Returning to Philip Pullman's THE BOOK OF DUST, Thinking about "Young Adult"

My newest Vermont historical adventure reaches the marketplace on June 23: THIS ARDENT FLAME. Set in a real village not far from where I research and write, in 1852, it probes the very real controversies around ending enslavement in America, from a Vermont point of view.

But for me—and I think for many other authors—a novel takes on legs and spirit of its own, and within a few pages of the start, I knew the teens in this book had complicated lives in which they felt the pain of being "other than" what's expected. They knew romance and dreams. They threw themselves into battles for justice, without full consideration of what it could cost them.

And that, for me, is the point of writing "YA." Teen protagonists aren't just unseasoned; they are passionate. When they recognize the next right thing to do, they can be more likely than careful, thoughtful adults to offer themselves and their abilities. Of course they get hurt this way. But they also grow in leaps that are exhilarating to experience, even as the writer rediscovering them. 

THIS ARDENT FLAME recaps what it meant to be deaf in Vermont before the Civil War. It exposes the pain of families already beginning to split on moral grounds. I hope that in the best of ways, it foreshadows the coming darkness of the war that tore America apart, so fiercely that the wounds have still not healed, 160 years since they began to bleed.

My kind of writing depends on constantly learning. A lot of that is from the scholarship and research of others, especially social historians. But I'm also always working at becoming a better wordsmith, scene setter, tension exposer, painter of love and loyalty. Part of my "training" comes from reading powerful stories told by others. I grew up on Madeleine L'Engle, J.R.R. Tolkein, Frances Hodson Burdett, Arthur Ransome, Robert Louis Stevenson, Louisa May Alcott, and yes, second-tier novelists who brought us important visions, like Harriet Beecher Stowe, who strolled right into THIS ARDENT FLAME and surprised me deeply.

In my non-writing life, I'm doing some hard things right now, involving selling the home where my husband and I lived and loved, and where I tended him in his final illness. I'm learning to talk with (and learn from!) contractors in preparing a new home for myself. I'm packing LOTS of books.

So I'm re-reading YA novels this month. That took me, this week, to Philip Pullman's newest series, "The Book of Dust," which has two published books so far, with the third and final yet to come. As I worked through the first one again, La Belle Sauvage (named for the canoe owned by Malcolm, one of the protagonists), I looked at how Pullman summoned power through his words, and deepened the ideas and passions behind them. 

Around halfway through the book, Malcolm's school gets taken over by a religious crusade that deliberately turns children into spies on the morals of their families and friends. Malcolm observes the effect: "Few pupils were openly naughty anymore—there were few fights in the playground, for instance—but everyone seemed guiltier."

The phrasing made me think of Orwell's Animal Farm. Political manipulation and power depend on making one group feel potent, and another feel guilty and "less than." It's a shocking book, and one that is now embedded as firmly in our culture and thinking as Orwell's other noted dystopian, 1984. 

Is Animal Farm meant for teens to read? I certainly read it first when I was a teen, for school. Recently my 12-year-old grandson read it for school, too. I tried to let him know, without being pushy about it, that I felt the book was dark, even scary. I bet he felt the same way. I hope his classroom reinforced taking a stand against the machinations exposed in the story—and supported the kids who found it painful to read. Lots of people experience the use of power against them, even before they grow up.

I'm torn about whether Pullman's books are "good for young readers." Even today, I find they hurt me, darken my views, open me to more despair. 

If you have an opinion on all this—I'd like to hear yours. Let's talk.

[Hope you'll make time to browse more of my tales here of historical research, writing, and life! Tap the link to reach the rest of the material: https://bethkanell.blogspot.com]

Unpacking a Vintage Postcard: The Little Revelations of Research

My husband Dave was the main collector of vintage postcards here. With a dozen want lists, ranging among his passions of Vermont history, AT&T founder and Lyndonville experimental farmer and philanthropist Theodore Newton Vail, the village of Gilman, and Jewish themes, he spent hours roaming the online listings, and something intriguing arrived in the mail most mornings.

It's taken me time to absorb his tasks in with mine, since his death two years ago. But I am now hunting postcards when I have time. I picked up this one for its charming "Bird's Eye View of West Derby, Vt." (which is now part of Newport, Vermont), thinking we might not have the image itself among his Newport and Derby postcards.

And then, of course, the back of the card drew me in.

It's hard to read, scrawled in pencil and overlaid with a Newport (Vt.) postmark. Even the postmark year is difficult to parse, though we can see it comes from the years when a postcard traveled for the cost of a penny stamp. Even the stamp is a challenge for my aging eyes! But with the aid of a lighted magnifier, I read "Balboa 1513" and marveled that this U.S. stamp commemorated the Spanish explorer's claiming of the Pacific Ocean on behalf of his nation.

The message, once you turn it upright, reads as follows:

July 17 - '15

Dear friend You card rec'd this a.m. Was so glad to know you'd not forgotten me. I'm getting stronger every day and hope you are also. It was so nice of Leola to see me off. I was about sick for three days after coming home. Very sincerely, Mrs. Kimball

I puzzled over the address for a while, and came up with Mrs. B. W. McCosco, 54 Concord Ave., St. Johnsbury Vt.  However, I thought I probably had the name wrong, since I'd never heard that name before. So I started pulling up town listings from the early 1900s. It didn't take long to realize that McCosco was indeed a local surname, and here's what I found:

Mrs. Maude C. McCosco was a teacher who boarded at 159 Railroad Street in St. J. She was the second wife of Basil Winfred McCosco (born in West Danville in 1872, died in St. J in 1920). Her marriage took place in 1912, and her name before the marriage was Winifred Maude Blair Clifford (she lived from 1879 to 1967).

Note that her postcard was addressed using her husband's initials, B. W.; also note that she was listed in the town as a "boarder" just a few years after her marriage. I wonder now ... had Basil left her alone for some reason? What caused him to die at the relatively young age of 48? Which years did Maude teach school, and where?

Which just goes to show: The more you pull out the clues from a postcard, the more mysteries you open up in response.

Vermont History Comes Alive -- on the Pages, and in Short Videos

Photo by Darcie McCann

A huge joy in my writing life is researching and writing articles for the North Star Monthly that focus on remarkable people of this region of Vermont, whose lives and adventures have become part of our history.

Many people ask me, "How did you get the idea to look into that one?"

So I've started a series of short videos on "where this story came from." If you're curious, you can check them out at my YouTube page, or go directly to one of these:

The Fur Farms of Vermont

Pioneering Aeronauts of the NEK (Northeast Kingdom of Vermont)

I'll add another each month. Hope you enjoy these!

Cover Release! THIS ARDENT FLAME, Publication in June 2021

 I love this cover design from Five Star/Cengage -- it certainly tells you that the protagonists in THIS ARDENT FLAME are women! In this case, they are teens, taking on their share of putting the abolition of slavery front and center for Americans, especially Vermonters, in 1852. You already met Alice Sanborn in The Long Shadow (Book 1 of Winds of Freedom). Join her as she meets Caroline, whose return to North Upton startles Alice into recognizing how limited her own world has been.

Now, of course, I'm writing book 3 of Winds of Freedom, set in 1854, and featuring Almyra Alexander. You'll want to watch for her arrival, too, in THIS ARDENT FLAME.

Looking forward to sharing the new novel with you soon!

Lemonade from Pandemic Lemons: Here Come the Ebooks!

Although hardcover publishing for my next book is delayed until June 2021, Speaking Volumes has created an ebook of The Long Shadow, my 1850 Vermont adventure novel. A new cover accompanies the publication, and I love it! 

It's wonderful to be able to share more of my work via ebook versons now. And there will be other novels soon to come.

"Aging in Place": Eliza Ann Ide Henry, Wife of a Timber Baron

Because I live on the Vermont side of the Connecticut River, I focus more on the history of the Green Mountain State. But when we're talking about the decades of timber harvesting, both sides of the river have complex and fascinating stories to tell.

For the Vermont side, the books by Waterford native Robert E. Pike, Tall Trees, Tough Men and Spiked Boots, narrate the winter lives spent in the northern forests, followed by the perilous spring adventures of bringing the logs down the swollen rivers. River log transport ended on the Connecticut as Waterford watched construction of the Comerford Dam in 1930. It can still be witnessed on occasion in Maine, but the risks outweigh the benefits and need most of the time.

 On the New Hampshire side, J. E. (James Everell) Henry undertook construction of railroads that penetrated deep into the forested landscape. Not only did his timing mesh with the willingness to spread out the rail network, but it also coincided with the use of shorter logs that could fit onto rail cars.

Littleton, NH, author Mike Dickerman compiles material on Henry, along with a vast knowledge of the high peaks of northern New Hampshire. In August 2014, he visited the Waterford Historical Society to talk about Henry and his own book on this ambitious and accomplished leader.

Today, as Dickerman prepares a new book on history of the high peaks, he shared a photo of the Waterford woman who would marry J. E. Henry: Eliza Ann Ide (daughter of Joseph and Almira), who was 20 years old when this photo was taken. Her marriage would follow two years later.

Eliza Ann Ide, 1912, before marrying J.E. Henry.

Since the photo was taken in 1852, it's a perfect mesh with the historical fiction series I'm writing, Winds of Freedom. I can absorb from this image of Eliza's face a reminder of both the lack of experience and the determination to enfold life that so many of our New England young women combined at age 20 in the nineteenth century. It reminds me, too, of my own early adult years, the mistakes and successes, the surprises, the constant learning, from kitchen to garden to babies to how a marriage works and how to sustain love over the long term. (That takes a lot of learning!)

Mike Dickerman also shared this photo of Eliza (Ide) Henry taken 60 years later, in 1912 -- I think she looks younger than her 80 years in the photo, and clearly she's still industrious and creative.

Eliza Ann Henry, 1912, after her husband's death.

 

It seems to me that in this pandemic year, as we shelter in place while waiting for medical science to develop the vaccines we so desperately need, we mustn't overlook that we are also "aging in place." Such a close relationship with place is a traditional resource and value of this northern area, where family roots may go back a century and more, and even newcomers begin to bond with the terrain, the light, the plants and animals, as they struggle through their early seasons here. It's been a joke to "city folks" that we in rural areas talk about the weather so much ... but it defines each day's opportunities and necessities. So we have to pay attention.

Living beyond the years of a beloved spouse or child also change our relationship with time, in my observation. Instead of the calendar being significant for upcoming milestones, it has more to say about counting from major events: I am in my second year after my husband Dave's death. Through the long powerful rope of love and "missingness," I am tethered to what has been an anchor for me. 

 In the 1912 photo, Eliza had been a widow for only days or months. I wonder how she saw her past, and how she looked ahead. She would live nearly 20 years longer, dying at age 99 in Pasadena, California, so at some point she clearly decided to stir up excitement in her golden years, and travel across the nation (by rail, I trust!). 

That's a good reminder for today: We are sheltering in place, and aging in place -- but the years ahead will include freedom from the pandemic, and amazing adventures, if we choose. 

[Hope you'll make time to browse more of my tales here of historical research, writing, and life! Tap the link to reach the rest of the material: https://bethkanell.blogspot.com]

"Mining" a Postcard: Speedwell Farms, T. N. Vail's Model Agricultural Effort in Lyndonville, and Margaret Bean

Front of postcard

I have a lot of reasons to watch for information about Speedwell Farms. This agricultural effort of Theodore Newton Vail, whose telegraph-related enterprise skills empowered AT&T in the early 20th century, was a model of modern agriculture for its times. Through a series of local connections, T. N. Vail, a quintessential "out-of-stater," bought farmland in Lyndonville, Vermont, and developed it in both size and farming methods.

Back of postcard

Following the highest moral code of his time, Vail contributed heavily to his Vermont town, and both Lyndon Institute and Lyndon State College, now NVU Lyndon, owe their strengths to his support.

Vail's life and philanthropy were the major collecting interest for my husband Dave Kanell, enlivening his retirement years with an endless quest for related materials. Last week I noticed what's called a "real photo postcard" set at Vail's Speedwell Farms, and being sold online. The price was higher than Dave would ever, ever have paid, so with great regret, I didn't purchase the original, but the two photos here show the front and back of the card.

I have another connection to this beyond Dave's passion for it: Speedwell Farms took its name from the New Jersey ironworks that the Vail family established in the previous century, in Morristown there -- a place I often visited as a child with my mother, who loved its historic houses and battlefield. Talk about nostalgia!

Finally, this postcard was mailed to Miss Margaret (spelled Margrett) Bean in "Watterford Vermont" -- that is, my own town of Waterford. It's postmarked in both Lyndonville and Waterford -- on June 30, 1908, at 8 pm, in Lyndonville, and then the next morning (July 1) in Waterford. I transcribe the writing as follows: 

June 30 Lyndonville Speedwell Farms / Just a line I am well hope you are the same is Al at home yet good buy from EOK

[If you see it differently and have a reason to think you know the sender, let me know!]

In documents archived online, I can find  Miss Margaret Bean teaching in Waterford in 1925. She was quite young when this card was sent, though, only six years old at the time! Her parents were Ervin Lester Bean (a farmer; 1873-1957) and Orpha P. Kerwin Bean (1879-1929), both born just across the state line in New Hampshire. Margaret married Warren Weston Whitney in 1925, and lived in Littleton and then Lancaster, NH, where her burial stone stands.

Since one of my 5-great grandfathers is Jonathan Bean of Candia, NH, I'm especially curious about Margaret and may pursue this again later! 

Most important for me today, though, is the pleasure of finding a Speedwell Farms image, and enjoying the link between Lyndonville and Waterford residents in 1908.

1905 Waterford VT directory

My Eight-Greats Grandmother Valued Her Clothes!

It's Vermont Archives Month, and that's taken me into sorting many letters and photos from my mother's side of the family, and updating the family tree a bit further. 

Women's clothing in the 1850s and 1890s keeps coming back onto my research schedule, for a couple of books that I'm writing, one set in each decade. (The 1850s one will be book 3 in my Winds of Freedom series, published by Five Star/Cengage.)

But I was totally amazed to discover today the will of my 9-great grandmother Sarah Littlefield Sawyer, 1649-1734, who lived in Wells, Maine, when it was still part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Check out item 12 in particular!

If, like me, you have no idea of what "calaminco" means here -- check out this handy article by Leimomi Oakes, a textile and fashion historian, who says "Calamanco (also spelled callimanco, calimanco, and kalamink) is a thin fabric of worsted wool yarn which could come in a number of weaves: plain, satin, damasked, and was even brocaded in floral, striped and checked designs.  The surface was glazed or calendered (pressed through hot rollers)."

The Will of Sarah Sayer

   To All People to whom these Prestns shall come Greeting. Know y^e, that I Sarah Sayer of Wells in the County of York in the Province of the Massachusets Bay New England Relique of William Sawyer late of Wells afors^d Deces^d (thô weak of Body, yet of sound & well Disposing mind & Iudgment) Do Committing my sperit in the first place unto God the Father of it thrô Jesus Christ, & my Body into the hands of my Executors hereafter named to be by them decently Interred in hopes of A Blessed Resurrection, Dispose of the Temporall Estate with which God has been pleased to bless me in the manner following viz^t

   1. My Will is that all my Iust & honest Debts, together with my Funerall Charges shall be paid out of my Estate by my Executors hereafter Named.

   2 I Give & bequeath unto my son John Wells Eight Pounds to be paid him by my Executors within six months after my Decese. I Will also that A Bond of thirteen pounds given by him to me, shall be freely surrendred up unto him by my Executors within the afors^d term of six months after my Dece'se And I Will that the Eight pounds I herein give unto this my s^d son John Wells be laid out by him in procureing A Funerall Coat after my Disc.

   3. I Give & Bequeath unto my son Thomas Wells Eight pounds to procure A Funerall Coat after my Decese the which s^d sum shall be paid him by my Executors within six months after my Decease. I will also that A Bond of thirteen pound given from him to me shall be freely surrendred up to him after my Dece'se.

   4. I Give unto my Daughter Patience Clark five pounds (besides five pounds I have already given her) to be paid unto her by my Executors within six months after my Decease.

   5. I Give & Bequeath unto my Daughter Sarah Sayer of Newbury two pounds & four pounds A piece to Each of her two sons Viz^t Jonathan Sibley & Sam^ll Sibley these several sums to be paid vnto my s^d Daughter Sarah Sawyer & her afores^d two sons by my Executors within six months after my Decease.

   6. I Give & Bequeath unto my son Francis Sawyer thirty pounds to be paid unto him within six Months after my Decease by my Executors.

   7. I Give & Bequeath unto my Grand son William son of my son Daniel Sayer De'cs^d thirty pounds, to be paid him by my Executors within six months after my Decease.

   8. I Give & Bequeath unto my Daughter Hannah Chesley thirty pounds to be paid her by my Executors within six Months after my Decease.

   9. I Give & Bequeath unto my Daughter Ruth Sampson Thirty pounds to be paid her by my Executors within six Months after my Decease.

   10. I Give & Bequeath unto my great grand-Daughter Mary Clarke Daughter of my grand son Natha^ll Clarke A Certain Feather Bed that has an homespone Tick to be Delivered to her by my Executors within six Months after my Decease.

   11. I Will that what ever Use or Interest shall be found due upon my Bonds that any of my Children or Grand Children have Obliged themselves unto me by, shall be freely wholy and absolutely remitted released & given up unto such from whom it may be found due by my Executors at my Decease.

   12. I Give & Bequeath unto my four Daughters my wearing Cloths as follows viz^t I give to my Daughter Patience Clark A black Calaminco suit & my black blew searge Petty Coat. I give to my Daughter Sarah Sawyer my silk Crape suit & my red & Yellow under Petty Coat. I give unto my Daughter Hannah Chesley my silk suit. I give to my Daughter Ruth Sampson my striped Calaminco suit, & A striped Calaminco Gown & A black silk Petty Coat. all the Rest of my Cloths I will shall be Equally Divided among these my four Daughters. And if either of these my Daughters shall Decease before I shall, then I will that their Daughters shall have such Clothes as their Mother would have had by Vertue of this my Will if they were Liveing.

   13. I Will that four pounds shall be paid by Executors unto the Church of Christ in Wells, within six months after my Decease, to be distributed by them among some of the poor Members of s^d Church.

   14. I Will all my Estate of what nature or kind so ever not already disposed of in this my Last Will & Testament unto my two grandsons & my two Daughters hereafter mentioned viz^t Joseph Sayer, W^m Sayer, Hannah Chesley & Ruth Sampson to be delivered up unto them & equally Divided amongst them within six months after my Decease.

   15. finally I Do hereby Ordain Constitute & appoint my son Francis Sayer & my Grand-sons Joseph Sayer & William Sayer to be the sole Executors of this my last Will & Testament and Do hereby revoke & Disannull all former Wills & Testaments heretofore made by me & Declare this to be my last will & testament : As Witness my hand and seal this twenty seventh Day of April Anno Domini 1734. Annoque R R Georgii secundi magnæ Brittanniæ &c septimo.

Signed sealed & pronounced    in presence of    Hans Dalzel    Jeremiah Storer    Jeremiah storer Jur		NB : the words or grand Chil-    dren were interlined be-    tween, ye sixth & seventh    Lines from ye top of the    second page before signing    & ye word between will &    all in ye thirty first line from    ye top of the second page    was erased before signing    Sarah Sayer : (seal)
Probated, 10 Feb. 1734-5. Inventory returned 2 June 1735, at £540: 2: 6, by John Storer, Samuel Wheelwright and Daniel Morrison, appraisers. [Source: Maine Wills, 1640-1760 (Portland, Me., 1887), p. 356]

 

Miss Exley began, "Patience is a virtue ..."

One of the delights of being a historical fiction author is, I can confess what a large percentage of my life is spent mining the past!

Photo from the North Star Monthly, June 2006

For 16 years I lived in Barnet, Vermont (I've now lived in Waterford, Vermont, for almost 15), and my best friends there included a retired teacher named Miss Karlene Exley. One day I noticed that when she'd tell stories of her own mother, she referred to herself as "Kay." I asked her whether she'd like me to use that name with her, and she said yes. I felt so honored to be included that way!

Every historical novel I write has a bit of Miss Exley in it. (She is long gone, in person.) Today I'm thinking of her chant, clearly from her own childhood: "Patience is a virtue, Virtue is a grace, Grace is a little girl with dirt upon her face."

And I am so glad to say that the need for PATIENCE around getting ebook access to The Darkness Under the Water and The Long Shadow is almost over ... Speaking Volumes expects to make these available in October. (Yes, October of this year!)

I'll let you know just as soon as it's really real.

Mark Doty's 2020 Book on Whitman's Leaves of Grass and Much More

 

Visions are not as far from ordinary life as we sometimes think, and artists need to live as if revelation is never finished. (Mark Doty, What Is the Grass, p. 31)

 WHAT IS THE GRASS: WALT WHITMAN IN MY LIFE has been called one of the most anticipated books of 2020. And for anyone who knows the writing of poet and memoirist Mark Doty, that's certainly the case. I caught a Zoom (virtual) interview that he provided this summer and promptly ordered a copy of the book -- and knowing the book would probably devour hours when I "ought to be working," I waited a little longer.

Then gave in. So, fair warning: Be ready to clear six to eight hours from your schedule to savor this book.

I had two reasons for particularly wanting to read this, beyond being a fan of Mark Doty's poetry. First, I'm writing a series of novels set during the prelude to the Civil War, and since that's the time Walt Whitman wrote Leaves of Grass, every scrap of detail on that time and the emotional life of a vivid speaker then can be golden. I need these.

 Second, I'm wandering in the land of memoir, trying to find the very personal balance of telling enough — because there are things that I did that, even now, look adventurous and intriguing and worth talking about — and not telling too many things that are best left unsaid. Since Doty has managed this before, most powerfully in My Alexandria but also in his poems, I wanted to learn more. (See some reviews I've written that circle around some of Doty's work, here.)

What I found is a book that walks several journeys at once: Whitman's into becoming the first "American poet" (leaving behind European fuss and feathers); America's in developing its own language; and Doty's braided experiences of both love and physicality that celebrate (eventually) his love of other men. But the book is also a langorous paddle along the river of life itself, from childhood to maturity to the contemplation of the dead.

The dead are not lost, but in circulation; they are involved in the present, in active participation. Bits of them are streaming through your hand and mine, just as language is circulating through us. Lexicon and materiality forever move onward and outward in the continuous wheeling expansion this world is. This is no mere philosophical proposition on Whitman's part, not an intellectual understanding but a felt actuality. We are alive forever in the endless circulation of matter. Nothing luckier, stranger, or more beautiful could ever happen. There is no better place.

Doty probes Whitman's own coming of age in the 1840s, in an era when the words "homosexual" and "heterosexual" weren't yet available. He touches on the warmth and affection that was customary among young adults of the time, men with men in particular. More, he fingers the period when movements and associations to better the lives of humans were exuberantly rising. For Whitman, writes Doty, "Either his character was shaped by the decade or happened to be a perfect fit; the expansive, optimistic curiosity of the times was superbly suited to his own."

For poetry lovers, Doty's explanations of how Whitman's lines, repetitions, and stanza breaks created and nurtured the energy of Leaves of Grass and especially of the poems "Song of Myself" and "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" provide the detail and illumination of perhaps an entire term (or more) of a wonderful literature seminar. For those who love plot more than the words that tell it, the binding of Whitman's life and Doty's can fascinate -- because, as in his earlier books (even the ones focused on dogs), Doty writes love stories. Not soppy ones, but surprising, inventive, redemptive ones in full chest hair or leather harnesses, in risky interludes, in committed long-term discoveries. And this book, dedicated to Doty's husband Ethan, is first to last a love story, "It's a matter of magnitude, of what leads one to step into one's largest self, and to enter into experiences that inscribe themselves so deeply into us as to become benchmarks in a life, unforgettable. ... I have never loved anyone in quite the way I do Ethan. We spent a long time coming to know one another physically, in the present tense, and from our bodies all else has proceeded."

Indulge yourself with this book. It will surely inform and shape how I write my own next novel, or next poem (it already has done the latter). May it enrich your season ahead, and bring this powerful writer into the circle of the people you enjoy listening to.

Finding Prime Resources for Historical Fiction/Mysteries

Some of the best historical resources seem to arrive here by chance: a letter postmarked nearby in the 1800s (I have three from the postmaster of West Waterford to his son, located at a postcard show), a local inventor's identity (the "improved egg case" opened up research into Edward Everett Bishop of Waterford, Vermont), or a photo album that suddenly surfaces as a gift to a local group (thank you, Jamie Ide, on behalf of the Waterford VT Historical Society!).

Last Tuesday evening, that Muse of Historical Research -- to the Greeks, that would be Clio -- tapped my shoulder during a virtual panel of mystery authors "at" the Tewksbury (Massachusetts) Public Library. Tewksbury is one town east of Lowell, the marvelous center of fabric mill invention that anchored the Northern profits from Southern enslavement. As of 1840, there were 32 mills in the city. Readers of Katherine Paterson's historical fiction may have pictured the lives that the "mill girls" led there (see Lyddie); those who've pursued history tourism in New England may have visited the remarkable National Park that now embraces some of the remaining mill structures and stewards their history. American freedoms, gender roles, Labor as a force in politics, all these and more can be embraced in the history in Lowell.

But I hadn't known about Tewksbury. One of the people attending the author panel mentioned "the old library" and the librarian moderating the panel sent me a link to some photos that reminded me of the libraries I haunted in the 1950s and 1960s.

The "old" Tewksbury Public Library.

Then, of course, I began to explore what this urban library offers in the way of historical collections, and here's what I found in the town public history collection there:

Tewksbury History Topics

• Anne Sullivan and the Tewksbury Hospital
• Captain John Trull (Tewksbury Minuteman)
• King Philip's War
• Lowell Mill Girls and Women
• Merrimack River
• Mico Kaufman (local sculptor)
• Tewkesbury, England (Town namesake)
• Town Anniversaries (including 200th Anniversary Time Capsule)
• Tewksbury State Hospital (State Almshouse)

Link to online historical patient registers
Visit the Public Health Museum at Tewksbury Hospital

• Town of Tewksbury Annual Reports (1878 - present)
•  Wamesit Indians

Any one of these could slip into the books I'm writing, set in Vermont in the 1850s and 1860s, when Vermonters still saw Massachusetts as the place where the War of Independence began, rather than a traffic nightmare or a set of distant museums and restaurants. I also discovered that Tewksbury was struck by a devastating tornado in 1857 -- something that may go directly into Book 4 of my Winds of Freedom series.

Most of all, I get the sense that Clio the Muse is always ready to alert me to "something old, something new" to learn. You know, I used to feel a little guilty that I took the writing path, instead of going boldly abroad for adventures. But it occurs to me now -- every time I find another prime resource like the Tewksbury Public Library, I'm having an awesome adventure. Just wait and see what comes up in the next couple of novels I've got rolling! (Don't you love being able to share the adventure, too?)