My invitation to do so appeared on the front page of the New York Times Travel Section on October 2, 2017, with the headline: “Vancouver Island, Through an Artist’s Eyes.” Beneath an intriguing photo of a trail into a Pacific Coast rainforest, the feature’s first line revealed the artist’s identity. “Revered in British Columbia, little known in the U.S., the artist Emily Carr, born in Victoria in 1871, may be from another era, but amid environmental concerns, her works and images resonate.”

Zunoqua of the Cat Village, 1930

I’d been introduced to Emily’s Carr’s ground-breaking work in a Canadian Literature class taught by poet Deborah Keenan at Hamline University in 2004. Emily Carr: An Introduction of Her Life and Art by Anne Newlands was one of the assigned texts. The book was only 64 pages long, yet the color plates of this unconventional woman’s paintings spoke to me in a way no other visual artist’s work ever had.

I couldn’t articulate why. All I knew was that these images—created by an artist who nicknamed herself ‘Small’ as a child—brought to life a hidden part of me, raw and tender, foreign, yet totally familiar. Later, when I researched and read more about Carr’s life, she became a kind of imaginary friend, a kindred spirit much like I’ve always felt about the Anne of Green Gables author Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Emily Carr (Small, 1876)

The Times article highlighted two major exhibitions of Carr’s art: “Emily Carr: Into the Forest” (at the Vancouver Art Gallery, May 13 – December 3, 2017), and “Picturing the Giants: The Changing Landscapes of Emily Carr” at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (June 10 – April 1, 2018). The window of time in which to see both exhibits in a single trip to British Columbia was running out.

My desire to see the originals was so strong that I decided I would travel there alone if I couldn’t find a travelling companion. To my surprise, my always-busy husband Ralph cleared his calendar for a week to accompany me.

Usually when we take a trip together, Ralph—a more experienced traveler than I—makes the arrangements. But this time, I quickly booked flights from Minneapolis, reserved two seats on the ferry between Vancouver and Victoria through BC Connector, pre-purchased tickets to the art exhibits, and took advantage of off-season hotel rates for accommodations at two grand, historic Canadian Pacific railway hotels.

The Fairmont Empress, Victoria, BC

Since the Emily Carr House in Victoria, her childhood home, was closed to the public for the season, a friend suggested that I request a private tour. Jan Ross, the curator of the provincial heritage site, graciously agreed to do so.

We departed Minnesota on November 8th with only three “must-do’s” planned in advance. We left the remainder of the sightseeing and dining adventures to chance, as our spirits and the unpredictable rainy-season weather dictated.

I have always loved being in Canada; once I arrive, I always feel like I have come back home.

The Homecoming, Nathan Scott, sculptor,Victoria, BC

Were Emily Carr’s richly drawn paintings of First Nations villages and totems, dark, haunting forests, wild beaches and vast skies all I imagined they would be?

In next week’s blog post, I’ll share my answer.

Eileen at Vancouver Art Gallery, November 9, 2017

In Chapter 23 of The Secrets of Eastcliff-by-the-Sea, “Tea Party,” Annaliese hosts a tea party for her three cousins and their sock monkeys. Nora, Nadine, and Nell Ann have a surprise for Annaliese … their mother gave their sock monkeys away! So how will the cousins be able to attend Great-Grandmama Easterling’s birthday party? Only the sock monkeys received invitations. 

It was a lovely tea party that Annaliese and Miss Pine set out for their guests. Throckmorton sat at the sock monkeys’ table, covered with a lace tablecloth and Throckmorton’s favorite doll dishes, “the ones with daffodils and aqua rabbits.”

“On a larger table, also set for four, a three-tier silver serving dish held dainty petit fours and finger sandwiches cut into hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades. Devonshire cream, lemon curd, and rosy-red jam accompanied a basket of freshly baked currant scones.”

“Serving the catty cousins,” illustration copyright Sarah Jane Wright from The Secrets of Eastcliff-by-the-Sea, Beach Lane Books

One of the sources that provided inspiration for this tea party is The Anne of Green Gables Treasury (Carolyn Strom Collins, Christina Wyss Eriksson, Ruth Macdonald and David Macdonald, Penguin Books Canada Limited, 1991,) Chapter Five, “Tea Time.”

“The teas that are described most fully in the Anne books are of the special-occasion variety that consisted of treats such as sandwiches, fresh or preserved fruits, cheese, breads, cookies, cakes, pies, tarts, and other desserts. “A splendid tea,” as Anne described one of her Sunday School picnics, would have included those kinds of dishes as well as more substantial fare—meats, salads and vegetables. Extra-special treats such as ice cream assured the success of such occasions.”

The authors go on to say:

“A variety of tiny sandwiches served with the first cup of tea is a fitting beginning for any tea party. Finely textured white bread is most often used for tea sandwiches, but you can also choose whole wheat or light rye or a combination of breads. Slice the bread as thinly as you can—about 1/4 inch slices are ideal.”

Here’s a recipe for finger sandwiches from this cherished book.

_____________________________________

CHICKEN SALAD SANDWICHES

From: The Anne of Green Gables Treasury

1 cup finely chopped cooked chicken
1/4 cup finely chopped celery
1 hard-boiled egg, peeled and finely chopped
1 Tbsp finely chopped sweet pickle or sweet pickle relish
1 tsp finely chopped green onion
2 to 3 Tbsp mayonnaise
Salt and pepper to taste
6 thin slices bread
Butter, at room temperature

1. In a bowl, mix together the chicken, celery, egg, pickle, and green onions. Stir in the mayonnaise until you have a nice moist mixture. Add salt and pepper to taste. Keep the mixture in the refrigerator, covered, until you are ready ot make the sandwiches.
2. Butter each slice of bread on one side. Spread the filling on three of the buttered slices and top with the remaining slice of bread. Trim the crusts off the sandwiches and cut each sandwich into shapes.

Makes 3 whole sandwiches

On each of my many visits to Prince Edward Island, I made a special point to “do lunch” at Dalvay, always ordering the same thing: steamed Island mussels fresh from the sea, bread hot from the oven, and sticky date pudding with toffee sauce.

photo of Dalvay-by-the-Sea, Steven Garrity, Wikimedia Commons

In my imagination I lifted Dalvay — a Canadian National Historic House built in 1895 — and placed the majestic structure on the northeastern coast of Maine on “a high cliff above a frozen sea — far, far away from it all.” Unlike Dalvay, in my story Eastcliff-by-the-Sea is “old and not nearly as fine as it used to be.”

It was never my intention to include “Eastcliff-by-the-Sea” in the title of my book. However, late in the editorial revision process, the Marketing Department at Simon & Schuster decided they wanted a different title, departing from my original choice, Throckmorton: The Story of a Simply Remarkable Sock Monkey. My editor favored inclusion of the setting’s name and characterization of the book’s plot as a mystery. Thus, a new title was born.

Resources:

Learn more about, and see pictures of, Dalvay-by-the-Sea. Note the Anne of Green Gables video connection, also the fact that the original Dalvay estate had horses, a stable, and carriages.

Here’s a rich history of Dalvay-by-the-Sea, including two granddaughters who became princesses!

Did my mention of sticky toffee pudding make your mouth water? Here’s the recipe!

Six months earlier, on the way home from a party near dawn, I’d totaled a white Volkswagen Beetle. Somersaulting through the convertible’s rag-top roof, twenty-three years of life flashed before my eyes; and I didn’t like what I saw. Too late, I thought. When my body stops rolling, I’ll be dead.

Twenty-two days after the accident, with every inch of my skin blotted with greenish-yellow bruises, I married a man whom I’d met at that party.

Later, when he asked me where I wanted to go on our honeymoon, I answered, “Prince Edward Island—because I want to see the island where Anne of Green Gables took place.”

The book’s protagonist was my childhood heroine. Anne Shirley was spunky and made mistakes. I envied her untamed imagination and indomitable spirit. Growing up in a small, red brick house where talking about feelings was forbidden, Anne was my true kindred spirit.

We honeymooners headed north from Wisconsin in a brown Ford van to Sault Ste. Marie, camped near Sudbury, showered in Quebec, and at Cape Tormentine boarded the car ferry to cross the Northumberland Strait.

L. M. Montgomery’s descriptions did not disappoint. The gables were green, the soil was red, the gulf waters cobalt beneath a periwinkle sky. We boiled lobsters in a pot over a campfire near the windswept dunes, and I believed with Anne Shirley’s fervor that our rash marriage would last forever.

As early as 1897, a journalist with Prince Edward Island Illustrated wrote: “This is the place for weary men and women to come to build up worn-out tissue, to rest the mind, to banish weariness.” So ten years later, divorced, with two young daughters in tow, I returned to the Island, worn out and weary. We flew from Halifax into Charlottetown by prop plane during a thunderstorm. I can still see the fear in my children’s eyes and the pink and lavender packs strapped to their backs.

I returned to PEI almost every summer after that. Seventeen grueling years as a public school administrator had taken its toll on my health and spirit. Ultimately, Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction (CFS) and companion depression trapped me in its insidious net.

One cloudless morning in the summer of 1999, I was sitting on a barn red, double-sided, wooden bench on the porch of a run-down cottage that my second husband and I had purchased on Argyle Shore. I could see the coast of Nova Scotia and a peppermint-striped lighthouse guarding its shore. A pair of seals, as black and shiny as a fisherman’s slicker, swam in unison through the gentle surf and shallow waters.

It was the time between tides.

I waited for my nearest neighbor—a red fox—to steal past for his morning drink from a fresh water stream that slices the bank on its way to the sea, and I thought about the musty-smelling sixth-grade autobiography that I’d recently found buried in a box labeled “Eileen’s Things” in my mother’s basement.

My brother had sketched my face on the cover, complete with pointy black plastic glasses. Below my penciled likeness, I’d written, “You are a Portrait in the Picture of Life.” On the back page, my teacher Mrs. Ross had penned in red ink: “This is excellent from beginning to end. I hope you will always keep your zest for living and learning.”

Re-reading my eager, honest, child-like words I remembered how my mother had hovered during the biography’s creation—reminding me to check my grammar, correct my punctuation. “Use your best penmanship,” she admonished. “If you make a mistake, don’t cross it out, start over.”

Calmed by the sea, I could hear her voice. I could feel her pride. By this time Alzheimer’s disease had destroyed her mind, silenced her voice. I wondered, “Do I still have time?”

On Prince Edward Island red clay soil brings forth lavender lupines that line ditches along dusty country roads. Rose-red fireweed creeps between prolific rows of new potatoes. “The lowest ebb,” writes Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “is the turn of the tide.”

Within the next year I would enroll in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at St. Paul’s Hamline University. Almost 30 years after my first visit to PEI, I was assigned to write 20 pages of creative prose that thematically reflected Canadian literature. I knew my story would take place on Prince Edward Island.

I asked myself, “What if a Yorkshire terrier from Manhattan washed up on the south shore of PEI, tangled in a lobster trap, and met that red fox? What themes could I capture in that story?”

My first published novel for young readers, Tango: The Tale of an Island Dog, was my response.

Powerless.

Small and insignificant.

Like a homely, hand-sewn sock monkey named Miss Beatrice, I often smiled on the outside while tears of sadness and confusion soaked the red felt heart tucked inside my body’s soft stuffing.

Worrisome dramas of adult life unfolded in front of my veiled eyes and played themselves out behind my back; unfortunate events often set in motion by the ringing of a black, rotary-dial telephone on a paper-cluttered desk in our family’s cramped kitchen.

Conversations were never private; my mother’s tone of voice was a dead give-away that the news coming from the other end of the line was bad. She’d shoo me away with a flick of her wrist, but I’d sneak into our only bathroom, right next to the kitchen, and press my ear against the door, straining to eavesdrop on every word.

Rarely would Mom explain anything. I was told only the most cryptic details: Great-Aunt Ida had a heart attack shucking sweet corn for supper; poor Uncle Fred died of grief, the butt-end of his cigar still plugged in his mouth; Cousin Lawrence, an up-and-coming baseball star, has an inoperable brain tumor; it’s our turn to take care of your sick grandmother – no one else wants her; Aunt Anita has skin cancer, terminal; the homestead family farm is being sold.

Why? Why? Why? I wanted to ask anyone who might answer.

When? Where? What happened? I’d pester anyone who might know.

I quickly learned that ‘children are to be seen and not heard’.

Looking back on my recently published novel for middle-grade readers, I realize that it was this very sense of invisibility and powerlessness that I was trying to capture when I created a family of inanimate sock monkey characters in The Secrets of Eastcliff-by-the-Sea. The sock monkeys share my childhood frustrations:

“You know how it is with us monkeys,” Captain Eugene lamented. “We observe. Then our keepers move out of range. We may hear the beginning, middle, or end, but rarely do we hear a whole story. It’s really quite frustrating.”

“Sock monkeys should get to live their own stories,” Sir Rudyard asserted. ”What good is seeing and hearing and smelling if we can’t do anything?”

“If I had a choice,” said Miss Beatrice, “I’d rather be someone than do something.”

Fortunately, as I made clumsy attempts to live and shape my own story – to be someone – I discovered the power of classic books with strong themes and admirable characters: Anne of Green Gables, Call of the Wild, Black Beauty, National Velvet and Little Women.

Stories with a beginning, middle and an end.

Stories that revealed not only what happened, but why.

Stories peopled with characters that became real because I was able to eavesdrop on their souls.

Stories that sketched clearly the inexplicable adult world as seen through a child’s eyes.

Stories that didn’t hold back the truth.

Slowly, the chaos and confusion within my young mind and soul got woven into a pattern with some semblance of order. Through the magic and mystery of story, I learned that there was always room for hope.

Recently, my daughter-in-law Lynn posted a photo of our nineteen month-old grandson Albert on Facebook with the caption:

Today Bertie put together two words for the first time ever. “Read book.” My heart exploded. Well worth the wait and our middle of the night rendezvous.

My heart exploded, too.

What better words could a grandmother – a writer – ever hear? What better way for a young boy to learn about who he is and what he’s capable of becoming?

Read book, indeed.

Throckmorton

Hi! My name is Mr. Throckmorton S. Monkey. I’m a red-heeled sock monkey and one of the main characters in Eileen’s new novel for middle-grade readers, The Secrets of Eastcliff-by-the-Sea: The Story of Annaliese Easterling and Throckmorton, Her Simply Remarkable Sock Monkey.

Eileen had so much fun writing about me and the other Easterling family sock monkeys that she’s invited us to come along on her on-line writing journey.

At first, we sock monkeys existed only in Eileen’s imagination, but after the book was finished, her dear friend Millie Dosh, a talented seamstress, brought us to life.

Here’s our family photo, from left to right: Captain Eugene S. Monkey, Sir Rudyard S. Monkey, Miss Beatrice S. Monkey, Ebenezer the Lighthouse Keeper, Dame Lorraine S. Monkey, and me:

Members of the Sock Monkey Family

Recently Eileen was tagged to take part in an author blog tour. Let’s hear what she has to say . . .

MY WRITING PROCESS: A BLOG TOUR! By Eileen Beha

June 24, 2014

Many thanks to Nancy Loewen for inviting me to join this blog tour, in which authors and illustrators share something about their writing process and latest work.

I had the privilege of getting to know Nancy when we were students in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Hamline University. To this day I can remember reading the early drafts of her beautiful short story, “Harvest,” recipient of the 2006 Associated Writing Programs Intro Journal Award and published in the Mid-American Review. Nancy’s book-length manuscript, a young adult novel, was selected as “Outstanding Fiction Thesis” when we graduated in May, 2007. Not only is Nancy a talented writer across multiple genres, but she’s also a wonderful mother, devoted daughter, and blessed with a kind and generous spirit. Baby Wants Mama, her latest picture book, is absolutely delightful!

Click here to see Nancy’s post and to backtrack through the blog tour.

What am I currently working on?

At 4:17 p.m. on Monday, June 16^th,I sent an email to Lauren Rille, Associate Art Director at Simon & Schuster, requesting eight last-minute text changes to The Secrets of Eastcliff-by-the-Sea prior to its release by Beach Lane Books on August 16, 2014. So, I’m finished!  At the moment, I’m breathing a deep sigh of relief, knowing that the book I started writing in January of 2008 is finally going to print.

(Yay! Hooray! I can hear Throckmorton say.)

I’ve also just started the process of revising my first and yet unpublished middle-grade novel, Don’t Call Me Carrot. Using a writing journal, I’m exploring ways to transform a minor character into a major character, and perhaps the book’s structure into a dual point-of-view.

How does my work differ from others in its genre?

My two published middle-grade novels have been described as “classic” in style, each bearing the literary characteristics of an old-fashioned tale. Both books feature a multigenerational cast of characters and two interacting, somewhat timeless worlds: a realistic world with human characters and an imaginary world inhabited by anthropomorphized animals (living and stuffed).

I’m challenged by story structures that force me to take risks with point-of-view. Told by omniscient narrator, Tango: The Tale of an Island Dog shifts perspectives between three animal and two human characters. The point-of-view in The Secret of Eastcliff-by-the-Sea – third person limited omniscient – is further constrained by the fact that Throckmorton is inanimate; he can think, see, hear and smell, but he can’t move.

Why do I write what I write?

I fully intended to write adult fiction when I enrolled in the MFA Program at Hamline. Then in the summer of 2002, I took a 2-credit course, Writing the Middle-Grade Novel, taught by Kate DiCamillo . Noting that I had a suitable “voice,” she encouraged me to attend the bimonthly writer’s workshops for writers of children’s literature led by Jane Resh Thomas , which I did for almost 10 years. Now, I’m motivated by the desire to have one of my stories positively influence a child’s life in the way that my favorite book, Anne of Green Gables, influenced mine.

How does my writing process work?

The most effective writing process that I’ve ever used sounds simple: sit in the chair and do the work. Back in the day when I was a special education teacher, we called it “time on task.” And hard to do when “life” so often gets in the way.

Five other writing processes work well for me.

One, I keep a writing journal for every book that I’m writing, or thinking about writing someday: a scrapbook of character sketches, freewriting, clustering, newspaper clippings, magazine pictures, poems, photos, or anything else than resonates with me as I contemplate a story.

Eileen’s Writing Journal

I also use a modification of a method called “dreamstorming” that I learned in a week-long workshop with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler, as described in his book From Where You Dream . Butler proposes that fiction is the exploration of the human condition with yearning as its compass. Creating a mental collage, I allow my imagination to take me all over the novel, beginning, middle and end, in no particular order, focusing on sensory details, which I record, but don’t set into prose for weeks, or even months, later.

Also, when I start a new story, I like to tell myself something that I learned from Jane Resh Thomas: that in the first draft, I’m telling the story to myself. Keeping this front and center in my mind helps me get the editorial critic off my back. I ask myself, “And then what happened?” and move on.

Revision, says author Janet Burroway, is the heart of the writing process — revision not just in the traditional sense of improving a word choice, or cutting a scene, but in the sense of re-envisioning the entire work, being open to new meaning. And the only way that I know how to re-vision a story is to write tons and tons of pages that I know I’ll have to discard: a mock diary written by the protagonist, a fake interview with the antagonist, or a scene rewritten from the points-of-view of all secondary characters.

Finally, I always, always read my work aloud, word for word, after every major revision – and never fail to be surprised by how much revision that I still have left to do.

Next up on the blog tour: Mary Losure.

I first met Mary at a writer’s workshop with Jane Resh Thomas about ten years ago and we’ve been writing colleagues and friends ever since. I’ve had the privilege of reading drafts of all four of her published and soon-to-be-published books for children. The Fairy Ring: Elsie and Frances Fool the World and Wild Boy: The Real Life of the Savage of Aveyron  are narrative nonfiction, published by Candlewick Press. Her new book, Backwards Moon, a fantasy for ages 7 – 10, will be released on September 15, 2014 from Holiday House.

An award-winning writer, Mary is passionate about words and the power of story, whether real or imagined. I also hear that she plays a mean mandolin.