Tell Me a Story

I recently picked up Sue Grafton’s book, “Y is for Yesterday,” the twenty-fifth mystery of an alphabet-based series that began with “A is for Alibi.” I’ve enjoyed her writing style for years, listening to her books on our way to Maine or curled up with her pages as the autumn evenings stretch before me. 

Each book stars the feisty private detective Kinsey Milhone, who Grafton suggests is like herself, only “younger, smarter, and thinner,” or “the person I might have been had I not married young and had children.” Sadly, as I turned the pages of the “Y” book, I already knew there will be no “Z is for Zebra, Zoology, or Zeus,” for Ms. Grafton died late in 2017, one book shy of her goal.

Over the decades, I’ve gotten hooked on authors, such as novelists Agatha Christie (fun “who-dun-its” I enjoyed as a teen), Susan Howatch, (especially the Starbridge series), and books from the prolific pen of Father Andrew Greeley, priest, sociologist, journalist and story-teller. He claimed to write five thousand words a day – that’s a lot of writing. I’ve recently sought out Jacqueline Winspear and her investigator/psychologist Maisie Dobbs, and have been captured by the story lines arising from Louise Penney’s Three Pines, so much so that this faithful library patron and connoisseur of used books paid full price for her last release.

At age eight, the lovely Madelyn Simone is “catching the bug,” discovering the quirkiness of Shel Silverstein’s poetry and the imagination of Roald Dahl. She’s been renewing Dahl’s “BFG” each week from the school library, and carries the tattered copy around with her. I’m planning to expand her personal library this Christmas, probably selecting Dahl’s “James and the Giant Peach” and “Matilda”(with the terrifying headmistress, Agatha Trunchbull). And BFG!

What is it about story that draws us in? Whether on the silver screen, flickering on our televisions, or hiding between the pages of a book, story calls us. As Margaret Atwood, author of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” reminds us: “You’re never going to kill storytelling because it’s built into the human plan. We come with it.”

I’ve wanted to write fiction for as long as I can remember, because I’ve always loved the magic of stories. I started a handful of novels, but even with the motivating helps of National Novel Writers’ Month (an annual November event), I’ve struggled to get past page twenty. As a preacher, columnist and mother, I’ve always wanted to preach, convince, and instruct in “the way,” so it’s been tough to simply allow the story to speak on its own. Rachel Held Evans describes my struggle: “If you’re going to be a believable storyteller, you have to avoid writing like a woman, or writing like a man, or writing like a pastor, or writing like a theologian, or writing like a Southerner, and start writing like you.”

Yet as of this week, after a long gestation and a hesitant birth, my first novel is done, ready to read, in my hands, in the trunk of my car, and available on amazon! “The Sally-Ann Goodwife” asks: Can Elizabeth Anne Stanton find her way from the privilege of Main Line Philadelphia to the challenges of life as a faithful Salvation Army servant to the poor and marginalized? Can she figure out how to be a good wife to her beloved Bram without losing her own identity? In an attempt to answer those questions, my main character dons the navy blue polyester of the Sally-Anns and begins her story: “We stood together at my father’s grave, our tears washed away by the unremitting rain punctuating the dismal morning.”

Maya Angelou understood my need to write this story: “There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you.” “Autobiographical,” asked a friend? Somewhat, as the Salvation Army connection acknowledges, for as P. D. James, another favorite author counsels, “You absolutely should write about what you know. There are all sorts of small things that you should store up and use, nothing is lost to a writer.” 

Reading about Kinsey Milhone, Maisie Dobbs, Matilda and Miss Trunchbull, or Libby Stanton-Pearson this week? Greet my literary friends, and be sure to share a favorite of your own.