When I First read A Girl of the Limberlost

This family portrail, dated 1963, was taken the year I read A Girl of the Limberlost.  It is springtime, Easter Sunday, in the backyard of our house in St. Joseph, Michigan and I am seated on the left, holding my sister Mary in my arms.  After this photo was taken, two other siblings, my youngest brother and sister, were born into our family.  In many family portraits, I am holding an infant sibling.  When did I have time to read?  Oh, but I did.

Bella's voice coming in loud and clear

The Isabella Tiger Moth, part of Paul McMichael's moth collection, is briefly described in A SUMMER of SILK MOTHS as a harbinger of winter.  Pete Shelton draws the Isabella for Bella, to her delight.  In the sequel-in-progress, 13-year old Bella is taking her place as one of three narrators.  She is opinionated and smart, age-appropriately judgemental of the adults around her (not furious or vindictive like Nora was).  I am loving the process of creating Bella's strong, young female voice, at once chatty and fierce.

Questions for the author as the sequel unfolds...

End of June musings:


How important are the moths to the sequel?

Does Bella have enough perspective and voice to be a successful narrator?

Would a romance/relationship between Christina and Abe be interesting to young readers?

Will Pete's journal adequately take the place of the moth journals?

Should Pete turn to another girl for comfort in Nora's absence?  Who?  What sort of girl?

How can I keep the setting (Riverside) vibrant and significant in the sequel?

Bugs

From A Child's Garden of Verses, Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen.  This image haunted me as a child--it haunts me still.

moth wardrobe

Another great shirt, another present from Chloe,this one designed by kiki smith.  note large moth above my left hand.

The Beginnings of a Sequel

I have submitted RAMONA'S GIFT to an editor.  While I am waiting to hear back from him (could be months), my mind turns effortlessly back to Nora and Pete--truly they have been living on the edges of my imagination ever since I decided a sequel to A SUMMER OF SILK MOTHS is a must-do.  When I imagine what happens next with Nora--one PLOT element is crystal clear:  Nora must abandon Riverside, both physically and emotionally, in order to reunite with her mother and help her sister Carly.  Although she had imagined herself returning soon to her uncle and her beloved, the complications of her former life make this less and less possible, the farther away she moves in time and miles from the two people who saved her and gave her a new identity.  She becomes a ghost-version of who she was at Riverside. 

New dramas unfold at Riverside, but Nora's journey--her continuing metamorphoses will be at the heart of this second book about these characters.

Lots more stuff about Bella. 

Here is the first line of the sequel:  I never meant to let go of him.

I am 20 pages in and it is smooth and easy first draft writing--unusual for me and exciting.

Another book that inspired me to write about girls...

Was thrilled to see Jonathan Franzen's excellent review in the NYTBR of Christina Stead’s The Man Who Loved Children—a classic novel of family dysfunction that I discovered in my 20’s and that I still sometimes turn to for inspiration, in part because the dialogue between family members is so outrageous and high-blown and furious and real. But both the book’s title and this particular cover do not show how much of this book is about a girl, a supremely heroic and rage-filled adolescent girl—Louie Pollit, eldest in a large family with parents who are at war. I had never before read an account of such a miserable, frustrated, emotionally wrought teenager. She is impossibly melodramatic, yet ever-recognizable. She became, for me, a kind of patron saint of righteous teen rage. How I loved her, then and now. One of my summer projects will be to read this book yet again in order to prime the pump for the sequel to A Summer of Silk Moths—returning to Nora’s world—the first world, the one she was so furiously escaping from when she first arrives at Riverside.

“Louie knew she was an ugly duckling. But when a swan she would never come sailing back into their village pond; she would be somewhere away, unheard of, on the lily-rimmed oceans of the world. This was her secret.” (italics mine) The Man Who Loved Children.