JoAnne Lewis

The beginning of the story. Moving is never a fun task. Organizing, purging, cleaning, sorting, packing, boxing, and figuring out what is in what box! It’s a clear, blue sky and breezy Saturday morning, Amanda has just finished cleaning up from breakfast and taking her dog Melanie for a nice long meandering walk. She treated herself to a coffee and Melanie got a treat. It’s so nice to have a dog friendly coffee place within walking distance. Amanda takes a final sip of her coffee and moves from the kitchen towards the garage. Opening the door and walking down the steps into the garage, the familiar smells assuage her nose. Even after so many years, she still expects to see Dad’s fire gear, boots and all the other equipment there. Now many storage boxes have taken over the space. Walking through the space with the familiarity of someone who has done so a million or so times, she turns on the lights and opens the door to let some air in and some mustiness out. A few years ago, she updated and painted the garage so that it would be more efficient and not as affected by the varying temperatures as the seasons change. She admires her handiwork for a minute, then decides its time to get started on her goal of today. Clearing off the shelf, moving the current pile of trash out to the debris box and making more progress on the sorting part of moving. The attic is going to be warm, dusty, full of cobwebs. Technically, it’s not an attic, but more of a storage space. Amanda is used to it by now. This is the third time she has rented a debris box to fill with the items that don’t need to move with her. Today is going to be filled with smiles, laughter, and probably a few tears. When you know you’re going to be leaving a place you’ve known all your life, it is emotional to go through more than 50 years of family treasures, memories and the tangibles of lives. As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. Five years ago, there was promise, plans and preparations for a future here. Now it’s time to pack it all up, put the house on the market and move across the country to a new state. Amanda sighs and climbs the ladder to the top and moves her leg over the top rung of the ladder and pulls herself onto the landing. She looks around at the organized chaos and picks a box to open and look through. Surprisingly it is empty! She moves the small empty box out of the way and leans down to look what is under the shelf. There are two boxes tucked back there, behind an old sleeping bag. She leans down, grabs the sleeping bag and tosses it over the side, where it lands with a soft thud onto the other things ready to be moved out to the debris box. She gets on her knees and ducks under the shelf and reaches in to move the box from its place. It is obviously an older box, dusty and covered with an old latch rug. Interesting, she thinks, what is this? She doesn’t remember seeing this box before. She gets up, puts the box on the shelf and removes the old rug. To her great surprise, the box appears to be full of newspaper wrapped items. As she moves it over to look at later, it makes a tinkling sound. Turning her head back to the box, her curiosity gets the best of her and she discovers a box full of antique stemware.

Updated hook: Looking up to her father for as long as she has, holding on to the stories she was told growing up, and believing them to be true. Now, in her search for her ancestry, she uncovers hard truths she may not want an answer to.

Pre-Event Assignments Assignment 1 – Story Statement: My main character is a women researching her father’s family ancestry. She and her dog work in their cozy writing room, coming up with questions and so many answers that she gets lost in the idea that her family history is more than meets the eye. She began this journey after finding items in her parent’s attic that had been there for about 40 years. Tucked away under an old door that was being used for a shelf. She found two boxes – one covered in old newspaper and a colorful portion of a vintage latch rug. She experiences exasperation, anger and confusion that the stories she was told growing up may not be exactly true. Her father has been gone over 20 years and she has no one to ask. But her computer. As she starts digging, she finds things that are surprising, shocking and touching. She finds that her love of community service is hereditary. Generational heredity. As she compiles her stories, she finds confusion where there should have been clarity. After all, the documents are all there and should paint a clear picture. They don’t. What did her father not tell her? What happened to the wealth that her grandparents had? Why did their family struggle so much? Coming from a successful lineage? Was it because her father was the youngest in the family, that he was more coddled then shown how to be successful? To take pride in your work, to be focused and diligent in his work? What type of man was he? Really? The one that I grew up with was generous to a fault – to anyone and everyone he met or worked with or encountered. Like he was still living with a large amount of money. This caused many problems for his family. Especially later in life, when the specter of a foreclosure on their home was entirely possible. Fast forward 20 years and there is a resolution. The home was kept and subsequently sold to pay for the living expenses of his widow. During the clean out and packing of a home that had been lived in for over 50 years, she found many things that sparked her curiosity and piqued her interest. Now that she is delving so deeply into this history, her imagination is working overtime. She finds herself wondering and fantasizing about what it was like to live in the periods of time she is researching. She wants to capture her imagining and what she believes it was like to live during those times. She is determined to become as informed about her father’s family as she possible can. She is determined to get her answers and find solace in her knowing. Once she decides to do something, she digs deep past all the past trauma and becomes focused on finding out her answers. She is determined to silence and ignore the criticism from other family members during her process. Her mantra is “if they don’t want it found out, then have them tell me the truth”. She believes that she has her spirit guides to help nudge her to the right path. Assignment 2 – Sketch the antagonist or antagonistic force The antagonistic force in my story are the past traumas and stories that have been told over the years to create this narrative of her family. Her ancestry. The doubts and concerns that come up with each discovery cause her to doubt her ambition to learn the truth that, she believes, is there. Are her spirit guides warning her about what she may or may not discover? The nudges are there, the gut feelings, the aha moments, that begin to erode her confidence and bring questions to light that she may not want answered. And then there is the guilt that is buried deep, but is there, questioning what is she uncovers something that she doesn’t want to uncover? What then? Does she stay the course and continue finding her answers? Does she share those answers? Her determination is strong, and she finds her strength to silence those nudges. Assignment 3 – List of breakout titles Seeking Answers – Family secrets uncovered Whispers of the Past– Amanda’s Quest for Answers A Daughter’s Journey – What is hiding in the past? Assignment 4 – Comparable to my novel After researching several websites, I couldn’t find novels comparable to mine. At least not yet. Assignment 5 – Hook line and core conflict After looking up to her father and believing the stories she’d been told over the years, boxes in the attic reveal troubling questions that she may not want the answers to. Assignment 6 – Other matters of conflict: Two more levels Emotions are a funny thing. One second, you’re feeling happy and excited with your find in the attic. The next you are digging deeper into those finds and your excitement begins to diminish. Amanda’s excitement has really diminished. Anger is starting to replace the excitement. She is doing a good deed and helping her mother clean out parts of the home that haven’t been touched in years, decades even. Growing up and living in this house off and on for most of her forty odd years, she cannot believe there are still secrets she is uncovering. The anger is coming from not having anyone, literally anyone, to answer all her questions. Why has this been tucked away, into the furthest corner of the attic, for decades? Why??? Where did they come from? How old are they? Whose are they? Why are these precious glasses wrapped in newspaper? A few are broken beyond repair, so sad to have to throw them away. Her anger is directed at her father. She can only surmise that after his mother died, he just wanted to put this stuff away and forget about it. Well, he did! Now its left to me, his only daughter, to try and get answers. Then, of course, there is the folder. With family lineage and details that were never shared! All those times of asking, digging and being a nag to get answers about the family could have been answered if she had just known about the boxes in the attic! She begins questioning her mother, who is at the beginning of memory issues, and gets nowhere. Amanda’s frustration with her is simmering very close to boiling over. Patience is becoming harder and harder to find. Why did everything have to be so secretive?? Why were the answers always so vague?? We are family, who are supposed to support and be there for each other. Assignment 7 – Setting The story begins in a sleepy little town north of San Francisco. Nestled in a valley, this little town began as a vacation destination for San Franciscans. Then it became a hippie enclave and has transformed yet again into a suburban town. Nine tidy family homes sit on a cul-de-sac in a quiet corner of town. Over the years, families have come and gone but it remains a haven for kids to play and imagination to be free. There are trees to climb, bikes to ride, roller skates to try and fun to be had. A basketball hoop waits for the kids to come home and play. The downtown is quaint, with the variety of shops that you’d expect to find when you travel outside of the city. A bakery, an everything store, pizza parlor, a bar, and a hairdresser. Of course there are the two banks in town. The hamburger place that is frequented by all who pass by and smell the burgers cooking. It’s a quiet town, where most everyone knows you, or your parents, or your neighbors or all the above. Walking downtown is an event where you never know what you’ll encounter. Bicyclists on their way to the coast, a police officer chatting with the resident he is giving a ticket to, smells wafting out of the bakery making your mouth water with the thought of a warm, fresh from the oven donut. People crowding the sidewalks, chatting to each other. There is the library which is so imperative to research and inspiration. This novel will also go back in time to various decades and centuries. Anywhere from the 1960’s and back. Traveling to those time frames will be featured in little vignettes throughout the novel. We will also travel to Europe at various times, sail on ships and come in through Ellis Island (possibly).