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’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.

I taught a seminar recently to folks who wanted to learn how to write their personal histories. Before I began I asked how many had ever read a memoir. The majority had not. I gave them my standard spiel, which I’ll repeat here: There’s no better way to learn how to write a memoir than to read one. In fact, read several. You will learn how the author writes about people, places, embarrassing incidents, regrettable events. You’ll learn how the author incorporates scenes and dialogue, moves through time, creates tension, and adds humor. I can’t overstress the value of reading the kind of books that you want to write.

My shelves are full of memoirs I’ve read and use for ideas I share with my students. I’ve created a list of the good ones–my opinion–under the “Resources” tab in the navigation menu at the top of this page. Consider choosing one and adding it to your Santa list this Christmas. I have three on my Santa list:  Dave Eggers’ memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genious;  Ben Yagoda’s Memoir: A History (hot off the press!); and Linda Tate’s Power in the Blood: A Family Narrative. I expect to learn a lot from all of these books.

I’m currently reading two books that are teaching me more about the craft of writing. I recommend them both: Roy Clark’s Writing Tools, and Jon Franklin’s Writing for Story. You can read reviews of all of the books I’ve mentioned on Amazon.com.

When reading the Poets & Writers blog recently, I came across a quote from author Laura van den Berg: “When I’m stuck on how to do something, I’ll reread a book that accomplishes what I am attempting–The Quick and the Dead by Joy Williams is one I return to often–and try to figure out how the author pulled it off.”

Enough said.

If you’re looking for different ways to organize and write a family history about ancestors long gone, here’s a review of an interesting book that may give you some ideas about how to balance historical facts and family story.

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CNBC news anchor Bill Griffeth received an email from a cousin inquiring whether he had any genealogy information he could contribute to the family tree she was compiling. Griffeth sent her a few pages he had acquired from an aunt.  Some months later, his cousin sent him the family tree she assembled. “It was a Broadway production!” Griffeth recalls. He was stunned to find his heritage traced back 400 years. All those new names and places intrigued him, but what really snagged his curiosity was discovering  his eight-times great-grandmother was a victim of the Salem witch hunts and was executed for witchcraft in 1692.

Griffeth wanted to know more, more about his ill-fated Salem forebear, and more about the other people who appeared on his family tree. His curiosity sent him on a research adventure that occupied the next several years, involving a 10,000-mile journey visiting churches, cemeteries and centuries-old houses, talking to anyone who knew anything about his relatives and the events that shaped their lives. Along the way, he took hundreds of photographs and recorded his findings in five large spiral-bound notebooks.

He shaped his information into a captivating story, a 276-page family history published by Random House in 2007 called By Faith Alone. The book’s title, borrowed from a book written by Martin Luther centuries ago, is key to its focus, for Griffeth has written a story that is part family history and part history of Protestantism’s roots in Europe and America. Griffeth writes in his introduction that the book is more than a family history of his lineage; it’s also the family story of any American who descends from European Protestants who immigrated to America. 

I found this to be true. As one who comes from Protestant heritage, I found Griffeth’s story illuminating, and my copy of the book is a muddle of underlined passages, margin notes, and colorful little sticky flags.

The book hooked me for another reason. As a family history writing teacher, I’m intrigued with the various ways one can tell a family story. Griffeth selects five families and tells the story of their connection to Protestantism. That’s his focus, and it helps him shape a tightly controlled narrative. Sometimes writers try to cover too much territory in a family history, exhausting and confusing their readers with too many people and too many stories to follow.

That being said, Griffeth focuses on far more than his five families. In the course of his research, he visited the New England and European towns where his families lived. He provides brief histories of those places, and lets his readers tag along when he traipses through ancient cemeteries, hikes to the top of a bell tower, sits in on Sunday sermons, and strolls along Rotterdam’s cobblestone streets. He re-creates conversations with amiable parsons and chatty local historians he visits along the way. In this way, the book feels like part travel journal.

Occasionally, Griffeth tries to imagine his forebears in those places. For example, when he visits a colonial-era house in Topsfield, Massachusetts, he writes:  

[I] walked into a rustic-looking room with creaky, uneven floorboards and a very long dining room table with place settings for ten or twelve. There was a faint odor of old wood and smoke.

I tried to picture the Towne family gathered around a table like this for a meal. It they followed the customs of the time, father William would have sat at the head, eating off a pewter plate and drinking from a pewter stein while everyone else used plates and cups. Everyone would have used knives and spoons to eat with. Forks were introduced in the late seventeenth century. (p. 147)

If you want a brief, informative, and interesting history of Puritanism, Methodism, and Lutheranism, you’ll find it here. You’ll also learn a lot about the Salem witch trials. Griffeth doesn’t provide footnotes, but he says he consulted dozens of books and websites, and his bibliography covers five pages. He also includes a notes section, where he discusses the sources he consulted for text in each chapter.

Griffeth’s story of family, faith, and Protestantism’s formative years is told with the lively communication skills of a person who has spent a quarter-century talking to television audiences. You will learn a substantial amount in this book, and enjoy the journey.

By Faith Alone is available at Amazon.com and bookstores nationwide.

I’ve thought a lot about Frank McCourt and his engaging memoir Angela’s Ashes since hearing of his unexpected death yesterday. McCourt published Angela’s Ashes the same year I finished the family history of my Scottish grandparents. Until writing that book I hadn’t paid much attention to the memoir genre. Frankly, I can’t remember reading a memoir before Angela’s Ashes unless one counts Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl. I must have been drawn to McCourt’s book because of all the attention it was receiving. Little did I realize  how that book would change my life.   

Writing my family history helped me see the value of leaving a record of one’s life. As I wrote about my grandparents’ lives, I keenly felt the loss of not having known them and hearing their story as they would have told it. I had my mother and two aunts who were valuable resources for factual material, but it wasn’t the same as being able to hear my grandparents’ version of what happened to them.  

That sense of loss led me to the conviction that I should motivate and help others write their life stories. I have written before about how I naively believed writing that one family history taught me enough to teach others. Of course, I soon realized I was in over my head and began looking for help. And there was Angela’s Ashes. It couldn’t have been more fortuitous timing. I learned so much from that book that helped focus my thinking.  Here was an ordinary man—not a hero or a celebrity—who had written about his life in such an engaging way that it resonated profoundly with people everywhere, selling millions of copies worldwide, winning a Pulitzer Prize.

I learned many things from Frank McCourt, but there are two that stand out.

1.  A person doesn’t have to be a celebrity to write an interesting life story. We’ve all had interesting lives. It’s just a matter of telling our story in an interesting way. Here’s how McCourt did it…

• He re-created incidents from his life and presented them as scenes so readers felt they were living his experiences along with him.
• He re-created conversations that occurred decades before, thereby illuminating personalities by letting people speak for themselves. While there was no way he could duplicate exactly what was said in these conversations, they “ring true” all the same.
• He didn’t whitewash the flaws of difficult people but wrote about them honestly and fairly, showing both their strengths and weaknesses.
• Although people he loved often made his life miserable, he wrote about them with compassion and forgiveness, even humor, so he never came across as bitter or vindictive.

I continually stress these techniques in my classes and included them when I later wrote my life story writing  book—quoting McCourt frequently—because I think they’re essential to writing an engaging memoir. I thank Frank McCourt for showing the way.         

 2.  McCourt taught me something else: You’re never too old. You’re never too old to tell your story, a message I convey to my retirement-age students constantly. And, you’re never too old to embark on a new career path. McCourt published Angela’s Ashes when he was sixty-six—after three decades of teaching and at a time when most people retire. Then he published TWO more books after that!  What a role model he’s been for us. I came to teaching relatively late in life—after I had raised four children and filled spare hours with volunteer work. My last fourteen years as a teacher have been some of the most interesting and rewarding years of my life. The sense of fulfillment I’ve experienced from teaching life story writing has enhanced every other aspect of my life. Like McCourt, I consider myself a late bloomer.

As I’ve read many of the tributes to him these last two days, it’s apparent that others have Frank McCourt to thank for their personal success. For some time the publishing industry has experienced what many call a “memoir boom.” While I haven’t studied the phenomenon closely, I suspect Angela’s Ashes was the catalyst—giving courage to countless others to write and publish their stories.  

I’ve felt unsettled ever since hearing the news of McCourt’s death, keenly feeling the loss of someone who has been important to me and regretting that I wasn’t able to tell him.  But I can tell you. Blogs can serve all kinds of good purposes.