EvaandHenry.com

I am so pleased to be on the panel of the next Breakfast With the Authors, sponsored by the Cape Cod Writers Center on March 23 in Hyannis at the Cape Codder Resort.  See all details for making reservations here,  and make them soon!

Chair Rock at the beach at Paine Hollow, South Wellfleet

The restaurant is asking for  a headcount. There will be two other authors besides myself talking with you about recently published books-  John Paul De Milio and Chip Bishop.   More here   http://capecodwriterscenter.org/events/breakfast-with-the-authors/            Other news: it’s been a very mild Cape Cod winter.  This is a warm March day on the shore at Paine Hollow.  Chair Rock has been there since Eva’s time.

Christmas in the 1880′s was not the garish consumer feeding frenzy that it is today. It was a time to consider blessings and celebrate the birth of a savior. Attending church through the advent season was looked forward to by all.  I am so happy that I was able to present a reading at the very church in Wellfleet that Eva attended.  I say Eva, because the original Methodist Church burned down in the 1890′s, and  the replacement, which is now more than a century old, was known only to Eva; Henry had already been lost at sea.

It gave me goosebumps to read from the book while standing in front of the pipe organ that Eva listened to every Sunday, and I looked out at the pews, full of people a century removed from the folks that built the church. The light from the stained glass windows is always warm and rich, embracing and peaceful.  Do visit the Wellfleet Methodist Church whenever you have the chance.

I’ve also had the pleasure of visting several reading groups on Cape Cod.  Yes, I’m back!  I’ve driven across country once again, this time from Montana to Cape Cod.  I have salt water in my veins, and am always called back to the Cape.

Reading Eva and Henry at the Wellfleet Methodist Church; the very church they were members of.

The Blackfeet Nation grazing range east of Glacier National Park, MT

I have recently driven myself from Cape Cod, Massachusetts to Bigfork, Montana. The journey was introspective while at the same time being very much observant of the big wide country I live in, and love. I’ve driven this way before, but with my husband. This time I traveled solo with my dog Yoko. I noted my thoughts along the way in a tiny notebook that sat on the passenger seat. My scribbling, which was performed without me taking my eyes from the road, give the the memory jogs I needed so I could recreate the whole day at the end of every one of them, and write about it in my blog: www.capecodderinmontana.blogspot.com If you are curious about the roads traveled in late June/early July, 2011. . . and lots of pictures to boot, please go visit.

A picture says a thousand words, and this old stereoscope card clearly shows the conditions faced by fishermen on a winter trip, and this was a clear, calm night.  Ice had to be chopped from the rigging to prevent the vessel from becoming top heavy and flipping over. Of course, it was impossible to sail with so much ice forming on the lines and ropes. Stereoscopes were a common form of photographic entertainment from before the Civil War up through the end of Eva ‘s life.  A collection of the cards that entertained Eva and her friends has been passed down in the family.  When viewed through a stereoscope, the double picture produces a pronounced 3D effect. 

One of the leather bound photograph albums found in our family attic belonged to Eva’s mother, Sarah Rich Paine-   Mrs. Otis Paine.  Eva and Henry are placed facing away from one another, not towards each other, and that may have been by accident, but to me it seemed ominous.  More telling was the carving on their headstone in the South Wellfleet Cemetery, obviously chiseled in two different eras. I had so many questions, and spent time finding the answers that I could.  After immersing myself in the history of their life together and the event that separated them (not until death do we part), I enjoyed the process of filling in the blanks and creating the resulting novel.

1886: In Chapter Two, Eva and her mother Sarah drove their buggy past the Second Congregational Church in South Wellfleet on their way to the Southern Wharf of Blackfish Creek.  Eva contemplates the headstone of John Taylor, a Revolutionary War hero who was a bodyguard to George Washington.  The stone is still there, and is decorated every Veteran’s Day with an American Flag. . . More fitting would be the flag sewn by Betsy Ross, with the circle of thirteen stars on the field of blue, rather than the modern fifty star flag. This monument is very special, and yet largely unknown and ignored. Perhaps this is good, because gravestone rubbings are highly damaging to the stones, and are forbidden in this cemetery. Mr. Taylor lived until 1851, long past the end of the Revolutionary War and the birth of a new country.

The church was closed and locked by 1886 because of the economic crisis and loss of population. Eventually the old church was moved to Wellfleet Center where it was used as Town Hall. The building burned completely in a winter fire during the 1960′s.   The present Town Hall is a replica of the old one, which had originally been built a century earlier by the South Wellfleet Congregationalists. It is the loss of the congregation and the use of the church that Sarah laments as they drive by the empty church in the buggy. By the end of the decade, the Southern Wharf Company itself would be defunct. The railroad passed by on what is now the bike trail on the east side of the cemetery on its way to Provincetown.  It chugged through South Wellfleet twice a day, bringing mail, goods, and passengers.

My great grandaunt Eva was exceedingly proud of the fact that she had attended and graduated from Wellfleet High School.  At the time of her graduation, the school was located, I believe, on School Street in the center of town.

Eva’s  diploma was framed behind glass, and generations that came after her found it on the wall of the parlor in what had been her house.  The class she graduated from in 1882 was prolific and large. Class size began to dwindle after that through the end of the nineteenth century, mirroring the loss of population due to economic troubles.

Other attic treasures giving clues to her high school years:  Eva’s autograph book,  signed by the members of her class as well as by her parents, neighbors and friends. A well-thumbed Latin grammar book. Shakespearean classics. And many photographs of happy adolescents posing with one another.