The Allure of History

"History never looks like history when you are living it." ~ John W. Gardiner

Isn't that a spectacular way to think of history?  History becomes infinitely more engaging when one dispels the ancient myth that all history is is dates--and not even the enjoyable sort, but useless, inane numbers on pieces of paper--and considers the lives of the people who lived those dates.

No matter what era you choose to research, the people within lived lives.  They laughed, they cried, they loved and had their hearts broken.  They were excited.  They were bored.  They made mistakes.  Trapped behind their stoic expressions in vintage photographs, our ancestors have stories to tell us.  Do you look for the story behind the picture?

A Window Closed By Elizabeth Lemmon

 

A Window Closed was published in May, 2010.  I wrote the novel for several years prior, and after many proof-reads and "no, really, this is the last final edit" edits, self-published just before my 18th birthday, under my maiden name: Elizabeth Lemmon.

 

 

A Window Closed is a historical novel that is set during the Civil War.  Near my hometown of Liberty, Kentucky, there is a large white farm house with one set of closed shutters.  Local legend has it that during a war, a mother sent her son off to war while doing the spring cleaning.  She closed a pair of shutters for him, and told him that they would remain closed until he returned.  He was killed in battle, and the shutters remained closed throughout her lifetime, and ever since.

Since there was little more than local myth to go off of, I based A Window Closed very loosely off of that legend. 

 

A Window Closed is a unique, multi-layered historical novel with a foundation in factual information and all the embellishment of a fictional story. During the second World War, Stella Manyard is sent from her home on the sparkling coast of California to live with her great-aunt and namesake in the quiet town of Roseville, Virginia while her parents serve in the Armed Forces. Stella dreads the transition from the excitement of the coast to what she fears will be the definition of boredom. Roseville is anything except dull, though, and if it were dull, the house her aunt lives in would have made up for it. The huge pre-Civil War era house has a secret, held as tightly as the shutters that are nailed shut in the neglected library. Great-Aunt Stella knows the answer to all of the questions, and they are wrapped up in the story of her experiences during the Civil War --A story that she hasn't recounted to anybody for almost eighty years. All of that is subject to change though, because it is the summer of 1942 and the whole world is changing...

 

A Window Closed is available for purchase through Amazon.com.  Please read it, and leave me a comment or review.  Let me know what you think!

 

While it is my first novel, I do not intend for it to be my only novel, and am continually striving to better my writing.  I am currently working on my second novel, and hope to have it ready for publication by the end of 2013.