Can you relate to this quote by Erica Jong, "Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to the dark place where it leads."

I've become Persephone a few dark times over the many years in my writing and speaking career. I'm still at it, but currently taking a new path to share my writing, historical novels, love of baking, and life experience.

I'm a member of SeniorU that is currently based in New England. Through their Therapy Gardens program, I've been giving talks on 'Laughter in the Kitchen' (name of upcoming cookbook) and 'For the Love of Monarchs (raising Monarch butterflies).' Therapy Gardens is for any venue, but SeniorU is specifically highlighted to delight, entertain, and educate seniors.

The photo is me eight years ago and since that time, I'd say I've become a wisdom maker, not just in age, but by much experience. So I'm also speaking to seniors specifically with some of my talks, but the difference is that seniors really speak to me, as well. Always, I bring my Cynthia's Synsations to sample (see pavlova in photo).

Here is the link for this program: https://senioru.com/home/our-team/  Contact them directly if you are interested in having me or another member visit your venue).
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Cynthia

     “History is written by the victors” is often quoted and attributed to Sir Winston Churchill. Is this adage true or false? Aman Zaidi, a teacher of positive psychology, wrote an online article, History is Not Written by the Victors. He cites that there are vanquished peoples whose stories are known. He claims history is written and “documented by many different people and good historians.” And, of course, there are “remnants of bones, severed skulls and weapons at a battle site that provide hard evidence.”

     True, history has been written by many, with interpretations, by having a pen, feathered quill, and parchment; and by possessing the victor’s triumph and booty. History is not one-dimensional with scribes waiting in the halls of king’s castles to record the conquering hero’s versions. There are oral tales, diaries, drawings, hidden tomes, and yes, the bones of the dead.

     Primary sources are coveted by historians, historiographers, and historical fiction authors who are willing to critically examine sources to provide analyses, write scholarly papers, novels, and even simplify history for the public. The Carnegie Museum of Natural History states that Homo sapiens date approximately 300 hundred thousand years ago. Written records only go back a little over 5,000 years ago with the earliest written material from Egypt and Sumerian records. Then consider the oral stories (that are probably just that, tales with some truth in them) and the really old non-Homo sapien bones like Lucy’s (3.2 million-years) from Ethiopia. There’s a whole lot of history unknown.

     It’s maddening digging for truth. Recorded history (documents of all kinds and artifacts) simmers in rich beliefs and enculturation feelings until the meat falls off the bones and fed to the masses. History is written by the victor is both true and false. Dialetheism is a word from the Greek that means twice, and contains the view that statements can be both true and false.

     There are many sides to a story…and history. And as we are taught, presented, and even pummeled with historical facts, including conspiracy theories (which have always been around), we cannot only rely on one history book, one historian, or even two or three. It’s a slow-footed, lingering, time consuming endeavor, but now is the time for every Joe Blow/Jane Doe commoner to become a digger for the truth of the past. It’s time to take away some of the power given away to historians. We have a myriad of sources, material, and information at hand, like never before. Knowing our history will not only sober us, challenge us, hurt us, it will make us more human, empathetic, understanding, and resolved to never be either the evil victor or the conquered.

     Continuing to learn American history as an adult, is a bit like being a teenager and learning that your parents have feet of clay. As I dug into American colonial history to write my latest novel, Catharine, Queen of the Tumbling Waters, I found myself stupefied over what I read about some of our founding fathers and others. We know that many of the decisions made regarding Native Americans were detrimental to them in regards to loss of land and loss of cultural ways. But what about the loss to Europeans? My protagonist, Catharine Montour, an Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) young woman, says, in regards to the settlers coming into her village uninvited:
                The trees and I are beginning to feel crowded out by new settlers and their ways. These settlers tramp through the woods, their eyes seeing through the trees, imagining them cut and cleared for their homes. They don't come to the forest to commune with the spirits of the trees and flowers and to give thanks to the Great Spirit. They resemble hungry hawks diving for their prey. They're desperate and greedy the way they come rolling into our village with wagons loaded with their belongings, hoping for more, and disregarding those who already live here.

     What about this loss? The loss of a people's ways who had a strong connection with nature and viewed animals as kindred spirits. A way of life that honored and gave thanks to nature and Creator, to brother tree and sister river. They saw themselves one with nature, neither to make it subordinate or take dominion over it. All of life was sacred and although no people group is without flaws, the gifts of their way of life, for the most part, were not received. Perhaps now, there is slow learning, and fortunately, throughout history, there have always been humankind who would live as Thich Nhat Hanh said, "Walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet." It's not too late to love the face of God in the earth!

The Great law of the Iroquois Confederacy of 1570 says, "In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations." How many of us make decisions thinking of future generations?

     My conclusion is that there is more unwritten history that requires us to read between the lines. I dug deep into the annals of history and then inquired of the spirits in the land where Catharine and her people lived. And sometimes, Catharine, herself gifted me with her presence while I wrote her story.
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     Catharine, Queen of the Tumbling Waters is a compelling and powerful true story that spans the French and Indian War and the American Revolution.

 Read more about my novel at www.cynthianeale.com and purchase it on Amazon

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     Church bells ring and I’m suddenly walking down a narrow, cobblestone street wrapped in a long wool coat, a scarf around my neck, and wearing a classic wool style cloche hat. It is twilight and the sky is stained with a leftover vermilion sunset. Feathery snowflakes swirl before me. I imagine angel wings as they come together and dance. I’m transported to this scene each time I’m in a city and church bells ring. In this vision, there is anticipation and joy as I hurry to open the heavy wooden doors of an old spired brick church. Catholic? Protestant? I don’t know. Another life? Although I wear cloche hats and long coats sometimes, this image is timeless and ephemeral, full of ardor and expectation. And it is always winter.

Have I walked into many churches with bells ringing like this? I can’t recall that I have, but certainly I’ve heard many church bells ringing over the years. They are always enchanting and magical. I have no guilt about not attending church services, nor is there an association with religion. Church bells ring and I’m at once filled with exultation and feel loved, and that anything can happen. And just below the surface of my heart, I’m always hoping something wonderful can happen. Always, even if I’m gloomy and discouraged. It is there, this wordless presence, sometimes just a little poke and sometimes a big hug.

Is it a siren call? I could go through the doors to the impossible light of religion that can hypnotize, intoxicate, dominate, and make me small or large, depending on what sermon I drink. But again, I don’t believe it’s the church calling me as the bells ring and I instantly go under a spell. Perhaps this experience is a symbolic human quest for the divine, to love and be loved. I believe all of us have this desire, even if we don’t speak of it. And yet this is something else.

Alas, I’ve never made it through those heavy, imposing, oak doors in my ethereal imaginings while church bells ring. I continue to walk and say nothing to my companion, or companions, if one or many are with me. It all happens vividly and for as long as the bells ring. I might skip and dance ahead of my friends, if they are there. If I’m alone, I stop, move aside, close my eyes, and let myself soar. I am usually with others and they don’t seem to even notice my instant rapture. I say nothing of it, for it is mine alone, for whatever it can mean. Past life, divine embrace, hope, or even being encultured by the Catholic church as a young one. I adore telling the stories and feelings of my life, but after the church bell ringing is over, I forget it until the next time it happens. And I forget to tell my friends, or felt it un-necessary. It is mine alone. Until now…

Church bell ringing isn’t the only experience that puts me into a trance. Nature also claims my spirit, although nature can be indifferent and fierce at times. I’d like to say meditation puts me into a trance, but only a little, although it does calm me. Music lifts me out of myself and makes me more of myself, offering dance to both shake off the demons and to express joy. It has a modicum of that church bell ringing place. I’m exploring new territory because I’ve already bushwhacked through so many parts of me that I can walk with ease in.  

 I’ve always looked within to find sanctuary, but oftentimes I’d find a few haunted rooms that, at first, I avoided going into. Eventually, I had to. But the church bells didn’t really ring there. It’s ongoing and necessary, finding refuge within, especially as my body ages, seemingly at high speed. All this talk about being present, grounded, and letting the mind take a back seat and not drive us too fast into a ditch or over a cliff can be so much work. Creating new synapses, pathways, and avoiding the potholes of self damning, fear, and anxiety is a full-time job. There are many post-traditional spirituality speakers and healers on the lecture circuits who talk about being happy for no reason. Can we cultivate this? Doesn’t it sound delightful? Wars, traumas, illnesses and we can still be happy even if these things come to us, too? You tell me…we all have an option to breathe or hold our breaths. And if we breathe, there is life and we can go on.

What is the meaning of my church bell ringing, I ask myself. Do I need to understand it? Do you?

This summer I watched and listened to a bumble bee devouring the nectar of my Hot Lips Turtlehead Perennial bush. It went from kissing all the ripened pink lips on the bush and then finally found the lips of his or her choice. And then, what a party! The buzzing was a baritone most of the time, so maybe a male? I don’t want to get into gender issues here…and then he went to bass with a rich rumble buzzing. He nestled himself deep into the flower and disappeared, but I could still hear his singing, his joy. Apparently, this loud buzzing causes much vibration that shakes the nectar lose. He knew what he was doing.

After a few minutes with this bumble bee experience, I went into the church bell ringing trance, but I wasn’t skipping happily into a church on an early winter evening. I was somewhere else…free, anticipatory, yes, but mostly transcendent and one with the bumble bee and what was most remarkable was I heard weeping in my imagination. Love weeping. And then I was weeping soundlessly. We were both weeping for love of creation. Who was weeping with me? I don’t know exactly, except it had to be divine. And it is a poor choice of a word, as is Creator, God, even Spirit. Wordless…Nameless, but ever so real.

And then this summer there was a babbling brook that stopped me in the woods to tell me something. I didn’t know what, but the water was singing, sighing, and speaking truth. I thought that if I wasn’t there, nor no-one ever stopped to listen, it wouldn’t matter. It was the church bells ringing again in the water. I walked on, having been spoken to about love again.

 What is the meaning of my many years of church bell ringing? It is simple and profound, understood and misunderstood, but mostly, it’s an experience of entering into the holy of holies, being invited to experience divine love. I can poorly describe it as a master painter sharing art with someone who not only sees the colors and story, but feels it. Did I cross a momentary threshold of laughing and crying with the One who created it all? I think of Michelangelo’s ‘The Creation of Adam’ on the Sistine Chapel. I visited once and was mesmerized. The touch of deep love that words cannot define.

In Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Prince Andrei Nikolayevich Balkonsky, says while he is dying from war wounds, “All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.”
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And in the movie series, Prince Andrei says that even the fly buzzing in the room he must love. The bumble bee, the brook, the monarch, but please not the tick…
I know now that the ringing of church bells has always been a call to love.

     Leaving home, leaving sorrows, but mostly leaving love and lots of beauty, I ventured into the unknown as a young woman in the 70’s. I had robust limbs, vigor, a soft soul for the world, redheaded spunk, and youthful foolishness. I carried a copy of Leaves of Grass, some Emily Dickinson poems, and Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet.

I lived in Los Angeles, traveled to India, Japan, and Hawaii, and lived in Rochester, New York. I was Catholic, Buddhist, evangelical, and a fairy lover until my mid-30’s. So what? Well, this was a considerable feat for a young girl growing up in rural poverty, albeit in a land fecund and majestic. And I’m still a fairy lover.

Sometime around 40, I returned for the first time. I had gone home many times since I left in my 20’s but this was the first time returning with love brimming in my heart for the love and sorrows I had left behind. To confront all and to let the mothering of the land and my family, especially my mother, whom I always carried in a deep pocket of my heart, into my life as I had never done before.

 I laid down in a rocky, refreshing stream and let the waters move over me and through me. It was Catharine’s Creek, off the Catharine Valley Trail in Montour Falls, New York. Little did I know that I had also come home to her, this Iroquois/French Queen Catharine who, like me, could never be separated from the land and the spirit of place. A continual baptism each time I went home.

Birthing a marriage, a daughter, books, including a Catharine novel just released in April 2023, I traveled more than a poor girl from a poor county in New York could have imagined doing – India, Ireland, Italy, all around the U.S., but mostly, I traveled in spirit, in soul, in healing, and returned again and again to my rural roots, my mother, my family, and most recently, Catharine, when I did a book launch on the very site that had been her village in Montour Falls.

Quite a feat for a poor girl with sorrows in her back pack, love in her pockets, and dreams bigger than she had room for. Poor? Really? l had never been poor because love was all I needed and I had had it. The empty bowls of my life were sacred vessels filled with the love of a mother, of her sisters, brother, and others. And Spirit! Love makes the essence of sorrows so sweet, only sips can be taken. Even if the losses cannot be requited, the scars are covered with love.
We can all return home, but it is how we return. Now as I prepare for another trip home to New York at 69 years of age, my mother, two sisters, her brother, and an uncle are no longer there, at least in the flesh. All in fourteen months, they have left this earth, this home I return to.

I’m Alice in Wonderland these days. I don’t like to admit it, but loss, as well as gain (such as a book birthed after I had been in long, long labor with), can do it to you.  

            Stop this moment, I tell you! But she went on all the same, shedding gallons of tears, until there was a large pool all round her about four inches deep and reaching half down the hall….I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night?...But if I’m not the same, the next question is Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle!
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There’s much more to say, but I’ve said enough and wept gallons of tears. Please take the time to listen to this video of a brother and sister, my Uncle Ken Cope and my mother, Doris Cope Havens Filippetti Force Huston, speaking love to one another before they died. My mother, age 94, died in May and her brother, Ken, died in September 2021. He was in a nursing home and Mom was in hospice in her apartment. Note how they say that all that really matters is the love of family. At the end of the video, there are excerpts of Mom playing piano and singing in her 80s. The video was made possible by the lover of a hospice spiritual care counselor Mary Hays.

My latest release, a historic novel, Catharine, Queen of the Tumbling Waters, is an enlightening story about an unsung Iroquois and French heroine who lived during the French and Indian War and the American Revolution in Pennsylvania and New York. Catharine Montour, the matriarch of her village, guided her people to safety in Canada at the end of the American Revolution when General John Sullivan led a campaign initiated by General George Washington to destroy all Iroquois villages.
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From the beginning, perhaps when I was still relatively young and believed inspiration and spirituality would carry me through the arduous journey of researching and writing a novel, I said yes to Catharine Montour. I had already been through journeys with the four novels in my Irish Dresser Series. It had been gruesome, at times, but thrilling, and it hadn’t destroyed my innocent belief in creativity and saying yes to a voice from the past.

I said yes and then I said no for fifteen years while I researched Catharine’s life, wrote, and continued to write and promote my other novels. Researching an obscure, yet famous, and mysterious Native American woman seemed impossible. Me, a white woman, who grew up with Catharine’s memorials and spirit in my backyard, didn’t know beans (corn and squash) about her, her people, and the unique and complex times of early America.

Catharine Montour sent me dried kernels of corn throughout the years. They were her gifts to me, along with other paranormal experiences, to keep me on this journey with her, to tell her story, to channel, of sorts, her spirit, and to let the kernels of truth grow within me and hopefully, sprout and flourish beyond my life and telling.

The Three Sisters – the planting of corn, beans, and squash, an Iroquois and other indigenous belief has been passed down to Europeans. Many gardeners plant the three together, for they nurture each other. How much nature speaks! Different plants sustaining and taking care of one another. Certainly, the Iroquois and others powerfully lived this truth, both in planting and community.

They came, these kernels of corn – in my bed, on remote deer paths, alongside roads, and always when I had nothing to sustain me to keep writing. And then I would find Catharine in old tomes and blossoming in my heart. I kept going. I kept planting the truth of the corn she gave me.

In my novel, when Catharine and her people from her village are fleeing from General John Sullivan’s soldiers, it’s harvest time and the corn is taller than men. Catharine instructs each woman to gather corn into their baskets before they leave. “Soon, we are fleeing Eagle Cliff Falls, my heart broken, and as we pass by our field of corn, I reach down to caress my sister corn.”

Catharine’s gifts of dried corn kernels have nurtured my writing and storytelling. And they have given me a new friend. Masheri Chappelle, the New Hampshire Writer’s Project chair, is a Native American seer. We only met since Catharine’s story was birthed. She reminded me that one kernel of corn was the beginning of life and provided the power to sustain. She reminded me that Catharine gave me these kernels to lead me to her story and to give me faith that she was really reaching out to me. And that I would know how important telling her story was to her and her people. She gave me something of great value.
Amen.

First, I celebrated Catharine’s story at the site of her village in Montour Falls, New York in May. It was attended by those who love and want to know more about Catharine. It was magical. Corn fields lay all around the area. And then I celebrated Catharine in New Hampshire where I’ve lived many years. My book launch and celebration was at an old inn, on the Ambrose restaurant patio, Inn by the Bandstand in Exeter, New Hampshire. It was elegant and delicious, full of meaning. Tapas, some made with corn were served. Chef Stanley and one of the owners of the inn, Jaime, are originally from South America and Mexico. How befitting, these sons of the Corn Mother are here at this inn.

And maybe not poetic justice, but poetic healing was served. This very inn was built by General John Sullivan’s son after the American Revolution. General John Sullivan, who led the assault to destroy Catharine’s village! He and his solders slashed and killed Sister Corn. Catharine and her people had to leave. And then there is the power of corn. Catharine Montour, through me, returns two hundred and forty-four years later to the inn built by the oppressor whose father believed he was doing right for a new country. In the beyond, it’s over, forgiven. It is here we need to know and forgive. And what a party of forgiveness it was!

I’m celebrating the publication of my novel, Catharine, Queen of the Tumbling Waters, with a book tour. I began with a book launch in Havana Glen, Montour Falls, the very site of the village where my protagonist, Catharine Montour, lived with her people before and during the American Revolution. She was real, another hidden woman of history, an unsung heroine, except to those of us who grew up in the land of her spirit. There is an inscription in Iroquois and English on a memorial rock to Queen Catharine Montour, “Every one of you, always remember this.” Remember what? Some history, conflated and contradictory…a mystery. But we have all loved her and felt her presence in this gorgeous land.  

This is the land of the Iroquois, known as the Haudenosaunee, and the Six Nations, a confederacy of Native Americans and First Nations people. They lived in Ontario, upstate New York, and Pennsylvania. Today, they live primarily in New York and Canada, but many live around the United States.

Why would I, a white woman who knew very little about the Iroquois and Catharine Montour, an Iroquois and French woman who lived through the French and Indian War and the American Revolution dare to write a novel about her? To put it simply, and yet there was no simplicity about it, Catharine Montour chose me. Come along with me on my book tour as I blog about my experiences and entice you with Catharine Montour’s life story.
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Here are a few photos from my book launch in Havana Glen, Montour Falls, NY

Here is an excerpt from my novel:

“I’m not like your white women who lose their tongues and wits in a house full of men.”

So says Catharine Montour to her white captive during the Indian depredations of the 1750s. Catharine Montour, a métis, born during Pennsylvania’s Long Peace, is nurtured by her grandmother, the celebrated Madame Montour, an interpreter for the British colonies. Her uncle, Andrew Montour, is also an interpreter and sits on the Council of the Iroquois. The Montours are an unconventional, yet highly regarded family who host diverse and fascinating assemblies of fur traders, missionaries, Indians, and colonial leaders in their home.

As the Long Peace ends and the French and Indian War, and eventually the American Revolution occur, Catharine, desiring only to live quietly by a waterfall in New York, becomes a fearless, determined, and passionate leader who demands loyalty to peace in her village and for all. And then in 1779 when General John Sullivan leads the campaign to destroy all Iroquois villages, Queen Catharine, heroically guides her people to Fort Niagara. Today as American exceptionalism prevails against the recognition of indigenous peoples, Catharine’s relevant and fact-based story spans two wars and enlightens and makes visible the unwritten truths of early American history.
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www.cynthianeale.com

My new historical fiction novel, Catharine, Queen of the Tumbling Waters, was published by Bedazzled Ink Publishing in April 2023. Bedazzled Ink is dedicated to general and literary fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books that celebrate the unique and under-represented voices of women and books about women that appeal to all readers. 
https://www.bedazzledink.com/about-us.html#/

My novel is a work of imagination, inspired by the life of Catharine Montour, also known as Queen Catharine, born in Pennsylvania possibly around 1729 and lived in what is known today as Montour Falls, New York. She was a metis, which means mixed in French, and was French and Iroquois. It was said of her that she was handsome, possessed more than ordinary intellectual powers, and meted out justice to all. She was regarded by Europeans as a superior woman.

Queen Catharine Montour’s name is perpetuated everywhere in Montour Falls, New York and the surrounds. There is a memorial, a street, a park, a creek, a trail, and many businesses named after her.  History describes Queen Catharine as the leader and matriarch of a Seneca tribe and village, She-O-Qua-Gah (there are different spellings), a Seneca (Iroquois) word meaning tumbling waters. The village was later called Catharine’s Town, Catharine’s Landing, Havana, and eventually Montour Falls to honor Catharine Montour. In my novel, Catharine names the area Eagle Cliff Falls, which is the name of one of the waterfalls in Montour Falls.

In 1779, nearing the end of the American Revolution, General George Washington initiated a campaign to be led by Major General John Sullivan and the Continental Army (also known as the Clinton-Sullivan Campaign) to destroy all Iroquois villages, whether they were enemies, allies, or neutral to the Revolution. Congress approved Washington’s plan, “directing him to take all measures necessary to protect the settlers and to punish the Indians.” Washington wrote to Sullivan, “The immediate objects are total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every sex and age as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops in the ground and prevent their planting more.”
(Founders Online/Archives.gov.Home)

Queen Catharine Montour heroically gathered her tribe in She-O-Qua-Ga and led them away from Major John Sullivan’s approaching Continental Army to Fort Niagara to be sheltered by the British.  

The campaign ended and forty Indian settlements were burned to the ground, thousands of bushels of corn, fruits, vegetables and livestock were destroyed, but most egregious were the thousands of Iroquois who sought refuge under the British at Fort Niagara. The winter thereafter was brutal and severe and many Iroquois died from cold and starvation. It is not known whether Queen Catharine returned to She-O-Qua-Ga, but I believe she did. After the American Revolution, the great Iroquois Nation and Confederacy scattered and has never been the same, but their spirit has always remained and today, there are many Iroquois museums, writers, artists, and organizations celebrating this indigenous history and their place in America.
I’ve often said my writing career includes working with the dead and although this sounds morbid, it is not. We all carry the blood and stories of our ancestors and there’s a thin line between here and there if we attune our hearts to listen. I wanted to be a writer at a young age, but it took years to learn to listen. And when I did, I encountered many unusual experiences and synchronicities. This is not the place to talk about my other novels and their strange incidents, but before you put your curious and discerning nose into this novel, I want to tell you about some of my Catharine visitations. No, I didn’t just channel Catharine’s story, but through grueling, ardent, frustrating, and thrilling research, and with her spirit and various encounters, I have written a Queen Catharine Montour story!

I grew up in the Montour Falls, New York vicinity and was intrigued by Queen Catharine, but there was little known information. Historians have puzzled over Queen Catharine Montour and the Montour family for years. The Montours were elusive, famous, but obscure, and have been difficult to track down. Historians have disagreed over the life of Catharine Montour and her various family members for years. Her grandmother, Isabel Montour (Madame Montour), was born in New France in the 17th century. She was complex, a go-between, interpreter, and told a couple of different stories about her life. It was Simone Vincens, author of the wonderful biography, Madame Montour and the Fur Trade, who instructed me to learn about Isabel Montour and her son, Andrew Montour, if I wanted to know Catharine Montour. After uncanny and astounding Catharine nudges and reading local history articles, I delved into Simone Vincens’ book and it became the skeleton that eventually led me into fleshing out Catharine’s life.
In 2006 while visiting family in Montour Falls, I walked the Catharine Creek Trail as I usually do. Off the trail is a memorial to Queen Catharine with the Seneca and English words, “Every One of You Always Remember This.” I quizzically pondered this memorial because I didn’t remember much of anything about her. Suddenly, an emphatic voice within said, “Write my story!” I stomped my foot and said aloud, “No, I’m still writing Norah’s story!” That evening, I pulled out my mother’s couch bed and found a book on the Iroquois on her bookshelf. I read about the Three Sisters (corn, beans, and squash) and fell asleep. In the morning, there was a kernel of corn in my bed! It was May, not autumn, and there were no dried corn arrangements in the apartment. Two big nudges, but I ignored them.

I took the Iroquois book home to New Hampshire and read it while continuing my work on a novel in The Irish Dresser series. The next visit to New York was in autumn and one morning I walked the trail and stopped at Catharine’s memorial. No voices, but as I continued my walk on a gorgeous day, I hummed and then incoherent words tumbled out in song. When my husband called, I jokingly said, “I’m singing in the Seneca language!” Later, my mother and I went to the Wind Mill Farm & Craft Market in Penn Yan, New York. Mom sat with a coffee and I went off to browse. Suddenly, I heard music that reminded me of my earlier crazy singing. With goosebumps and excitement, I followed the music to a Native American store where Seneca music was playing. I shared my experience with the owner and he gifted me with an owl necklace and I bought the Seneca CD. He strongly encouraged me to write Catharine’s story.

Thereafter, for years while working on The Irish Dresser Series and writing a screenplay series, I researched and wrote Catharine’s story. I found many books, rare books, journals, and ordered out of print books that cost me a pretty penny. Some of the print in the reprinted books published in the late 1800s or early 1900s was so small, I wore reading glasses over contact lenses and used a magnifying glass! I would find Catharine peeking out here and there in three volume history tomes and gradually, although painstakingly slow, her life was pieced together. In the empty spaces in this hide and seek research, I took creative license and used my imagination. However, I must say that even then, it seemed Catharine was telling me what to write. For instance, George Croghan, the Irish-born fur trader and a key early figure in colonial times, kept popping up in my research. And when I learned he became a good friend of Catharine’s uncle, Andrew Montour, it seemed natural for Catharine and George to have a dalliance. Well, if they did…. You will have to read the book to find out. But George Croghan matters a lot in the novel although I kept saying no, no, no…he’s Irish and I don’t need to bring this Irish fellow into this story.

I felt at times I was in over my head and on many occasions decided to quit. Well, I had said this with my Irish novels, too, but this was different. It was difficult writing about a real person of history and a Native American, at that. The voice of doubt, at times, was stronger than the voice of Catharine and the characters’ voices in her story. But each time I was going to quit, peculiar things happened.

Once, after stating it was over with Catharine and I felt briefly unshackled, I was at an Irish festival in Boston to sell my books. The authors were gathered together in a tent and we introduced ourselves to one another. One of the authors had written a book about General John Sullivan and I asked him if he knew of Catharine Montour and he responded, “how do you know Queen Catharine?” Another time, my husband and I were driving through Newmarket, New Hampshire when we came upon The John Sullivan House! I hadn’t known this general who led the campaign against my protagonist and her people was from New Hampshire. I had only known him through New York history and hadn’t known he had been attorney general, federal judge, and a governor of New Hampshire. Was I getting the message to keep writing?

I continued to work on the novel, but at times, reluctantly. A few years later, at the beginning of the pandemic, I was walking on a remote deer path in the woods. I looked down and there was a kernel of dried corn, bigger than life. I put it in my pocket and decided there would be no more quitting. I finally finished the novel in 2021, but then my mother went into hospice and I traveled from New Hampshire to New York to help care for her. She was my biggest fan and encouragement and repeatedly said she didn’t want to die until she held Catharine’s story in her hands. Fortunately, I was able to read her an edit before she passed in May 2022. During these difficult times, my publisher for my last two novels indicated publication for 2023 would be non-fiction and they would not be publishing Catharine’s story. At this point, with my mother in hospice and knowing my best friend was soon going to leave, I quietly decided not to pursue publication and laid aside this story. Around this time, while back in New Hampshire on a reprieve, my husband and I went to dinner at Ambrose Restaurant located in the Inn at the Bandstand in Exeter, New Hampshire. While dining and talking to one of the owners, we learned that the inn was originally the Sullivan-Sleeper home, built in 1809 for George Sullivan, the son of Major John Sullivan, who was a lawyer and statesmen in New Hampshire. Of course I would have to continue to pursue publication for this story!

After saying goodbye to my dear mother and less than two months after she passed, I had an offer for publication from Bedazzled Ink Publishing, a publisher who represents authors who shine a light on under-represented women. And that is what I have sought to do in this novel – to shine a light on an under-represented Native American woman. But did I really have a choice not to?
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https://nhpbs.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/f08d5e21-9ed4-46d7-bb74-b60df3383811/queen-catharine-montour  -  A  brief PBS documentary about Queen Catharine Montour.

Folio 1 – We take it all so personal – the leaf that delicately dances from the tallest tree and lands on your lap. Perfectly an oak leaf with the russet brown shiny skin. You happened to crane your neck way up to the sky that late autumn afternoon when its turquoise canvas could not blind you. The sun had withdrawn its embrace and sat companionably with the earth as you looked dispassionately into the heavens. Only for perspective and levity, but not for revelation. One leaf, alone, doing a slow, graceful pirouette that lasted a minute, two? It was a performance and your neck hurt by the time this leaf fairy landed on your lap. You think of the country song by Engelbert Humperdinck, Please release me, let me go…You’d be a fool to cling to me…So release me and let me love again…Falling leaves, some in their prime ripe with color, a few innocent and green, and some old, brittle and brown. They all lay down for love of earth. Timing is everything. Limbs tired, no juice left, the wind knocked out of you. We take it all so personal.

Folio 2 – I walk, or rather limp, through the woods that I’ve walked in for twenty-six years. Tree skins, these leaves, are now every hue of brown, lying thickly on the path, ready for decomposing. Different shapes and sizes, they fell silently and alone. A few balding trees shimmer and shake with golden yellow leaves, the last to go. And there are small bushes with bright peachy red leaves. It’s a cloudy day, the rain finished, and the few colorful leaves cast a spell on me. I stop and admire, photograph, and gently rub a leaf between my fingers. But I can’t ignore the deep piles of perishing leaves I walk through, their scent an autumn intoxication I inhale each year. This death fragrance lingers in my senses as much as the ripening apple orchards this time of year. They will nourish the roots of trees as much as the apples will nourish my body. These woods are home, familiar, and I visit them more than I do family. Somehow I believe they know me well, too, their limbs lifting in the wind to greet me. Sometimes a tree will drop a leaf in my hair that I don’t find until I lie down in bed and feel the crunch on my pillow. I love trees, their circling, not around, but up and down, their sighing, their colors, even if death must come. I trust them even when their roots, buried in dying leaves and New Hampshire thin soil, cause me to stumble. This autumn, I’m preoccupied with my upcoming hip surgery and so I stop often, but not only because of a sore hip. I’m telling them I might not see them for awhile, probably not until they’re sleeping beneath the snow. I must walk right after, the doctor says, but not in the woods where there are roots, rocks, and uneven paths. I must walk on even, straight paths. I’ll miss the wild, natural orderly chaos of the woods for a time, the way they welcome me into a good therapy session each time I visit. I read tree leaves like a fortune teller reading tea leaves and a dendrochronologist reading tree rings and usually walk out of the woods with awareness and a story or two. And never do I leave without saying thank you, especially as a writer of books whose pages come from pines, spruces, hemlocks, firs, birch, hickory, and more. I’ll be back, I tell them, and meanwhile, their leaves, colorful or pungent, are enfolded within my heart.

Folio 3 – My protagonist, Catharine, in my upcoming novel, Catharine, Queen of the Tumbling Waters, to be released in the spring of 2023, is also a tree lover and tree leaf reader (read my prior blog to know more about this real life character). A series of autumns in her life bring much change and she, too, ponders the resonance of autumn leaves upon the pages of her heart. This is an excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Eight:
I’m sitting on the river bank after my last invigorating dip into the icy water. I’ve wrapped myself in a blanket before I return to my clothes and complex life with captives and George Croghan and his friend, Edward Pollard. I watch the river as the wind carries maple, birch, and oak leaves gently on its surface. They float like tiny colorful boats down the river away from their mother trees. I, too, have fallen from my source that rooted me as a Montour and native custom. What this next life is I don’t know and hope I can surrender as freely as the trees and leaves. I look up into the nearby trees and note soon they’ll be as naked as I am right now. These trees are at ease in releasing and I honor them with a quiet prayer. I feel a chill and quickly dress to return to my home full of people who are of every color.
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Oh, mournful season that delights the eyes, Your farewell beauty captivates my spirit. I love the pomp of Nature’s fading dyes, The forests garmented in gold and purple, The rush of noisy wind, and the pale skies Half-hidden by the clouds in darkling bellows, And the rare sun-ray and the early frost, And threats of grizzled Winter, heard and lost” ~Pushkin