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Announcing “Little Sister, a Family Memoir”
I’m pleased to announce that my sixth book has been published.
I’ve been working on Little Sister, a Family Memoir for the last couple years, but in reality, it’s been on my heart much longer than that. As I wrote it, I pillaged a lifetime of notebooks and files in my office and found personal stories, bits of history and photos. Some of the book is funny, but some might make you cry. And, while it’s my memoir, it’s also the Larson family history set in my hometown of LaMoure, N.D.
To give you a taste of the book, I’m including an excerpt from Little Sister at the end of this blog post. I hope you’ll read it and give me some feedback. The book is only available on Amazon at this time. Look for it under Gayle Larson Schuck. Or contact me to order a signed copy, which will be available after Oct. 15.
Another reason I’m celebrating this fall is this is my 90th blog post! The first one was published in 2015. I remember when I first heard the word “blog,” which is short for Web Log. That was in the late 1990s and it didn’t seem like an idea that would fly far. Boy, was I wrong. Blogs have become a standard form of communication. Thank you to everyone for sticking with me and not hitting the unsubscribe button.
I had fun speaking at the Touchmark Ladies Night on Sept. 24. There was a nice turnout and so many old friends chose to attend. I talked about writing Little Sister and gave tips for writing their own memoirs. I hope to include those tips in a future blog post. We all have stories that should be recorded. I encourage you to also keep a journal, because today’s mundane events become tomorrow’s history. Thank you to my friend Connie who took this photo.
Writing Update
These are the book signings that are planned at this time:
October 26, Wilton Fall Fling, Wilton, ND
November 30, 7th Annual Stop n Shop Holiday Vendor Show, Bismarck Amvets
Date TBD Touchmark, Bismarck
The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever.” Isaiah 40:8
Now here is an excerpt from the introduction of Little Sister, A Family Memoir:
From the beginning, I had an inner sense of being set apart, like a yellow tulip in a field of red. I was one of the Larson kids, and yet I wasn’t. This understanding has always influenced my life. The set-apart feeling also added to my insecurities.
As a child, I suspiciously thought I was adopted. What else would explain my strange place in the family? Finally, a copy of my birth certificate and pure logic put that idea to rest.
Being the baby of the family, and being born a generation later than my siblings, had advantages. They were old enough to have their own incomes, and they gave me lots of gifts. While the family had no luxuries, I had an abundance of toys.
Today, I see another benefit. The adults often forgot I was in the room. I listened to many private conversations as I quietly played with a toy. There wasn’t much else going on in my world. We had no television or computer. The nearest neighborhood children were two miles away. I memorized my surroundings, recorded discussions in my head, and internalized the emotional climate around me.
For a long time, I tried to catch up with my siblings. However, all six of them were married by the time I was ten. By then I was drinking coffee with my sisters and sisters-in-law, and listening to their grownup talk about money, kids and recipes. At that age, I already had eleven nieces and nephews, who were much closer to me in age. They dubbed me Auntie Gayle.
After my mother died in 1986, the rest of my siblings tussled over a cowbell they all wanted as a keepsake. I didn’t even remember the cowbell. I wanted the green sherbet dishes that meant nothing to the rest of them. I was the only one who knew what had become of the four-hundred-day clocks that Bob and Jerry sent home when they were stationed in Europe.
It wasn’t just our childhood memories that separated us. Our teen years were vastly different. They were products of the Depression and World War II. My sisters grew up obedient, practical, and responsible. My brothers were fun loving, but before their voices changed they went to work for neighbors to earn a little money.
By comparison, I was a product of the promising fifties and rebellious sixties. To my siblings, if you dropped acid, you probably had an accident while working with a battery. By the time I came of age, it was a common term of the drug-laced counterculture of the sixties. I didn’t drop either one.
I almost caught up with my siblings. I married and had two sons before I was twenty years old. Our sons fit in well near the tail end of my parents’ twenty-three grandchildren.
It wasn’t until I was in my thirties, that it became plain that I would always be a generation behind my siblings. There was no catching up. They were now in their fifties, becoming grandparents and dealing with health issues. I was still taking college classes.
If it was my lot in life to be set apart from my siblings, then it was my privilege to be their Little Sister. They were more than my sisters and brothers, they were my friends and heroes.
https://www.amazon.com/Little-Sister-Gayle-Larson-Schuck