper’s large coverage area. These towns may be small, think population 1,200 and under, but they are rich in stories and interesting people.

One day, I was checking the traps, that is, making my weekly rounds to reliable sources, when I learned a man doing research on “The Cummington Story” had stopped by the Old Creamery in Cummington because Aaron Copeland had composed the film’s score. The film was about the town’s experience with the World War II refugees. Ron Berenson, the store’s then co-owner, asked if I knew anything about it. No, I didn’t, but I certainly would dig into it.

And like other stories, one tip led to another. While I was covering Cummington’s Annual Town Meeting that May, I happened to sit next to Gloria Gowdy, who told me as a teenager she lived across the street from the Refugee House. She invited me to her house when one of the refugees, the sculptor Nelli Barr, then 90, would be visiting from her home in Chicago. On that day, Barr brought along a scrapbook and a typewritten memoir. We spoke at length about her experiences.

Barr recalled it took seven months to reach the U.S. She and her husband, Paul Weighardt, established artists, left their home in Paris for Norway. When the Nazis invaded Norway, they hiked to Sweden, where friends gave them enough money to book third-class passages from Moscow to Siberia, then Japan, Panama, and finally, Haiti, where they obtained permanent visas. They arrived in New York with a few bags and their sketchbooks.

For the story, which appeared in the Gazette’s Hampshire Life magazine on July 22, 1994, I reviewed historical records, gladly accepted an invitation to visit the house by its then owner, and interviewed Cummington residents who had first-hand experiences with the refugees.

Gowdy said she could relate with the refugees because her father was Jewish. She recalled the war had a heavy hand on many of the refugees, who didn’t talk about their experiences.

Virginia Caldwell, who lived next door, said many townspeople had a wait-and-see attitude when the refugees arrived.

I met with Connie Talbot, Sangree’s granddaughter. Connie, who lives in her grandfather’s home in nearby Windsor, allowed me to go through the paperwork he kept in the attic.

Now about that film, “The Cummington Story,” which was produced for the Office of War Information, Overseas Branch.

Sangree is the narrator of a fictionalized version of the refugees’ experience and how they won over the very reluctant denizens of Cummington. Werner Königsberger, one of the refugees, plays the role of the main character although with the first name Joseph. Another woman from the hostel acts as his wife Anna. However, there is no mention of where these homeless people came from, except for one allusion to the book burnings that took place in Germany although the country is not named..

The movie supposedly films Joseph speaking at his first and only Town Meeting, as he is about to return “home.” The narrator says this about Joseph, “He would be leaving soon to return home to help rebuild his own country, but would take with him many things he had learned in Cummington.”

Since the 20-minute film was intended to be shown overseas, it appears the U.S. government wanted to make it clear refugees were welcome as long as they went back home when it was safe again.

In reality, none of the refugees who came to Cummington returned to Europe. Königsberger and his wife Grete, who came to the U.S. with $6, were the only refugees to stay in Cummington, opening an arts and crafts business. The rest found other places to live in the U.S. thanks to the efforts of the Rev. Sangree.

Watch The Cummington Story from the National Archives.

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North Fairhaven

North Fairhaven Girl at Oxford School

Again, I was inspired by Chris Richard’s posts on Substack — Long Ago & Close By — about Oxford School. My hometown of Fairhaven, MA., closed the school in 2007 due to a declining student population, and it has since been converted into housing. This was the elementary school I attended as a child in the town’s northern end, and for me a good place to learn. That’s me above on my first day of school.

Oxford School was a short walk along Main Street from Jesse Street where I lived. I usually met up with other kids in the neighborhood, and years later, my sister came with me. It was a cold walk in winter, especially for us girls who were required to wear dresses or skirts. Snow pants kept our legs warm.

As Chris reported, the main brick building was finished in 1896. An addition was added in 1953 to handle North Fairhaven’s growing population. The addition had a gym with a stage, which was used for assemblies. The school bell in the tower came from Paul Revere’s foundry.

Due to the Baby Boomers, each grade, one through six, had enough for two full classes or a combination of grades like second and third in one. North Fairhaven, as I mentioned in an early post, attracted an influx of nationalities such as Polish, French Canadian, and Portuguese, many of them immigrants or the next generations. I recall the last names of classmates: Cabral, Benoit, Canto, Gonsalves, Hendricks, Ponte, Viera, Wojcik. Mine was Medeiros.

We were situated in the class according to our height, the shortest kids up front. I was somewhere in the middle. The desks in the original building were bolted to the floor, but movable in the addition.

My fellow students were the usual mix of personalities you would expect in a class. I would rank myself with the silly and smart girls. One memorable classmate in third grade was Frank who was so fascinated by movie monsters he kept a collection of photos. By the way, I still keep in contact with several classmates via social media.

School was easy for me, so I got good grades — making honor roll meant the family would get sundaes at Frates’ Dairy. I was happy to learn how to read and then later, how to write what others could read. Thank you to my teachers like Mrs. Cadell and Mrs. O’Neil.

Fourth grade, when Mrs. Darwin was my teacher, was a favorite year. We students worked hard at making perfectly round letters in cursive — although journalism ruined that for me. She read aloud A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Poohseries and taught us about world explorers.

And Mrs. Darwin gave me the freedom to write on my own, making up short stories and one-act plays. I assigned parts to my classmates, and we practiced at recess. Later, we performed in front of the class. I don’t remember what I wrote, but I do the feeling of using words to tell a story.

One sixth-grade teacher, who I will not identify, taught after serving in the military. He was a tough disciplinarian. If a student misbehaved, he, it was usually a boy, was given the option of being hit with a short or long stick. I don’t know how hard because I never had to make that choice.

During my time at Oxford School, we got a new principal, Miss Toledo. I recall two things about her: she was very short and she inspired a rhyme — “Holy Torpedo, here comes Toledo.”

We started the day by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and the Lord’s Prayer, the Protestant version that ended: “For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.” We Catholics skipped that line. We sang patriotic songs.

We were expected to be quiet in class unless called upon and to raise our hands if we wanted to ask or answer something. No passing notes although we did.

I recall being pulled out of class for hearing and vision tests, getting our hair inspected for lice, and receiving a dose of polio vaccine via a sugar cube.

I realize now learning was tougher for some kids, and they didn’t have the educational resources that became available later. So, a few kids “stayed back” a grade, and then there was the mysterious “special class.”

The cafeteria was located in the bottom floor of the addition. Mrs. Foley, a North Fairhaven neighbor, was head cook. Lunch cost a quarter and milk, for those who brought their lunch, a dime. (We also had a milk break in our classroom.) We were served standard American fare and were expected to clean our plate. The worst menu item was hash. On Friday, lunch was a tuna fish sandwich or fish sticks, probably since most of the kids were Catholics who didn’t eat meat that day.

We kids burned off a lot of energy at recess, during a morning break and after lunch. A teacher supervised as we kids played. During inclement weather, we were in the gym or playing eraser tag in the classroom. That’s where two kids chased each other around the classroom with a blackboard eraser on top of their heads. If the eraser fell, you were out. I was actually good at it due to my flat head.

One popular game outside was Cock-a-Rooster. Kids lined up on one end of the large asphalt lot in front of the addition. One kid would yell, “Cock-a-Rooster,” and everyone would run to the other side. Whoever the kid touched, joined him or her in tagging for the next round. This would continue until one person was left. It was a bit exciting dodging the taggers.

Needless to say, playing on hard surfaces (in front and behind the school) meant scraped and scabby knees for many of us girls.

Other pastimes included hopscotch, jacks, and marbles. We jumped rope to rhymes, two of us girls swirling a long rope for a jumper. Here’s one: “Cinderella, dressed in yella/ Went downtown to meet her fells/ On the way her girdle busted/ How many people were disgusted / 5-10-15-20 ….”

Thanks Oxford School for a good start to my education.

And for those who want to read Chris Richards’ posts “The School on the Top of the Hill”, here they are: Part One and Part Two. Again, thanks to the readers he has sent my way.

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