Although researching and writing historical fiction hasn't been part of my professional career to date, I hope you'll enjoy this excerpt from ...
Letters to Mariah
by Lynn Zuranski
Copyright 2015, all rights reserved
September 21, 1890
Bell Family Homestead
Maple Creek, Illinois
Dearest Mariah,
It won’t surprise you to learn that this packet of letters was assembled at Grandma Alma’s insistence. The idea came to her on an excessively warm day last June, during Sunday dinner, after Uncle Charlie made the mistake of being the third person in as many minutes to comment on the heat.
“Enough!” She thumped the table hard enough to bounce the dishes. “I've had enough of your caterwauling. This day won’t be getting any cooler so long as you’re all carrying on about the heat. Ignore the blasted weather, I say!”
In the amused silence that followed, I chanced to notice her dark eyes narrowing, and then they began to twinkle. You’ll know what that meant, Mariah; she was conjuring up a plan.
"It ain’t a hot day at all. It’s January! A blizzard’s howling fit to take the roof off. You hear it, don’t you boy?” She pointed at young Benjamin.
“Yes ma’am,” he agreed politely, despite being busily engaged with the last drops of gravy on his plate.
“And you girl,” Grandma Alma pointed at Gussie next. “Firewood’s running low. We’ll be burning the furniture next. Bet your toes are so cold you can’t hardly move ’em.”
“They’re so cold I can’t feel them at all!” Gussie exclaimed. (Your little sister can humor her great-grandmother better than any of us, you know.)
“That’s the ticket.” She thumped the table again. “Now you big girls get the dishes cleared before Ben there scrapes the flowers off his plate. And you older boys start right in with the churning. I want my ice cream sooner than later today, if you please. The rest of us will be settin’ on the porch, deciding which of the exciting times our family has known to yarn about first.”
“Yarns? I say!” That was Uncle Daniel, trying to stand up to his mother and doomed to failure of course. “The good Lord reserved Sunday afternoons for resting, and I for one am looking forward to a doze in the shade.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Grandma Alma decreed. She rose unassisted, smoothing her bombazine skirt. “I have decided. We’ll each have a turn telling a tale, starting with the oldest folks. They'll be about the family’s pioneer days, back when these parts were the Northwest Frontier.”
Gussie clapped her hands. “Oh, famous! I love old-time stories! Will yours be the first?”
“Mine will be the second, child. Your Great-Uncle Peter will begin.”
“Must you be so dictatorial, Alma?” Uncle Peter sighed, languidly fanning himself with his napkin. “It’s your confounded idea, and as for age I reckon you've got me beat by a couple of years.”
“You’ll go first,” Grandma Alma stated flatly, “because you’re the only one left of the folks who first got to this land. You can tell how your parents came to live just outside the stinking marshes of Chicago. And how they came to be buried there, too.”
Uncle Jacob, bless his complacent heart, was trying to play along. “Must the stories be true, or may they contain elements of fiction?”
"True? Of course they’ll be true! No Bell or Johnston ever told a story that wasn't!" Her eyes twinkled again. "And besides, Grace will be writing them all down.”
That gave me a start, I can tell you. “I? But whatever for?”
“Because you have the clearest hand among us, and with all those years as a schoolmarm you’ll know about spelling and such.”
As she turned from the table, chin up and spine straight, Grandma Alma made one last remark. “And when you're done you’ll send them all off to what’s-her-name, Alice’s girl. The one who up and ran off with that Oklahoma Sooner.”
I trust you won’t take offense at this, Mariah dear. Of course she knows your name perfectly well when she takes the time to think about it. And deep in her heart she’s as proud of you as we all are. In fact, I believe she sees much of herself in you, as she too married young and traveled far to an untamed land.
You'll be reading more of that later.
I won’t pretend there were no further arguments about this storytelling business, but in the end Grandma Alma got her way, as she always does. And she was correct, as she always is, that sitting on the wide front porch, shaded by the tall sugar maples so much a part of our family’s history, talking about Indian wars, blizzards, and the surprising number of adventures it has been our family’s fortune or misfortune to partake in, the sultry weather faded away. In its place were ice and wind, fear and love, tragedy and joy, desperation and hope.
I have written down each story as a separate letter, and as you'll see each is signed by the person who narrated it. I hope this packet finds you in good health, my dear, and that the reading of it brings you a little closer to your home and the family who loves you so.
Most Sincerely Yours,
Aunt Grace