Forever Friends by Liz Flaherty

"I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers." - Anne Shirley, who would surely have been my kindred spirit if I'd been born at the right time and in the right place. To the right ... well, you know what I mean.  

I think often about books I grew up with, like Anne of Green Gables or Understood Betsy or Little Women or even the Trixie Belden series. When I think of them or when I remember parts of the stories that are especially beloved, I wonder exactly what made them stand out so much that decades later, I can still repeat dialogue almost verbatim or cry over scenes. I realize that if I reread Little Women, I skip over Beth's death and Laurie and Amy's marriage. I never read about when Matthew Cuthbert died

Why am I still wounded by losses and betrayals in books of fiction I read before high school? Especially when I'm not at all wounded by things that happened when I was in high school. That was four years of really good times and really shattering heartbreaks, and yet those memories are mostly dimmed or of no relevance at all. 

I can explain. I think. 

The people in those books from long ago--Anne and Diana, the March girls, Betsy and little Mollie, Trixie and Honey and the Bob-Whites of the Glen--never became fictional characters to me. Even now, they're friends I grew up with. 

My school friends are still friends, too, but they've aged along with me--a blessing by itself. The book friends are still as I knew them between the covers of their stories.

This probably isn't a shock to anyone else, but I was really surprised to figure it out as a reader. I always knew it as a writer. Those people who present themselves to me and wanted me to tell their stores are as real in my mind and heart as ... well, as Trixie and Anne and the March sisters.

I've always said I didn't expect to change lives with my books--I just wanted to give readers a good afternoon. I still feel that way, but I also hope they consider the people whose stories I tell to be friends. 

Speaking of friends, The Girls of Tonsil Lake have been friends since they were five, and they still are. The story of the year they are 51 is one of my favorites. And Jean, Suzanne, Andi, and Vin are still my friends. 

Four women whose differences only deepen the friendship forged in a needy childhood... They were four little girls living in ramshackle trailers beside a lake in rural Indiana. They shared everything from dreams to measles to boyfriends to more dreams. As they grew up, everything in their lives changed--except their friendship. Through weddings and divorces, births and deaths, one terrible secret has kept them close despite all the anger, betrayal, and pain. Now, forty years later, facing illness, divorce, career challenges, and even addiction, the women come together once again for a bittersweet month on an island in Maine. Staring down their fifties, they must consider the choices life is offering them now and face the pain of what happened long ago. Secrets are revealed and truths uncovered, but will their time together cement their lifelong friendship--or drive them apart forever?

 

Amazon: https://a.co/d/7391moA and https://a.co/d/4t6MnzQ

D2D: https://books2read.com/u/bxGQQk

A Turn of Phrase ...

I wrote this in April of 2020 for the Word Wranglers blog. I had absolutely no idea I'd be feeling the same way over five years later! I'm sorry I do, to tell the truth, but I still like a good turn of phrase, and the stories I talked about here. - Liz

Because I want comfort right now, and things to laugh at, and no surprises, I've been reading books I've read before, usually a long time ago. I love them. It's not that I think writers then were necessarily better than they are now or even that the stories were better, but there was something about the way those writers spun the language that I don’t see in modern prose.

I read Betty MacDonald’s Onions in the Stew this week. She referred to Vashon Island as “plump and curvy” and to Mt. Rainier as a “magnificent, unbelievably shy mountain who parts her clouds and shows her exquisite face…” She writes that a “tiny white church up to its knees in non-ecclesiastical currant bushes holds a bony arm bearing a small cross high up toward the pale sky.” Yet another church, “large hipped…glares disapprovingly” at a movie theater. I can see those things, can’t you? I think I can feel them, too.

Do you remember when the needle grew “too heavy” for Beth March? I was nine years old when I first read it. All these shockingly many years later, my heart breaks yet again.

“I’m so glad,” said Anne of Green Gables, “I live in a world where there are Octobers.” Remember her of the new days with no mistakes in them yet? It became a mantra for me when it seemed as if I couldn’t go even a few hours without something going wrong.

Although I haven't yet, I have no doubt I will delve into some old Betty Neels books before this crisis ends. They are the mashed potatoes and gravy of comfort reads, and I can't wait. I know what's going to happen in each of her over 100 books, and I don't care--I'll read 'em again. Same with Rosamund Pilcher's The Shell Seekers. There's just something about the way they talk to me. 

I blogged once that something I always looked for and cherished in books I read (and wrote) was tenderness. (SPOILER ALERT) LaVyrle Spencer is one of my favorite writers, and Forgiving is possibly my favorite of her books. Much of the reason for this is that tenderness threads through the entire story like fingers unbraiding hair. The last line of the book was, “And they slept. Delivered.”

I love being a writer. I talk about retiring from it, but probably never will. I love being a reader, too, because of the richness reading gives to my life. Because of turns of phrase and just the right word in just the right place. Because of a breaking heart, a borrowed mantra, and the soft, sweet sigh of “Delivered.”

Share with us. What are some of your favorite place settings of words or your favorite writers who set those places?

The Trees Are Full of Ice by Liz Flaherty

I wrote most of this for a blog in January of 2021. There isn't ice in the trees today, although it was zero when I came to the office this morning. There is much about today that is cold. Bittersweet. Even though this blog is a memory, it's a reminder to me of how to go on from here. Wishing you diamond days. - Liz

The trees are full of ice today. The sun shines on them and they are just beautiful. It's as if they're covered with a multitude of diamonds. It's funny that the thing that draws our attention to the beauty is also the thing that destroys it, isn't it? Not funny so much as bittersweet. 

Along with the brilliant trees came an ear worm. "Some days are diamonds," John Denver sang, "some days are stones." Bittersweet again, the thoughts of an artist gone too soon, as well as the song itself. 

We've seen a lot of it in the past year. Lived a lot of it. I don't know about other writers, but it's made it harder to create a story. I'm not using Covid-19 when I write, and I catch myself thinking things like they can't go into a crowded restaurant or there can't be a girlfriends trip or even they wouldn't touch hands that soon. Where's the hand sanitizer and they hardly know each other. 

But there have been some good things, too. Some sweet moments among the bitter. I've been writing in sprints, which had been both successful and fun. I'm writing a new story, with people I'm having fun getting to know, in a subgenre I'm not completely comfortable with.

I'm finding during this up-and-down time that I have new resentments, new things creating changes I'm not sure I want. I read curmudgeonly posts on Facebook that both annoy me and...gulp...I can identify with, and I hear these words from the song: "More and more I can see there's a danger in becoming what I never thought I'd be..."

Oh. Okay. 

Bittersweet is beautiful. My grandmother kept it in a little copper vase that hung on the wall. It's also, according to some reports, toxic. So is giving in to the bitterness that comes visiting every day. But we can learn from it without giving in. We can use it without giving in. The days that seem to be stones from sunup to beyond sundown, what Anne Shirley called "Jonah days," exhaust us. And yet, this is how we do it, isn't it? One day at a time. One foot in front of the other. Without giving in. Watching for diamonds.

Just A Piece of Perfect by Liz Flaherty

"You'll still have me."

It was 1982, the week of my mother's funeral. I was 32 and my life was everything I wanted. I had a husband and three kids who were my world, a job I liked, a house I loved, and enough money to pay the bills if we were careful. 

And I was overwhelmed. It was a bad year in the marriage--you have those in 50 years; it just happens. A kid was heading into puberty, my husband and I worked different shifts, and I couldn't keep up. I couldn't be the kind of housekeeper all my in-laws were. I couldn't stay slim. I had bad hair. And then my mother died.

I would survive, and thrive. I knew that. That was just what we did, right? But I sat at my mother-in-law's kitchen table and told her what I knew to be the truth. "I realized this week that when Mom died, there is no one left who will love me regardless of anything that might happen."

That was when my mother-in-law looked into my eyes and said, "You'll still have me."

I did, for 34 more years, and although our relationship wasn't seamless, the love within it was. I was blessed by having her. I'm so grateful, but what I'm writing about is that sometimes, the perfect thing is said. 

I wrote about it for Valentine's Day, when, on our way home from receiving a "benign" verdict on my breast biopsy, my husband said, "It's the best day off I've ever had."

The first time my son-in-law met my daughter's grandmother, he got a bowl out of the cabinet that she couldn't reach. Later, at dinner, when someone complimented the contents of the bowl, Jim said, "Grandma and I made it," and won her heart forever. 

I needed more than anything the words my second mom said to me that day. Being overwhelmed was a life state for quite some time, and occasionally still is. When I am, when I feel emotionally needy, I think of her again. And of those words.

We get to do that as writers, the difference being we get to create the circumstances that produce the perfect words. The "my dear, I don't give a damns" and the "I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”

I'm not sure I had a good reason for writing this post, except that...yes, as romance authors, love is our literary bottom line. Happily Ever Afters are not only the readers' reward, but ours as well. And if we manage to write something--just once in a while--that is perfect and stays on someone's heart for a long time giving comfort and joy, well, that's even better, isn't it?

This is an interactive post! What are some of the perfect things you've said, heard, read, or written?