I’m always looking for examples of creative ways people write family histories that breathe life into ancestors long gone. I have posted a list of books I particularly admire in the Toolbox section of my website, www.MemoirMentor.com. I recently finished another family history I’d like to recommend to you, one that will surely go on the top of my list. It’s The Journey Takers, written by Leslie Albrecht Huber. I am impressed with the way Huber structured her family history and told her story, and I’ve picked up some ideas I’d like to implement in the Parrett family history I’m writing.

Huber’s narrative traces the lives of several families on her paternal line who made the brave choice to forsake their homeland–in this case, Germany, England, and Sweden–to immigrate to America. Hence, the title, The Journey Takers. This is an interesting focus, one that provides a unified theme to the varied individual life stories. My husband and I have frequently discussed writing a joint family history about all of our immigrant ancestors who came to America. Huber has beat us to the punch and provided a superb template to boot.

The Journey Takers is also about Huber’s own journey, actually several journeys, including research trips to her ancestral homelands to comb through archives, talk to the locals, and walk the land her people called their own. While researching for this book–a ten-year project, she tells us–her own young family is also in a state of flux. Educational pursuits and job responsibilities require the Hubers to move to several different states and spend a year in Spain. She recounts these different experiences in an engaging way, candidly telling us about her difficult pregnancies, parenting adjustments, and frustrations about being sidetracked from her research and writing goals. Her children are her top priority, she tells us, but she’s also ambitious and driven to complete this book. The worst thing she can imagine, she thinks, would be to lead an ordinary life. A woman so driven finds ways to fulfill her goals. I had to smile at some of her solutions: bouncing a restless toddler on her hip at the Family History Library, juggling babysitters, toting her mother and pre-school-age children with her as she navigates the Oregon Trail. I felt like I knew this woman and could relate to her conflicted desires. 

The sections about Huber are told in first person, of course, and are also written in the present tense, which makes them feel both personal and immediate. The ancestral narratives are told in the past tense and third person. Huber has done her reseach, in both primary documents and social history, which she combines in an interesting, seamless way, documented inobtrusively with endnotes that appear at the back of the book.

Here’s the best part, however. The book is full of scenes…and you know how I like scenes. The book is worth reading just to convince yourself that scenes infuse lifeless names and facts with flesh and bones–and a heart and soul. Huber does a fine job with this creative form of writing, inbuing her scenes with engaging detail, dialogue, and emotion.

I love the slick way she transitions into scenes. For example, after describing horrible conditions on board an 1861 immigrant ship bound for America from Sweden, she writes the following:

When I think of Karsti’s voyage across the ocean, one image stands out in my mind.

Karsti hurries down the steps leading below deck in the semi-dark as the massive, angry sea tossed the ship back and forth. Behind her, she hears the hatch door slam shut with a resounding thud. She reminds herself that this is to protect the passengers–to keep the water out, not to make them miserable. A few lanterns give off a dim glow, the only light available. She searches for something to hold on to in order to steady herself against the relentless motion of the ship. Around her, she sees other passengers gripping their beds, their faces white.

The scene carries on in this vein for several more paragraphs, helping us visualize what Huber clearly visualized from her reseach about that voyage. It’s all done to good effect. I include below several more  examples showing how Huber transitions from narriative to scene. 

Sometimes I imagine Karsti at Castle Gardens. She stacks her luggage, which represents all her possessions, around her. She rolls up a piece of clothing and places it under her head….

In my mind, I can see James stopping to knock on a door. A few seconds later, Elizabeth answers. Her long, brown hair is pulled up neatly on top of her head….

I picture their wagon bumping over the parched ground as John guides the horses along the dirt trail lined with sagebrush.

The book contains many other fine examples of this type. We can learn a lot by reading books similar to the ones we want to write. This is no ordinary book, written by no ordinary writer and genealogist. Leslie Albrecht Huber has nothing to worry about. 

Leslie Ann Huber, The Journey Takers, Foundation Books, 2010, 332 pages, 6 x 9, with appendix and bibliography. ISBN 2010924144, $19.95 (paperback). The book can be ordered through Leslie’s website, http://www.thejourneytakers.com/.

Next post: A bit about my glorious Baltic Cruise

I returned from my Ohio research trip about a week ago and have spent the days since organizing and analyzing the material I collected in my ancestral homeland. On the whole, I rate the trip a success, particularly the experience of actually seeing the places where my Parretts actually lived and worked. I am lucky, because that area is still primarily a farm community. If I squinted my eyes and disregarded the paved roads, automobiles, and power lines, I figured I was seeing pretty much what my folks saw when they lived there. 

I learned a lesson, though, one I’ll pass on to you. Before you go on such a trip, compile a list of every record you already have relating to the people you’re researching. I made a list of what I wanted to get, but not what I already had. I thought I could rely on my memory. I should know better by now. Turns out I brought back some duplicates of material I found years ago–which means I wasted both time and money spent on photocopying!

There was little need to pack away my suitcase, for I’m off again. I know, I know…why don’t I stay home and write? I will, I will…after this next trip. My husband and I are joining some friends on a Baltic Cruise. For the next couple of weeks, we’ll be floating around on the Symphony, a fancy sea palace filled with food and fun and hundreds of people who are paid to assure we’re happy! We’ll be pushing off from Dover (the White Cliffs place), then sailing to Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and, finally, three days in St. Petersburg, Russia, a place I’ve always wanted to see. I just finished reading The Madonnas of Leningrad, a good book my student Marta Sarkissian gave me to prepare for the trip. And I’m tucking in my airplane carry-on bag my new copy of Steig Larsson’s The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, the last book in his super-exciting Millennium trilogy. Can’t wait to dive in.

Sound fun? I’ll let you know when I return. Meanwhile, write on, my friends.

I’m always looking for interesting ways to write a family history that brings ancestors to life. I found an excellent example in Linda Tate’s Power in the Blood: A Family Narrative, published in 2009 by Ohio University Press. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a way to combine research with imagination to create complex, lifelike characters that will grip readers’ hearts from the get-go.

Tate spent 14 years writing this book after seven years of exhaustive research that involved combing through genealogical records, interviewing relatives she’d never met before, and spending summers in the area where her family lived. She began her research in 1988, prompted by a recurring dream about a grandmother who died when she was five. She begins her story with this provocative statement: “Grandma Fannie died when I was five, but now I get word that she is still alive.” Who wouldn’t want to read more?

Her family history focuses primarily on two interesting women, Tate’s grandmother Fannie, and her great-great-grandmother Louisiana, who tell their own stories with the speech patterns and vocabulary of their Appalachian culture. Tate is a scholar in Appalachian literature and grew up in a family who used many of the speech patterns of their ancestors. These women feel real, and you will soon realize that they reveal themselves, flaws and all, through their compelling, often painful, stories. In addition to the character narratives, several chapters include Tate’s account of her childhood relationships with some of these people, as well as her research efforts and discoveries. Readers learn a lot about the process of putting together a family history of this magnitude.

Tate provides an unflinching view of complicated, deeply flawed individuals, who inflict a great deal of pain on their families. At the same time, she maintains a tone of fairness and understanding, and in the end she shows how knowledge and honesty can heal the psyche. We see all sides of people and come away with a greater comprehension of a unique American culture through multiple generations . I guarantee this book will get under your skin, as it did mine. To learn more, you’ll find an interview with the author here.

Beginning Wednesday, February 10, PBS will broadcast Faces of America, an inspiring new genealogy series hosted by Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who last year produced the much admired documentary African American Lives. In this new series, Gates shows how the latest tools of genealogy and genetics helped trace the ancestors of 12 famous Americans, including actress Meryl Streep, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, political commentator Stephen Colbert, chef Mario Batali, director Mike Nichols, ice skater Kristi Yamaguchi, and many more. If you’d like to know more about this not-to-be-missed program, click here to see the promo trailer. Check your local listing for the broadcast time in your area. I can’t wait!

I don’t know about you, but competition really gets my juices going. I’d do anything in school to get a gold star on the teacher’s chart. Competition helps me cut through the pull of procrastination and the seductiveness of sloth.

If you can relate, consider submitting one of your stories to a writing competition? There are several looking for submissions in the memoir and family history categories. And deadlines are looming. Talk about an incentive. Here are a few for your consideration:

Deadline December 31–National Genealogy Society Family History Contest

 The family history should be an original work that has not been previously published or submitted elsewhere, covering three to four generations with proper documentation using the NGSQ Numbering System. The family you select to write about may span any period of American history and must span at least three generations. The progenitor may have been born elsewhere, but he or she must have actually lived in colonial America or the United States. The second and third generations must also have lived in colonial America or the United States. The writer and his or her siblings or spouses may not be included as a member of the third generation.

Lots of great prizes. Go to http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/cs/family_history_writing_contest for more information.

Deadline:  December 31–Southern California Genealogy Society GENEii Writers Contest

Category 1: family or local history articles 1,000–2,000 words in length, published or unpublished
Category 2: family or local history articles of 1,000 words or less, published or unpublished  

Go to http://www.scgsgenealogy.com/2009contest-cat.htm to learn more.

Open to members of ISFHWE. (Membership is $15.) Looking for articles and stories in four categories. Winners in each category will be awarded a cash prize and a certificate. The awards presentation will take place at the ISFHWE Awards Banquet to be held at the National Genealogical Society Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, on 28 April 2010. Info available at http://www.isfhwe.org. 

Category I: Newspaper Columns. This category is for newspaper columns published on a regular basis and published in 2009. Entries must be shorter than 1,000 words.
Category II: Articles. These articles must have been published in 2009 in a journal, magazine, newsletter, or website. Entries cannot exceed 5,000 words.
Category III: Genealogy Research Story. This category is for original, unpublished articles between 1,000 and 3,000 words. The articles should focus on telling the story of genealogical research using one of these topics: “The Search for,” “Sorting Out the Entangled Roots of …,” or “Encounters with a Family Skeleton.”
Category IV:  Want-to-be Writer/Columnist. Entrants in this category aspire to be writers or columnists in the field of genealogy/family or local history. The submissions in this category are original and unpublished, and between 500 and 1,000 words 

The contest is for articles dealing with Ohio history and genealogy, Ohio record groups, Ohioans who left to settle elsewhere, and Ohio families. OGS welcomes articles ranging in size from 750 words up to 5,000 words, depending on the subject. For more information, go to  http://www.ogs.org/writing2010/index.php.