dittybox

  Many of us have heard snippets of family history from our parents and grandparents, and now we have access to historical records online, we can dig a little deeper and trace the line back a little further.  It's fascinating stuff, but at the same time deeply frustrating, because there are always so many more questions to ask and nowhere to go to find the story that lies behind the documents. Simon Mawer's answer to this is to write an informed fictional account of what he thinks would have happened, and although he already has the bare bones of the story mapped out, I can assure you that this is not as easy as it looks.  I tried it myself when I was putting together a history of my side of the family, and as I went forward I realised I was creating the ancestors I wanted to have and the reality was probably something wildly different. There is always a great temptation to have people conform to modern standards, especially with the women.  Women from every era can ...

  A tale set in the old west of America, at a time not long after the Civil War, where vast numbers of the Indian population had been murdered and those few who were left behind had no land or legal rights to protect them. Winona Cole, who had once been know as Ojinjintka, has been taken in by two men who are trying to make a new life for themselves growing tobacco on a small piece of land.  They are kind to her, and treat her like a daughter, but many in the town think nothing of hurting an Indian even if she is just a little girl.  The men can keep her safe as long as she is on their land, but as she grows older and starts walking out with a young man, they can't watch over her as much as they would like, and around the age of seventeen she is attacked and bought home badly hurt. Winona can't recall who was responsible for hurting her as everything about it has gone from her memory, but her injuries told the story of what had happened and the people of the farm wanted j...

  I loved this book as it is the work of a real story teller.  This is the first sentence: 'She is twelve years old, and she will be married in the morning.' Who would not be instantly drawn in by that?  Shocking by today's standards, but in India in 1900, this happened, and it didn't always turn out to be a bad thing. A marriage broker had arranged the marriage and the groom is a man of forty whose first wife died leaving their baby son with no-one to look after him.  By marrying again, the man will immediately have found a nursemaid, cook and housekeeper and the bride's mother (who is a widow) wants to give her daughter the security she cannot provide herself.  The bride and groom have not set eyes on each other before the wedding, and the man is shocked to find his bride is just a child and he storms away from the altar.  He is only persuaded to return after being persuaded that the shame of being left stranded on her wedding day will mean that no-one el...