Writing My Grandmother’s Story, Augusta

Writing My Grandmother’s Story, Augusta

by Celia Ryker

 I grew up with my grandmother’s story swirling around me. Hearing tales of a woman who died when I was barely six years old left me wondering if some of my memories weren’t mine at all. Did I hear her say this or did I hear the story so many times that it became mine? 

As a child I slept on the screened-in porch of gramma’s cottage when I spent the night. Loon calls frightened me and she took me out on the lake at dusk to show me how silly the loons were. She discovered that I was afraid of snakes and showed me how to catch them; their scales soft and beautiful.  

I decided to write this tale almost thirty years ago. I had written Augusta story ideas along with a list of people to interview. I recently found these notes in a file; everyone on my interview list had passed away. How did I find my notes so quickly? That morning I had searched for my car keys for over an hour.

Among my notes I found an interview with Aunt Ivon, Augusta’s daughter, and her son Buddy, my father. I asked about Augusta’s first husband and they couldn’t agree on what his name had been.  Consulting Augusta’s grandchildren brought an even wider range of contradictions. 

About Buddy’s broken leg: I remember my father telling me that he was playing in a cardboard box in the alley when a garbage truck ran over the box. 

My brother, Arnie, said, “He was in a cardboard box when he was hit by a Wonder Bread truck.”

“He was hit by a trolley car,” according to my sister Fay.

The more people I consulted the greater the contradictions regarding almost every facet of Augusta’s story. This made my choice to write a novel, loosely based on Augusta’s life easier. If I didn’t know a name I made it up; if I didn’t like a name I changed it. This is fiction.

The image on the front cover of my book is from a daguerreotype that was given to me by Aunt Ivon. “Mama was married off to the father of one of her classmates when she was thirteen years old. This picture was taken on her wedding day; she’s wearing her eighth grade graduation dress,” she told me. 

My novel begins in 1906 with the friendship between Augusta and Clara, the classmate that Aunt Ivon mentioned. I created Clara from whole cloth. I named her father Simon Church and made him an atheist. My grandmother was religious, so this created an added dynamic between them.

My research about farm life in Arkansas at the turn of the twentieth century helped me tell Augusta’s childhood story. Conversations between Augusta and her hard working mother tell of a woman’s life on a hard knock farm. I couldn’t imagine how a loving mother could marry off her thirteen-year-old daughter to a man old enough to be her father. When I wrote the scene their conversation flowed with ease, like I was eavesdropping on a conversation I had never heard. 

Augusta’s hardworking husband lost his farm when cotton prices went bust. He became a hard drinker as a result of the failure of his life’s work and took his wife to Detroit to find work in the auto industry. Augusta arrived in Detroit wearing a feed sack for a dress; this I heard from several sources. 

The early years of the booming auto industry brought a broad variety of people to Detroit. I heard that a Polish woman helped gramma get through the breakup of her first marriage. Based on that I created Agata and Edith to help me tell what life was like for Augusta as a young mother in a strange city. 

I planned to write this novel in the omniscient third person. The prologue came from a story that my mother told me many times. Mom didn’t say it happened in the fall but that’s what I imagined. I saw gramma walking alone, leaves rustling around her shoes, a breeze tugging at her coat. I found myself writing the scene from Augusta’s perspective, and she began to tell her own story. 

I sat down to write Augusta’s thoughts while her son was undergoing surgery; instead, Thelma’s nightmare showed up on my computer screen. I reread it twice thinking to myself, where did this came from?

I’m often surprised, at the end of a writing session, by what I read. How can my own ideas sneak up on me? There were moments during the writing of this novel when I felt as if I were channeling Augusta. My mind didn’t wander; I was being directed.

The gramma I knew led a magically simple life, in a cottage on the lake. Her complicated life would be revealed to me in bits and pieces through other people’s memories. And memories are stories.

—

Celia Ryker’s first book, Walking Home: Trail Stories, was a Gold Winner in the 2022 Human Relations Indie Book Award in Travel, and Silver Winner in Motivational Memoir and Personal Determination. She is the perfect author to tell Augusta’s tale. Celia and her husband live between Vermont and Michigan with their border collie, Flurry. Learn more about Celia at her website, www.celiaryker.com. Follow her on Instagram @celiaryker.

AUGUSTA

Raised on a hard-knock farm in Arkansas and married off to the father of one of her classmates at the age of thirteen, Augusta was not set up for a life of bliss. Then, abandoned by her second husband in 1920s Detroit, with four children to provide for, she is forced into a decision that will haunt her forever.

From the author of Walking Home: Trail Stories, Celia Ryker’s Augusta is historical fiction based on the true story of her grandmother, a woman who lived on a lake and taught her how to catch snakes; a woman who fled the hardships of the Ozarks at the turn of the twentieth century for a new city, and a chance at a better life.

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