Smorgasbord Posts from Your Archives 2024 #Potluck – Elizabeth Gauffreau with her #bookreview for Augusta by Celia Ryker

Welcome to the series of Posts from Your Archives and I will be sharing posts from the SECOND six months of 2023 from your archives.

If you wish to be included the information is at the the end of the following post which is from the previous series, and shows you what it will look like.

This is the second post from author and poet Elizabeth Gauffreau and she shares another of her thoughtful reviews for Augusta by Celia Ryker

By Way of Introduction

Celia and I met through the League of Vermont Writers, and I’m delighted to introduce her to you and feature my review of her debut novel Augusta. She was gracious enough to record a version of the talk she gives to groups about the inspiration for the book.

Celia and I Hawking Our Wares at Bookstock 2023

My Review

Celia Ryker’s debut novel, Augusta, is a fictionalized account of her grandmother’s early life, from 1906, when she was twelve years old, through the 1920s. I was initially drawn to the book because writing the story of someone remembered from our childhood seems a natural impulse to explore unanswered questions. As Ryker states in her author’s note at the end of the book:

“I have few clear memories of the woman I knew as Gramma; tiny pieces of a life that ended when I was too young to ask meaningful questions and far too young to listen.” (215)

The question then becomes, is this person’s fictionalized story appropriate for a family history, or is it so compelling, so weighted that it deserves a wider audience? In the case of Augusta, her story clearly deserves an audience outside of her family, from the perspective of her likability and strength of character, as well as the historical context and social history revealed by her story.

Fully one quarter of this short novel is devoted to Augusta’s forced marriage at the age of thirteen to the widowed father of her best friend, one of her eighth-grade classmates. In a case of bitter irony, Augusta proved her mettle as a potential wife by helping the family after the mother took sick and died. Despite Augusta’s objections that she is too young to marry a man so much older than herself, her parents insist it’s the best thing for all concerned.

One of the most telling moments in the book occurs at the party after the marriage service when Augusta asks Simon, her new husband, about a mule tied to the back of her parents’ wagon: “ ‘Did ya trade a mule fer me?’ He was silent too long. “ ‘That better be yer best mule’. “ (45)

Surprisingly, Augusta is soon able to make the best of the situation she finds herself in: “Being a wife was something she had trained for most of her life, and she was good at it. She was feeling strong and loved.” (46)

Two years later, Simon loses the farm, starts drinking, and decides to uproot a pregnant Augusta to a tenement in Detroit. Augusta appeals to her mother for help–or at the least, sympathy–to no avail.

I found Augusta’s relationship with her mother to be one of the most compelling and thought-provoking in the book. While Augusta’s mother may appear cruel and insensitive to twenty-first-century sensibilities, I think she is more a reflection of how precarious survival was for a farm family at the turn of the twentieth century in the Ozarks. With no social safety net to fall back on, any opportunity for a daughter’s future financial security had to be seriously considered.

As subsequent events in Detroit would bear out, this was a time when a woman, particularly a woman with children, was at the mercy of her husband, who in turn was at the mercy of the vicissitudes of making a living. One drop in the price of cotton, one reckless financial decision, one lost job could take his family from comfort to destitution.

Augusta, young as she is, manages over the next fifteen years to survive abandonment by her first husband and a second husband who takes to the bottle and becomes abusive, prompting Child Services to remove two of her four children from the home. This husband then vanishes, never to be seen or heard from again.

The saving grace for Augusta through all of this is her ability to make friends and form strong bonds with other women. In fact, if not for these women, I don’t know how she would have survived to become the Gramma Ryker remembers as being “so exceptional that being near her made me feel special by proximity.” (215)

Meet the Author

Celia was born in Detroit in 1949 and grew up in, Clarkston, a small town 35 miles northwest of the city. Her first career was with horses. She trained horses and taught students on Southeast Michigan’s hunter jumper circuit for more than 30 years. Her second career sent her back to school to study gardening fine arts and landscape design. They were not just careers, they were passions and when life left room for a new passion she began to distance hike. Her husband said, “She got to H in the alphabet and stopped. She went from horses, to horticulture, to hiking.”

Celia has kept journals and written short stories and poems all of her life. She has written articles for newsletters, local newspapers, and The Vermont League of Writers. She published her first book, Walking Home: Trail Stories, at the age of seventy-one and her first novel, Augusta, at seventy-three. Her third book. Big Guy, a middle grade children’s book is due out in the spring of 2023, and she has more projects to come.

Celia and Don have been married for 39 years. They share their life with a border collie named Flurry and divide their time between Ortonville, Michigan and Bridgewater Corners, Vermont.

Meet the Inspiration for Augusta

To Purchase Augusta

~Rootstock ~Barnes and Noble ~Amazon, including audio book

 

©Elizabeth Gauffreau 2023

My thanks to Liz for allowing me to share posts from her archives and I know she will love to hear from you…

About Elizabeth Gauffreau

Elizabeth Gauffreau writes fiction and poetry with a strong connection to family and place. Her work has been widely published in literary magazines, as well as several themed anthologies. Her short story “Henrietta’s Saving Grace” was awarded the 2022 Ben Nyberg prize for fiction by Choeofpleirn Press.

Liz has published a novel, TELLING SONNY, and a collection of photopoetry, GRIEF SONGS: POEMS OF LOVE & REMEMBRANCE. She is currently working on a novel, THE LAST POOR FARM, based on the closing of the last poor farm in Vermont in 1968.

Liz’s professional background is in nontraditional higher education, including academic advising, classroom and online teaching, curriculum development, and program administration. She received the Granite State College Distinguished Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2018.

Liz lives in Nottingham, New Hampshire with her husband.

Books by Elizabeth Gauffreau

One of the reviews for Grief Songs

Merril D. Smith   5.0 out of 5 stars Poems that resonate  Reviewed in the United States

Elizabeth Gauffeau’s Grief Songs is a short book that leaves a long, lingering presence. The book is a collection of personal photographs paired with mostly tanka poems. (A tanka is a 5-line poem typically written as syllabic lines of 5-7-5-7-7). This means that each poem is a sharp distillation of a moment, an event, or even the history of a relationship between parents, between her and her parents, or between her and her brother.

Because the poems are brief, the book can be read very quickly. However, a reader who lingers over words and photos will be rewarded. The poems and the feelings behind them grow with repeated readings. I must say that sometimes I was left wondering what happened. This is not a criticism of the poems, but rather, my own curiosity about people. “Youth Group Picnic,” for example, gives us a glimpse of the day—two children waiting in the car, giggling and honking the horn. Liz fills in the rest of the story here on her blog.

“For a Crooked Smile,” however, needs no additional context.

“He was my little brother.”

That poem brought me to tears (as did several others):

Grief Song III

I held her hand
as she lay dying
death rattle
in my throat.

This is a book of poetry that is highly accessible, but with poems that resonate. It is a memoir in bite-size pieces. Each poem is a snapshot, a memory experienced in the way we are all hit by a sudden remembrance of a time, a place, or a person.

In “Sixty Years of Katherine,” Liz writes:

“minutes tucked into envelopes
decades left in dresser drawers”

These lines feel both personal and universal. Those of us who have helped a parent move or who have cleared a home after they’ve passed, understand the complex emotions behind these beautiful, succinct phrases.

Read the reviews and buy: Amazon US – and : Amazon UK – Read more reviews and follow Elizabeth: Goodreads –  – Website/blog: Liz Gauffreau – Family History: Liz Gauffreau – Facebook: Liz Gauffreau –

How to feature in the series?

• All I need you to do is give me permission to dive in to your archives and find two posts to share here on Smorgasbord either by leaving a note in the comments or by emailing me. (sally.cronin@moyhill.com)
• Rather than a set topic, I will select posts at random of general interest across a number of subjects from the last six months of 2023. (it is helpful if you have a link to your archives in your sidebar by month)
• As I will be promoting your books as part of the post along with all your information and links so I will not be sharing direct marketing or self- promotional posts in the series.
• If you are an author I am sure you will have a page on your blog with the details, and an ‘about page’ with your profile and social media links (always a good idea anyway). I will get everything that I need.
• As a blogger I would assume that you have an ‘about page’ a profile photo and your links to social media.
• Copyright is yours and I will ©Your name on every post… and you will be named as the author in the URL and subject line.
• Previous participants are very welcome to take part again.
• Each post is reformatted for my blog and I don’t cut and paste, this means it might look different from your own post especially if you are using the block editor

N.B – To get the maximum benefit from your archive posts, the only thing I ask is that you respond to comments individually and share on your own social media.. thank you.