Literary Journeys

This is a blog to all things literary. A visitor came to our site recently. She handed us a card for her blog on presidential sites. It was inspiring. I could do it for authors. Authors I have seen. Authors whose homes I have visited. Places which have inspired novels. Things which have inspired me. It's all about connections, and it begins here...

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Christy ~ The Quest for Cutter Gap

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I can thank my Aunt Latane and cousin Marie for introducing me to "Christy." I was in my teens, and it was life-altering to read the intensely powerful journey of another young woman, inhabiting the same mountains. Little did I know how close the story really was to home.  As chance would have it, I began attending a local church with a high school sweet-heart, and was amazed to learn that Catherine Marshall, author of Christy, had been born while her parents were pastoring the very same church. Why, that would make her parents...that would make her mother the inspiration for....   Christy.  "I retreated into the room to the dresser and began taking the hairpins out of my hair, staring at my reflection. Eyes too big for the rest of my face, a little too serious, even a bit frightened, stared back at me. A face too thin, the hollows beneath the cheekbones shadowed by the lamplight...As the last hairpin was withdrawn, my long hair came tumbling down."...
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Laura Ingalls Wilder: On the Pioneer Trail

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  One of the best parts about becoming an adult is the ability to take yourself to all the places you dreamed of going as a child. The "Little House" books had an enormous impact on my growing up years as well as my playtime... My cousins and I played Laura, Mary, and Carrie growing up. It was only natural that I'd want to see these places in person. On the first trip, I took in both the beginning and the end with the "Little House on the Prairie" site in Kansas and Rocky Ridge Farm in Mansfield, MO. The latter was Laura and Almanzo's last home, and where she wrote her endearing family series. The cabin on the Kansas site is a reproduction, but it was still thrilling to step on the plot of land deeded to Charles Ingalls from 1869-1871. Baby Carrie was born in Kansas, then the family had to leave the site because they'd unwittingly settled in Indian territory. There was one authentic part of the site left ~ and that was the well th...
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Frances Hodgson Burnett ~ "Waiting for the Party"

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One would rightfully envision the author of Little Lord Fauntleroy, The Little Princess, and The Secret Garden in England, would they not, amidst a pastoral scene of walled flora and fauna? Frances Hodgson Burnett was, indeed, born in England, but her family moved to the United States when Frances was fifteen.  In Waiting for the Party , a biography of Frances Hodgson Burnett, this fateful passage in her life is described: "She was fifteen and a half and her character was formed. The characteristics she showed then, so she herself maintained, were to stay with her for the rest of her life. She was curious, romantic, buoyant, compassionate, generous, restless and not very wise...The Hodgson family reached Tennessee in June."  Not only did they move to the United States.  ~ they lived in two small towns in East Tennessee named New Market and Dandridge.  It was 1865, and the Civil War was just over. Although they saw destruction everywhere and had to...
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