Elaine Marie Cooper Author

Historical Fiction That Grabs Your Heart and Feeds Your Soul

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Every Day is a Gift

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We buried my Mom yesterday. She was 99 years old.

Up until the last year of her life, her main difficulties were physical ones. But the last twelve months had seen an increase in loss of memory and comprehension—a tough battle for a lady as mentally sharp as Mom. Even when you’re nearing the century mark, no one wants to lose pieces of their life that become fragmented in the fog of growing dementia. That was her toughest struggle of all.

During the winter months of her battle, I was signing books at a Christian bookstore a distance away. During one of my breaks, I sauntered around the selection of gifts when my eyes were drawn toward a small ceramic bird. I focused on the inscription, which read, “Every Day is a gift from God.”

I picked up the precious reminder and brought it to the cash register. This was a gift worth purchasing for Mom.

 

Mom and I on Valentine's Day
Mom and I on Valentine’s Day

When I presented it to her on Valentine’s Day, her face lit up. “Thank you for the reminder,” she said with eyes that revealed so much. It’s difficult to consider the hours spent in discomfort, loneliness, and confusion as a gift. Yet even the moments of pain can become a blessing as our compassion for others in need is nurtured and our appreciation for heaven is heightened. These are the gifts of glorifying God that—while we do not understand the whole picture on this side of heaven—require our trust as our faith in Him is strengthened.

I often think of my crossstitch needlework when pondering life’s woes. While on the front is a beautifully wrought design, the underside is pocked with strands of tattered thread that look unattractive and frayed. God’s view is the finished piece of artwork while all we can see on this side of heaven is the battered and broken underside.

Yet God is creating His masterpiece.

After Mom’s funeral yesterday, I saw one of my mom’s dear friends—a precious lady with a keen mind and a crippled body from polio that she had years ago. My mom loved her and she cherished Mom in return. I had picked up Mom’s ceramic bird after she passed away and placed the gift in my purse. It was still nestled in my pocket book so I reached in and wrapped my fingers around the precious reminder that had ministered to my mom.

“Here, Carol.” I placed the bird in her hands. “I think my Mom would have wanted you to have this.”

Her eyes melted in appreciation. “Thank you.”

“Thank you for being her friend,” I said, my own eyes welling.

The gift of a friend—one of God’s many comforts as we face the trials of each day. As we each draw closer to Him, and our own eternity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Life and Death

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I’m sitting at my mother’s bedside and she is dying.

It is not an unexpected event since she is 99. But the sheer rapidity of the onset of pneumonia took us all by surprise. She was playing a game with my sister last Saturday. On Sunday she was reading the library books I had picked up for her and anticipating her grandson’s visit this week. By Tuesday, she was short of breath and feverish. By the next Saturday—today—she is unresponsive and near the end. [Read more…] about Life and Death

The Legacy of Family

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It was a simple excerpt from my family’s genealogy book that grabbed my attention: “Mr. Prince at fifteen years of age entered the Armory at Springfield, Mass., as an apprentice, and worked his way up to the position of inspector.”

The Armory at Springfield? What is that?

Thus began my journey to uncover part of my family’s history that eventually unfolded to become my novel, The Legacy of Deer Run. [Read more…] about The Legacy of Family

Ye Olde School Days

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As the bell rings yet again for another school year, ‘tis time to consider the beginnings of education in America. These roots run deeply into the very foundations of the settling of this country, for the tradition of going to school began twenty-seven years after the Mayflower arrived with the Pilgrims.

It was 1647 when the colony of Massachusetts passed the Old Deluder Satan Act, requiring any town with 50 or more households to hire a teacher for reading and writing. If there were 100 households, that upped the requirement to operating a grammar school for older students. This law was passed because parents became lax in teaching the basics of reading and writing, and the concern was that the colonists be able to read their Bibles. Hence the name of the law, so “that old deluder, Satan,” could not “keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures.”

While schools today fight to keep Christianity out of the curriculum, the education of young colonials was filled with prayers and the Bible. The usual tablet for teaching was called a hornbook, a wooden paddle with a parchment inscribed with upper and lower case letters as well as the Lord’s Prayer. The written document was affixed to the wood with a thin layer of processed cow’s horn—the colonial version of lamination.

Pots to hold ink for penmanship
Pots to hold ink for penmanship

Some youngsters began their schooling in a “Dame School” which was held in someone’s home where the children learned the basics of reading by the woman of the household. These dame schools were often the sole education for young girls.

If there was a schoolhouse in the community, it was one room and the schoolmaster that was hired was usually a young, unmarried man, who took the job before settling on a trade. Boys went to school in the winter for several weeks when there were no crops to tend. Girls (if they were lucky) went to school in the summer.

New England schools were numerous and paid for by local taxes. Farther west and south, these one-room places of learning became more scarce. The two colonies with the greatest numbers of formal schools were Virginia and Massachusetts—the first two colonies founded on American soil.

One of the more famous schoolmasters in colonial Connecticut started out teaching in the small community of East Haddam in the winter of 1773-74. The eighteen-year-old Yale grad was described as handsome, athletic and kind. Author Eric Sloan wrote that this teacher was so well liked that his students gave him a send-off party when he took a position in the larger town of New London.

“I’ll miss you,” the departing teacher said. “And I wish that part of me could stay back in East Haddam with you. I do regret there is only one of me.”

As this schoolmaster headed for his new teaching position, the rumbles of the Revolution were being felt. He joined the Continental Army while still a teacher in New London. But his other profession was as an American spy. When the British discovered secret military plans written in Latin and Greek and hidden in his shoe, Nathan Hale was arrested and then hung.

His famous last words embodied the spirit of the Patriot cause: “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” Nathan Hale, beloved schoolmaster, was hung on September 22, 1776.

His schoolhouse in East Haddam is now a museum overlooking the Connecticut River.

 

(Photos from Storrowton Village Museum, West Springfield, MA)

 

 

 

Geeky Fan of Nathaniel Philbrick

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I admit it—I’m a complete history geek.

And few things excite me more than the arrival in my mailbox, just a day apart, of not one but TWO new releases in the non-fiction category: Bunker Hill by Nathaniel Philbrick and Revolutionary Summer by Joseph J. Ellis.

Thanks to my husband, I’ve become a fan of Book TV. Steve is like Sherlock Holmes when it comes to ferreting out authors of the American Revolution era who speak on that program in front of audiences of history addicts like myself. My husband knows I will leave everything else aside to watch such an interview. This, to me, is great “Reality TV!”

When Joseph Ellis was the guest author on Book TV, I loved watching him speak with his self-amused laugh and interesting banter about the summer of 1776 that he calls, “the crescendo moment in American History.”

The Jason Russell House
The Jason Russell House

But it was Nathaniel Philbrick that I was most excited to hear. I felt a connection of sorts with the “other Author” (Philbrick) who toured the Jason Russell House in Arlington, Massachusetts just a few weeks before I did in July of 2012.

“Nathaniel Philbrick!” My jaw opened wide in teen-like adulation when the historian at the Russell House told me this must be author month: Philbrick was going to visit there to do research for “Bunker Hill.”

Many folks may not even be familiar with Philbrick’s work but he has penned Mayflower, Sea of Glory, and In the Heart of the Sea, among other historical non-fiction accounts. I have not scanned more than Mayflower and, while at times it read like a textbook, his research was impeccable. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for that book. And I am his geeky fan. 🙂

So, touring the creaky floorboards of the 1700’s home and its owners who I write about in Fields of the Fatherless, I felt a special kinship with both the historical figures that lived there as well as the historian.

Philbrick’s book is non-fiction; mine is fiction based on actual events. In my genre, I attempt to bring to life through words the people who lived the terrifying tale that helped win American Independence. Both genres have their place on the book self. Both serve to educate and help us remember that we owe a debt of gratitude to those who came before us and sacrificed so much.

Nathaniel Philbrick may never read Fields of the Fatherless. But I will certainly peruse the pages of his well-researched book about Dr. Joseph Warren and the battle of Bunker Hill. After all, I walked every step to the top of the Bunker Hill monument as a child. History courses through my blood.

Book TV, anyone?