Memory Weaver

Jane Kirkpatrick

Description

Eliza Spalding Warren was just a child when she was taken hostage by the Cayuse Indians during a massacre in 1847. Now the young mother of two children, Eliza faces a different kind of dislocation; her impulsive husband wants them to make a new start in another territory, which will mean leaving her beloved home and her departed mother's grave--and returning to the land of her captivity. Eliza longs to know how her mother, an early missionary to the Nez Perce Indians, dealt with the challenges of life with a sometimes difficult husband and with her daughter's captivity.When Eliza is finally given her mother's diary, she is stunned to find that her own memories are not necessarily the whole story of what happened. Can she lay the dark past to rest and move on? Or will her childhood memories always hold her hostage?Based on true events, The Memory Weaver is New York Times bestselling author Jane Kirkpatrick's latest literary journey into the past, where threads of western landscapes, family, and faith weave a tapestry of hope inside every pioneering woman's heart. Readers will find themselves swept up in this emotional story of the memories that entangle us and the healing that awaits us when we bravely unravel the threads of the past.

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781441228208
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

© 2015 by Jane Kirkpatrick, Inc.
Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www . revellbooks .com
Ebook edition created 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-2820-8
Scripture used in this book, whether quoted or paraphrased by the characters, is taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
This book is a work of historical fiction based closely on real people and events. Details that cannot be historically verified are purely products of the author’s imagination.
“Storyteller Jane Kirkpatrick puts flesh and blood on the bones of history. In The Memory Weaver , she breathes life into the little-known tale of Eliza Spalding, daughter of the famed missionaries, who survives unspeakable horrors to become a woman of love and faith and strength. Set against an authentic nineteenth-century background, this is a superb story of a woman’s struggle to triumph over time and place. The Memory Weaver is a memorable book.”
—Sandra Dallas, New York Times bestselling author
Praise for A Light in the Wilderness
“Kirkpatrick gives marvelous insight into the struggle of the freed slave, the adventurous lure of the Oregon Trail with the numerous potentials it promised, and the tremendous amount of faith it took to endure.”
— CBA Retailers + Resources
“Kirkpatrick exercises her considerable gift for making history come alive in this real-life tale of a freed slave who travels across the country to Oregon Territory in the late 1840s. Kirkpatrick draws an indelible and intriguing portrait of Letitia Carson, an African-American woman who obtains her freedom and then determinedly makes her own way in an unsympathetic society. Letitia is fully imagined, and Kirkpatrick skillfully relates Letitia’s thoughts, cementing a bond of empathy between character and reader. On the whole, Kirkpatrick’s historical homework is thorough, and her realization of a little-known African-American pioneer is persuasive and poignant.”
— Publishers Weekly
“This heart-stirring new historical novel has romance, mystery, and adventure. Characters are sweet, charming, strong, witty, and looking for their places in the world. One character is loosely based on the true story of the first African-American woman to cross the Oregon Trail to live in freedom. Kirkpatrick has done her research and gives detailed descriptions without overwhelming the reader and the story.”
— RT Book Reviews
Dedicated to Jerry, with whom I’ve shared a lifetime of memories
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Endorsements
Dedication
Epigraph
Cast of Characters
Map
Prologue
Part One
1. In the Beginning
2. Finding the Center
3. The River’s Edge
4. Secrets
5. Sacrifices
6. Cookstove Wisdom
7. Held Hostage
8. Making Things Work
9. Anxiety Shifting
10. Vows
11. To Make a Bed and Lie in It
12. A Full House
13. Lost and Found
14. Learning the Language of Marriage
15. Stretching through the Darkness
Part Two
16. Unpredictable
17. The Choice
18. That Which Sustains
19. Changing Plans
20. Heading Backward
21. Leavings
22. Segments of the Past
23. Knitting Lives
24. Picking Up Lost Stitches
25. A Studied Change
26. Grateful I Am
27. New Sight
28. Filling Hollow Places
29. A Gold Ring
30. Like a Second Heart
Epilogue
Author’s Notes and Acknowledgments
Author Interview
Discussion Questions
About the Author
Back Ads
Back Cover
The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.
Salvador Dali
The past beats inside me like a second heart.
John Danville in The Sea
Cast of Characters Eliza Hart Spalding the mother, early missionary to the Nimíipuu/Nez Perce People Henry Spalding husband of Eliza, father of Eliza Spalding Warren Eliza Spalding Warren the daughter, keeper of her mother’s story Henry Hart Spalding Eliza the daughter’s brother Martha Jane Spalding younger sister Amelia “Millie” Spalding sister and youngest of Spalding siblings Andrew Warren husband of Eliza America Jane Warren children of Eliza and Andrew Warren Martha Elizabeth “Lizzie” Warren Amelia “Minnie” Warren James Henry Warren Rachel Jane Smith Boston teacher and second wife of Henry Spalding Nancy Osborne Brownsville resident, friend of Eliza Matilda Sager young friend of Eliza, survivor of Whitman tragedy Lorinda Bewley young friend, survivor of Whitman tragedy Timothy early Nimíipuu/Nez Perce convert of Spaldings O’Donnell brothers drovers with Andrew Warren John Brown son of owner of Brown and Blakely’s store Bill Wigle Brownsville businessman Matilda Nimíipuu/Nez Perce friend of Eliza Spalding, the mother Tashe Eliza the child’s Nimíipuu horse Nellie Eliza Spalding’s Brownsville horse Maka Eliza Spalding Warren’s horse *Yaka the Warren family dog *Abby the Warren cattle dog *fully imagined characters

Prologue
1847 A LONG THE C LEARWATER R IVER O REGON T ERRITORY
The woman rode sidesaddle, holding the leather reins like long ribbons in her sturdy hand.
“Mama, Mama, wait!”
The woman turned, looked out beneath her bonnet as her daughter ran forward, carrying a late-blooming iris in her nine-year-old hand. The girl’s Nimíipuu horse with freckles across its rump followed behind the child.
“Why, I rode right past it, didn’t I, Eliza?” The woman inhaled the flower’s scent as the child handed the blue iris up to her.
“I notice things.”
“Yes, you do.” It was good to see the child’s smile light up her usually serious face. “But I notice that you are not on Tashe’s back. I dare not dismount from this sidesaddle to help you get back up.”
“I can mount all by myself.”
“Can you?”
“I’ll show you. Come, Tashe.”
The horse followed like an obedient dog as the child made her way down the bank of the Clearwater River. At what she decided was the perfect spot, the girl stopped the horse, ordered the mare to “Stay,” then scrambled back up the bank, the horse below her. The mare switched her tail but waited.
“Watch, Mama.” Certain she had her mother’s full attention, the child leaned over to grab tufts of the horse’s mane, inhaled a deep breath, then leapt like a frog, landing astride, her dress covering the blanket on the horse’s back. She reached for the reins, then sat up straight as an arrow.
“Oh, that’s wonderful.” Her mother clapped her gloved hands. “You’re so smart, Eliza.”
“I am.” The satisfied smile revealed two front teeth almost grown in.
“We must ride more often in the morning like this, so I can witness how wise you are, how much you’ve grown into a young lady.”
“Just you and me, Mama, and none of the rest.”
“Yes, just the two of us.”
It was a promise the woman wished she’d kept, but events intervened as they always do. Still, the girl would remember that last solo ride with her mother: the sweep of the landscape, the scent of the flower and the horses, the sound of the Clearwater River chattering on its way to the faraway sea, and her mother’s approving smile. She would weave those memories into what happened later, trying to make sense of those threads, praying they would support rather than threaten her own life as a woman, mother, and wife.

1 In the Beginning
My earliest memory is of laughter inside a waterfall of words. I’m in a half-barrel that once held flour. Tree rounds act as wheels. My bare feet tease the knots of rope bored through the barrel’s end; my dress covers my legs stuck straight out. My hands grip the smooth sides of the half-barrel. A Nez Perce boy, with shiny hair as black as a moonless night, tows the rope over his shoulder, pulling me in my makeshift wagon across the rubbled ground in front of our cabin-school-church. I lay my head back, close my eyes, feel the sun on my face, let my child belly jiggle over the rutted earth, laughter joined to theirs. Ecstasy.
A sudden jolt. The wagon stops. Eyes pop open. Before us stands my father, hands on hips, elbows out, eyes black as turned earth. Absent our laughter I can hear my mother’s distant voice speaking to her Nez Perce students inside the school, then Nez Perce voices repeating as a song: English. Nez Perce. English. Nez Perce. I let the words wash over me, as comforting as a quilt.
I found no such comfort many years later at the grave-digging of my mother. I was thirteen. I didn’t know then that the healing of old wounds comes not from pushing tragic memories away but from remembering them, filtering them through love, to transform their distinctive brand of pain. That frigid January day in 1851 I wanted to forget my mother’s dying and so much more. Then laughter interrupted my sorrow as the chink, chink of the shovel hit dirt. Laughter—that made me wonder about my first memory. Perhaps it wasn’t true that I was comforted by Nez Perce words mixed in with my mother’s those years before. Maybe I didn’t even hear what I thought I did. Emotions wrap around memory. We don’t recall the detail in our stories; we remember the experience.
Deep in the pit, pieces of ice floated in shadowed puddles. I had slipped out of a grieving house in Brownsville, Oregon Territory, leaving my brother and two sisters behind, with my father holding his head in his hands. I ought to have stayed at our cabin for my sisters and brother, comforted as an older sister should, been a shoulder to let them cry on. We all ached from the loss. But I’d had enough of tears.
The laughter came from one of the grave diggers. He stopped when I approached. A light rain pattered against his felt hat, dotting the brim.