Place as a Character in Stories

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Next READERS’ ZOOM on APRIL 11, 9:00 AM Pacific.  See details at end of post.

The Body knows where it belongs. There seems some configuration in nature between the dropped fawn and the grassy knoll that receives it, between the river and the salmon that returns from the sea, between the bee and flower and darkened geometry of the hive. And even in my human blinders, I have experienced this for myself.

I was born in Deaconess Hospital in Great Falls, Montana and carried home to the rural homestead where my grandparents had homesteaded thirty-six years earlier. I was the second generation of Baldwins born on that homestead edging a tiny town. The first photograph of me I am four months old, July, my christening day. I am on a little blanket on the grass, torso sprawled, head lifted (cobra pose they call it in my senior yoga class).

Belly on the ground, on ground that still calls me, ground that holds my grandparents, parents, various aunts and uncles in the Sun River Cemetery. The Blackfeet here count ancestors going back ten thousand years. It will take me half a century to begin to reckon with the thievery that made this place a place I thought I belonged.

from Wikipedia

It was when I went to Europe, particularly into the English countryside, walking among the standing stones of Avebury, I had a different sensation of belonging. The ground came up through the soles of my feet, shaking me like lightening. I was filled with a kind of Earthy energetic programming. Though my Enlish ancestors immigrated to America in the late 1700’s, I immediately thought: this is what ancestral linkage feels like! This is what Native Americans feel when they walk the land we call Montana. The land they call Niitawahsin.

When I wrote The Beekeeper’s Question, the story demanded I “go home” to love and reckon with the place of my birth. Though fictional, the characters, the vocations, the struggles, the social issues all stream out of the place I come from. And everything happens in place, under the buttes, in the dry winds, the weather, the ways Montana shapes people’s characters.

Last fall I discovered Colleen O’Brien’s book, Baited, a mystery/thriller based in Glacier National Park and the small town of East Glacier, inside the borders of the Blackfeet Reservation. I enjoyed it both for the storyline and for O’Brien’s amazing use of place. Well—she lives there. She’s taught at Blackfeet Community College in Browning. She’s well acquainted with the Park, the rangers, the Blackfeet, the tensions of then and now. She stocks Beekeeper’s Question in her store, Glacier Park Trading. Seemed like a match.

We connected recently and decided to share the next READERS’ ZOOM on APRIL 11 (9:00 AM Pacific—check your timezone) to talk about PLACE as a character.  I am an author born in Montana who has always been a visitor and not a resident. Colleen is an author born elsewhere, now a resident. The books are our debut novels after careers in nonfiction. Should be fun. Click on the live link, above. Put on your cowboy hat and join us.

Hanging onto the thread

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The sky is streaked with lingering light.

Mid-October 2025: Before going into the storyline that I’ve been noodling on the past few weeks, I want to acknowledge the huge hingepoint we are in: Portland and Chicago under siege by the US president, Gaza in tenuous ceasefire and hostage release, Ukraine shouldering into another season of war. None of this goes away. All of this breaks our hearts one way and another. Pause. Breathe. Keep an open heart.

Moonset, early morning facing west.

In Chapter One of my book, Storycatcher, I write, “Life hangs on a narrative thread. … The thread is slender, but strong: we trust it to hold us and allow us to swing over the edge of the known into the future we dream in words.” Never have I felt this more than true than now. I am swinging over the unknown while the threads coming at me are a tangled mess of broken narratives, soundbites, AI concoctions, manipulated information, reels and threads and phone-held videos—some of them helpful, amidst all that is not. Some of them the warps of lies. The lies are the hardest to deal with—the assumption that I will simply turn over my own thought process, moral code, and reality to whatever they say is true.

Every autumn for 30+ years this backyard maple has turned golden yellow… this year it is turning crimson red.

It’s a mystery.

In this whiplash environment, in the debris field of narrative, the battle of the story wars rages. And I am doing my best to hold on to the storyline that is my life, one thin thread-of-selfhood stitching my way through these times.

Greenbank Farm– early morning dog walks.

I am repeatedly challenged to ask myself, “What is my storyline in all this chaos? How do I articulate and live out what is most important to me? How do I hold myself to purpose on a daily, even hourly, basis? When I wander, where do I go to find my thread again? Journal writing? Dog walk? Weeding the garden? Tea with a friend?

Many days, this constant need for self-redirection is strenuous practice. My capacity to put “mental arms” around huge quantities of information and story and to synthesize incoming data into coherence has been a lifelong gift and challenge. As I age, and as the quantity of incoming stimulation explodes around me, the double-edged nature of being a synthesizer becomes ever more apparent. This is my skill: and it requires focus in the midst of all the peripheral data and story.

It is exactly a year since The Beekeeper’s Question came out, and I realize how deeply that writing project and  background research held me to a core sense of purpose. Waking in the mornings, I would project myself into the hours of the day and look for writing time, research time, hours to fit my life with the Cooper family, the Shines the Light clan, and the wartime lives of folks in Pigeon River, Montana, into my life with my beloved partner and family, dear friends, and the lives of folks on Whidbey Island, Washington. My author question remained: What have they, then, got to teach us, now, about how to live through times of social uncertainty and war without assured outcome?

My parents & grandparents, aka: Franklin, Maire, Doc, Leo

People ask me: “What’s the sequel? How do Maire and Franklin, Jesse and Willow move through the postwar years? Why don’t you write the lives of Flora and Drum? Or Boyd’s journey through the war… Are you doing a screenplay?” Of course, I still have big dreams for this book and the potential that it could be a dynamic mini-series. And the reality is that a book is like a baby—it needs daily feeding, tending, reminding other people it’s still here. The Beekeeper’s Question is now a toddler, and I am holding its hand and walking with it into a wider world.

She who tends and translates the hummm of the hive.

 

This autumn I am also teaching on-line, offering lectures, co-hosting our local writing café. These activities counterbalance the many ways I feel incompetent dealing with on-line promotion, bookstore introductions, booking podcasts, or seeking reviews. It would be easy to give up–but I am the servant to the story. I spent ten years dedicated to this book. These incredible people live only the page and in the audio. They kept me going through DT’s first presidency, the pandemic, and most the years of my seventies. They are counting on my stamina to keep them alive. But now that I’m in the piecemeal tasks of book maintenance, I often feel lost as a writer.  I want my core back— I want a sense of holding onto the thread.

 I do not know if I will be able or willing to take on another huge project. In six months, I will turn eighty years old. I am basically strong, healthy, dealing with small health challenges, nothing life threatening. I can recite huge quantities of story and background research on World War II, beekeeping, Celtic Shamanism, labor issues in the 1940s, etc. etc. and then forget for a few seconds why I walked into the kitchen. Overall, okay. More than okay. Thriving in a serious hearted way.

Friends on the road. Friends in chemo and radiation. Friends in the hospital. Late Dahlias and prayer candle… going 24/7.

Meanwhile, three things I know to be true about myself. One, writing is a lifeline. Writing is spiritual practice, activism, tribal—and I will continue this never-ending story as long as I have fingers and mind.

Two, Nature is my holy place.  I need daily contact with earth/air/fire/water. Geranium in a flowerpot, a tree pushing up the sidewalk, beach stones rolling under the wave action remind me of the planetary interdependence to which I belong. Everywhere I have traveled, Nature is the biggest marvel and my touchstone. I am so grateful to live where I do—a modest house nested at the edge of wild.

Leucistic doe eating apples in the roadbed.

Three, my life is seated in community. I put my time and attention into loving engagement. I show up to community needs—from tending aging neighbors, to demonstrating, to facilitating places of repose.  I am getting ready for whatever shall be asked of me in all these crises. Loving the folks in front of me, steadying myself and staying strong.

Watch for surprises–like a rooster escaped from the chicken yard crowing his freedom.

So, holding onto the thread means touching the ground I stand on, for some time every day. It means staying in the swirl of reciprocity with people around me and in connection through channels like these. And it means that every day between now and my birthday I am going to write something—short or long, I don’t know, but to keep putting who I am to the page, to discover what passion and projects remain mine to do.

“Life hangs by a narrative thread.

This thread is a braid of stories that inform us about who we are,

and where we come from, and where we might go…”

If we can make the path by writing: write.

The heart of the world is always expressing itself… even the fir needles beg the wind to shape a heart in my meandering path.

READER ZOOM CONVERSATIONS RETURN ON NOVEMBER 22. 9:00 AM PACIFIC/NOON EASTERN…  This session will be a dialogue between Christina and Alyssa Keene, the actress who narrated the audio version of the book.  On Audible and 30+ other distribution networks–including Libro. You can buy it through any local bookstore that has an audiobook account.

Read/listen.

Join in for a delightful conversation.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye–AUDIO is up!

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Front Cover

The audio version of The Beekeeper’s Question is ready for your ears! It went live on Audible September 8, and there is a one-week sale—so order now. The book is also available on thirty-four other audio distribution channels—Barnes & Noble, Chirpy, Spotify—wherever you like to download audio books—you can find it. In the next couple of days, I’ll be make arrangements with Kingfisher Books in Coupeville, WA so you can order through an independent bookstore—but because of the shortness of the sale (Audible sets these things)—I wanted to get word out to you all as soon as possible.

To get the audio into your library loaning system put in a request through Libby or Overdrive—whatever they use, and they can order it.

Rehearsing for Shakespeare–so many words!

Who wouldn’t want this bright energy reading you a story?!

The voice of the story is local actress and voice coach, Alyssa Keene. In just the last six months, Alyssa has been a shining lead as Golda in Fiddler on the Roof, and Island Shakespeare Festival’s production of As You Like It. She brings professional quality and a deep empathy  into the book’s voices as she immerses herself in the complexities of accents, genders, and narrative. And we will both be on the Readers’ Zoom call November 22nd: what it was like to write it/me, what it was like to read it/her. And then—what it was like to listen to it/you all.

So now, The Beekeeper’s Question is available in all formats.  More unfolding in this relaunch and celebration of the book’s first birthday.

Autumn presentations and classes!

Inkspiration—on September 27, I am part of three presentations by journal writing pioneers–myself, Tristine Rainer, Jamie Pennebaker, and series organization Kathleen Adams. For registration and more information go to The Center for Journal Therapy.

Story circle Network—on October 4, Writing from the Heart, Virtual Conference, I am presenting in the midst of a great line-up on “Shaking your Family Tree for Stories.” This day is a bargain—early bird discount until September 26.

For a longer dive into the power of story, writing your own story, and “Storycatching for the times we are living”, my five session zoom class, sponsored through Natural Transitions Network on the five Thursdays of October is a rich opportunity.

MOST OF ALL –THANK YOU, for all the ways you support this creative, circle-ly, story wandering life of mine. And to know that my writing and teaching continue to be meaningful, well what a blessing. And finding meaning is a blessing we create together—shared experiences of life and story and bearing witness. The world is hurting and cruel, and wonderful, and inspiring. We’re in it together. And as Doc says in the book, “We’ll figure it out.”

Artwork used with permission: Queen of the Bees… she who puts honey in our hearts.

Watermelon, Smoke, and Rainbows

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Rich farmland– landscape that feeds the country.

I’ve been traveling in eastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin: a friend’s daughter’s wedding, family visits on both sides, book club presentations, bookstore stops. It is high summer. We put five hundred miles on my sister’s loaned car, most of it back country highways, verdant green farmlands, crops growing, landscapes familiar from my youth spent here over 60-70 years ago.

And also, hints that this is not the America of my childhood. I have been collecting random thoughts to serve as this midsummer blog.

One of the last remaining Dutch Elm trees which shaded middle America for most the 20th century.

On the day of the wedding the AQI (Air Quality Index) in Duluth, along the shore of Lake Superior where we lounged all afternoon in an extended garden party, was 189—dangerous to breathe. Smoke from Canadian wildfires yellowed the air. All athletic endeavors cancelled—no jogging, biking, doing anything to increase breathing and heart rate. Inconvenient for us: disastrous for the regions actually on fire.

view from our VRBO into the bay.

Meanwhile, flash flooding put millions of Americans at risk, and the search and rescue and disaster stories pile up out of Texas, New Mexico, New Jersey. People are swept away. Bodies may never be found. Families will have to find a way to move on. Trauma grows with every event: loss overwhelms my mind.

Ah, but here at the wedding, a couple is making vows to continue their love path, families gather whose values are long-held traditions. Teenagers splash into Superior’s icy waters, screaming in chill and delight.

Hot air: Cold water.

The path we were on as a society was not sustainable: the path we are on as a society is not a remedy. We are people holding together while things fall apart. We are parents raising little ones, young adults planning educations and careers. We are elders and grandparents worrying together, seeking wisdom among our peers. It is July, high summer. A grandpa carries a tray of watermelon slices to the edge of the grass. “Spitting range.” The children look confused: modern watermelon does not have seeds. Things are not the same. We continue to hold together. Things continue to fall apart.

Staring into the sunset, Ann shares a passage from the book she’s reading, Turning to Stone, Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks (Flatiron Books) by Marcia Bjornerud. Lake Superior is featured in the chapter on basalt.  “Earth makes no distinction between creation and destruction.” One sentence. The words settle my heart: I am allowed to rest in not-knowing, in being present within a loving community, in sunsets when the sun is a smoky peach, in the sand between my toes and the bedrock of an active and evolving Earth beneath. And you, too. Rest. Regather. Restore.

Bees and Buzz, Honey and Magic

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The next reader’s zoom call is May 24, 9:00 AM Pacific. Link at the end of the blog.

The first photograph of me, I am three months old, lying on a baby blanket in my baptismal dress on the lawn at my grandparents’ house. July, Montana, the buzz of bees pollinating raspberries and garden vegetables. My little body is stretched over summer-warmed grass.

I do not remember this in the comb of memory, but my body knows. Whatever ceremony has just occurred in the little Methodist church my grandfather stewards, the one occurring in this photo is the land itself binding me to this place.

That autumn, my parents will drive east to New Jersey where my father will continue post-War university studies.  I will spend my childhood in Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Minnesota. I will never reside in Montana, but the West will always feel like home, and the Baldwin family will long identify this homestead as its spiritual source.  What Jeannine Ouelette calls, “a cartography of self.”

The summer I am five, we take the train from Indianapolis to Great Falls so my father can work the honey harvest, and my mother can join the daughters-in-law putting up garden produce for winter. Here my Montana memories begin. Picking raspberries, running through irrigation water, sucking honeycomb, and bees. Bees. Bees. Finally allowed to ride out to the bee yards in the honey truck with my grandpa and an uncle, I watch them work hives amid the buzzing swirl.

On our way back to the homestead, one loose bee, caught in the truck cab, stings me on the hand. I remember the sharp pang of it, my howl of surprise. My grandfather plucks the stinger out and sucks my thumb to draw out venom— his hands a calloused tenderness, his lips a blessing. He tells me, “Brave girl, Chrissie, you’re a real Baldwin now.” I am carried into the kitchen, turned over to the women, baking soda applied to my sting. There is supper around a family table, ice cream on the porch steps. Stories float like pollen in the evening air.

If this sounds like origin story to The Beekeeper’s Question: it is.

Over ten years—with so many variations of story shifting into place—the constant was the vocation of Leo Cooper, a combination of Protestant theology in the human community and the “protestant ethic” of hard-working bees. I drew upon memory rising through the summer visits that immersed me in the family mythos. I created story out of my DNA—those mitochondrial snippets that fed a synthesis of personal history beyond my ken—and from hours spent watching bees in action—asking for their guidance.

I studied A.I. Root’s tome, The ABC & XYZ of Bee Culture, 1930 edition—the book my grandfather had propped on the bookcase next to his King James version of the Old & New Testaments. I read Tammy Horn’s BEES in America, How the Honey Bee Shaped a Nation (University of Kentucky, 2005). I read The Hive, The Story of the Honeybee and Us (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2004) by Bee Wilson.

Honeybees were brought to America by early English settlers in 1620. “European colonists brought an agrarian philosophy that depended on cows and bees to extend and define an agricultural legacy inherited from classical Greek and Roman writers.”  (Let alone, Old Testament references to the land of milk and honey.) The Indians called them “white man stinging flies,” their arrival linked to westward press of colonization. And one of the cultural compatibilities that supported the horrific importation of Africans into American slavery was how deeply interwoven cows and bees were in many African societies.  “As long as settlers had cattle and bees, they could be assured of the basic essentials—food, wax, medicine, candles, and clothing.” (p19 Bees in America)

Bees came into the Baldwin family in 1915 when a neighboring farmer was drafted into World War I and offered his hives to my grandfather for the duration. The man lived, but wasn’t interested in the bee business after the war, so the operation became “Baldwin & Sons Beeline Honey.”  It grew to 500 hives spread out in a 50-mile radius that supported his eight children through the Depression and paid for college educations.

Homestead from the story

A lot of what Leo Cooper says in the story, comes from conversations with my father, Leo Baldwin, recalling his youthful years in Montana during his elder years living nearby.  He died in 2018, the book shaped enough that I committed to finishing it.

And then I came across Jacqueline Freeman’s profound gem, Song of Increase, Listening to the Wisdom of Honeybees for Kinder Beekeeping and a Better World (Sounds True Press, 2016) and was introduced to the shamanic aspects of beekeeping. See her interview with Seth Godin here. I wish I could have had these conversations with my dad.

A lot of what Maire Cooper experiences in the story comes from Jacqueline’s book, and The Shamanic Way of the Bee, by Simon Buxton (Destiny Books, 2004) which introduced me to the long lineage of Bee Priestesses, the Melissae. The interweaving of bees with Celtic shamanism was in Maire’s blood and in the story, Leo’s bees awaken that within her.

And then there’s Sara Leedom, a global storycatcher honoring the Indigenous ways of beekeeping. Sara showed up in my memoir class to write about her travels to remote honey hunters. While I stayed home and wrote, she attended international bee conferences, including one in England that brought her in contact with the Melissae.

So, there’s a lot to think about, and a lot to honor in the lineage of bees. On these warm May days, I’ve been greeting the bumblebees diving into my rhododendron blossoms and yesterday I parked by a bee yard just to listen to the hum. Wherever you live, watch for them, and watch out for them. And if you’ve read The Beekeeper’s Question, join the zoom and join the buzz. Here’s the link: Saturday, May 24, 9:00 AM Pacific.

If you have any trouble, contact: christina@christinabaldwin.com

May there be love and honey in all our days.

Trauma and Transformation

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Life is full of challenges. We grow by baby steps, facing risks, being supported by older/bigger/wiser folks around us. We learn to handle stress, expand our capacities, discover our resilience. And all this prepares us when challenge becomes trauma. Trauma is injury or emotional distress caused by events that overwhelm our ability to cope. Abuse, assault, battle, betrayal, drastic injury or illness: we do not wish traumatic events upon ourselves or each other, but they happen. We are triggered into trauma when events beyond our control veer out of control.

We are also fascinated by trauma—especially when it’s not our own. We seek out stories that allow us to travel vicariously through the drastic edges of human experience, cheering for people to learn, to thrive, and to show us the way. We understand that trauma is a hinge-point: it will make us or break us. The ‘hero’ comes through trauma incorporating wisdom; “I have suffered and here is what I learned.” The ‘villain’ uses trauma as a wrecking ball; “I was wronged by life, and you shall suffer for it more.”

Writers embed trauma in stories because trauma is embedded in life. In the formative years of writing my historical novel, The Beekeeper’s Question, an editor told me, “Do not protect your characters. They must make bad decisions, costly mistakes, hurt each other and choose what course their lives will take. When in doubt, make it worse.”

“Make it worse” became a mantra writing scenes for the story. World War II is happening: trauma is everywhere. I had to write about this within the perspective of that time. The US Army in the North Africa campaign (where the young soldier, Franklin, is sent) applied what was called “forward treatment,” shipping overwhelmed soldiers to a field hospital putting them into an induced sleep cure for a week, and then, supposedly rested, sending them back to the front. Though trauma has always accompanied soldiers home from war, society didn’t address it as a collective issue, just sent survivors to their families and communities and hoped they’d carry on.

After the Vietnam war, the 700,0000 American servicemen and personnel who required psychological help, taught us that unaddressed trauma escalates in delayed response. The persistence of what was named “post-Vietnam syndrome” led to defining Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and opened up the study of trauma. My friend Michael Orange, a Vietnam veteran, helped me “make it worse” for the character of Franklin Cooper, the beekeeper’s son confronted with war, battle, and physical trauma.

Trauma is also present in the experiences of the women in the story: sexual assault, miscarriages, beatings, deaths of loved ones. Maire, Franklin’s wife, suffers from nightmares and anxiety. Willow, her sister-in-law, carries both the spiritual wisdom and intergenerational trauma of her Blackfeet people. In fact, women are twice as prone to PTSD as men but their trauma, often arising out of domestic life, is persistently discounted as an aspect of being “the weaker sex,” and enduring “women’s conditions.”

For those who have read The Beekeeper’s Question, I will be hosting a dialogue with Michael author of, Embracing the Ghosts, PTSD and the Vietnam Quagmire, and his wife Cynthia author of, Shock Waves, A Practical Guide to Living with a Loved One’s PTSD on the role of trauma and PTSD in the book. The ZOOM is MARCH 22, 9:00/Pacific—do the math for your time zone as needed. Click here to register. This takes you to my email–ask and I send you the zoom link.

The 1940’s has many echoes of then to now, and those echoes only grow stronger. I found a tee-shirt on Etsy printed with the slogan: “If you’ve ever wondered what you would have done in 1930s Germany, you’re doing it right now.”

Trauma is a catalyst. It shifts our lives—ready or not. The person we become depends on the choices we make in response to trauma. The same is true for communities and countries as we collectively respond to war, oppression, natural disaster, regime change. We become how we respond. The year 2025 is exposing trauma from the personal to the global—and we cannot avoid it. We are in a hinge-point of reckoning.

Image from social media.

As an American born just after World War II, I have been steeped in the mythos that mine is the “greatest country on earth,” that we are forever the righteous victors. I have been steeped in arrogance that American character, our delusions of the self-made (white) man, should be a model for all of societies. We are Americans: we can do anything we want, and the world will be better for it.  Evidence to the contrary disregarded. Welcome to our reckoning.

We are living through a huge shift in how we be human on the planet. We are collectively deciding whether we descend or ascend in our basic nature. Reckoning at this scale is terrifying. No matter how much we read, scroll through news sources and analysis, we cannot get true perspective. We are small and the issues are huge. We are embedded in the moment like tiny pieces in the world’s biggest jigsaw puzzle. Yet anyone who does jigsaw puzzles knows even the tiniest missing piece impacts the whole. We are needed—everyone of us—to stay present and play our part, to fit ourselves into the pieces around us, to make a pattern and a story within the perimeters of our lives.

Americana Art Enterprises: The world’s largest commercially available puzzle called What a Wonderful World is an 8′ (2.4m) tall by 29′ (8.8m) long 60,000 piece world map.

It took me ten years to channel the enormity of World War II through the microcosm of Pigeon River, Montana and the lives of the Cooper family. And now I am challenged, in my aging years, to live through this crisis in the microcosm of Whidbey Island, Washington and my own life and community. As I stagger out of winter’s shock, in the greening of early March, I am determined to use every added minute of light and each unfurling bud to rise, to meet trauma with transformation. I take the tiny piece of my life and snap it into connection, find the adjoining pieces, and act with trust that the whole picture will emerge—whether or not I live to see it.

Page 101, The Beekeeper’s Question: it is August 1942.

Rocking on porch chairs waiting for night breeze, Leo whispered into the dusk, “This war is a three-headed dragon, each black mouth round with teeth, consuming young men.”

“That’s surely the strain of it,” Doc peered skyward, “We don’t know what will become of them. Or us. Or our country.” Caged between the Big and Little Dippers, Draco the Dragon writhed in the night sky. … Doc stared at the cosmic expanse of the Milky Way.  “You’re the local preacher and I’m an old country doctor, what can we do?”

            “Help people live through the sacrifices required of us now.”

Even if you’re a rusty, one-legged scarecrow, you have a job guarding tulips. Let’s go…

The Baldwins and the Coopers—multiple Leos.

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Second reader’s ZOOM, for folks who have finished my novel: The Beekeeper’s Question. Live conversation was held on January 11, with a special treat: Baldwin cousins, including men now 80s/90s who worked in honey harvesting, and our matriarch cousin, 95-years-old, with family memories from that era. 

In a long-ago writer’s group of mixed genre projects, I asked a friend who was novelizing her family history why she was writing fiction instead of memoir. Her answer, “Because with fiction I can offer my lineage another way out, alternatives they didn’t take.”

Her comment burrowed deep into my writing mind and inspired me, decades later, to borrow vestiges from the life of my grandfather, Leo Baldwin, and my father, Leo Baldwin Jr., and the small Montana town where the family ran “Baldwin and Sons Beeline Honey” for over 50 years. If you have recently read The Beekeeper’s Question, this locale and bee business is sounding familiar. And if you have visited the book page and watched the Langley Book Launch video you will see photographs of the actual homestead, town, and family members posing as stand-ins for the place and characters in the book.

I taught memoir and autobiography for thirty-plus years, wrestling with students over issues of integrity: How much can be shifted and still be considered true? Can I combine characters? What if people are still alive? What if the rest of my family doesn’t agree, or know, or admit to the realities of my story? What do I have the right to write about other people?

Well, a lot of that is solved by declaring a story is fiction and stating on the copyright page: “The characters do not represent actual persons, living or dead. All opinions expressed are those of the characters and should not be confused with the author’s.”

Well, mostly. There was a female doctor in the valley in those years. She was a close friend of my grandparents. However, Doc Jereldene in the book is my creation. Why she moved to the valley and her character is sourced from my imagination. The rest of the towns people are all imagined—Gertie, Belle, the Pocket, Torgerson, and Sivertsen families. The Shines the Light family, emerged out of hours of cultural and historical research.

Rev. Leo Cooper, well, he bears a lot of resemblance to Rev. Leo Baldwin. And while I placed the story within the house of my grandfather’s life, I had to break free of reconstructed half-memories, and source Leo Cooper from writer’s mind. Leo, the character, was brought to life to fulfill what the story required and to be what his sons and daughters-in-law, and the valley needed him to be.

My greatest hope for this work of fiction, and the role of fiction in general, is to offer readers “another way out.” Reading a good story allows us as readers to consider choices and consequences that play out in the drama of plot and illuminate alternatives. The Beekeeper’s Question provides a storyland in which we get to vicariously struggle with issues of racism, morality, love, violence. We are invited into imaginary communities in hopes we learn from these fictional characters how to live in our own communities. Reading allows us to imagine ourselves in the world of then and there, and prepare ourselves for how we will speak, listen, and act in the world of now.

I have been reading works of fiction for seventy years. I know that memorable characters, from Caddie Woodlawn and Little Women, to a thousand adult novels, all contribute to my sense of how to be a human—especially, how to be the kind of human the story of my life requires, and what “the valley” of these times need me to be.

More soon. Keep reading…

A year of all things

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Book Announce: The next Zoom call for readers who have finished reading The Beekeeper’s Question is January 11, 2025. One hour: 9:00 AM Pacific (10/mtn/11/central/12/east—US zones). Click here to get zoom link. Casual discussion on plot and background/backstories, how then and now are connected— whatever interests the group that shows up.

The following is a poem by Donna Ashworth, with commentary by me. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR

When I say ‘happy new year’,

I’m not for a moment,

expecting this to occur,

for that is not possible,

a year must be all things.

This is the line that calms my heart: a year must be all things. Ann and I spent last week putting together a scrapbook of photos and handwritten commentary on the year past. It is a decades long commitment, a kind of life review, composing pages of collaged photos that help us reflect and remember. We lost a handful of friends this year, endured the rise and fall of our political hopes, and practiced the line below: letting happiness come and go.

Happiness must come and go,

like the tides and the winds,

just as sadness,

and all the emotions in between.

When I say ‘happy new year’,

Maybe it helps that we live on the western edge of the continent where tides and winds are a real phenomenon. We are not in control of the sway of moon over water, or the increased velocity of winter storms.

I’m really wishing you,

a baseline of peace,

of gratitude.

This is the practice: to hold onto a baseline of peace and gratitude. In these dark winter weeks, I am often up two hours before dawn. We’ve had a little tree in the corner of the living room to bring the starlight in. It will go down on Twelfth Night, commemorating the release of the holidays (holy days). The lights and decorations put away for a year, the naked little Doug fir will be tied to the garden fence to shelter little birds that come to the feeder. It will still be January, chilly rain, probably a touch of snow, and a time when I must be my own light.

Because if you can sit with these things,

for the most part,

happiness will thrive,

when it does arrive,

and sadness will know its place in the mix.

For us to know a thing, we must know its opposite. Happiness without sorrow would be an unremarkable state of being and sorrow without happiness, the same. (Here I hear my grandmother saying, “Even in heaven the angels don’t sing all the time.”)  It is fluctuation that makes happiness remarkable and sorrow endurable. I will try to nourish that awareness in the coming months. Emotions are weather: let them pass through.

If you can nourish these things,

daily,

you will also grow hope,

for it flourishes in such soil.

And hope is the key,

to this enigmatic state

of ‘happiness’ we seek.

So, hope. Some folks count on it: some distain it. I think of hope as a verb. To have hope means I am taking action. Hope requires I do something to positively impact my tiny part of the world. I send money to World Central Kitchenbecause they are feeding people in places I cannot reach. I make dinner for neighbors in need because I can walk across the street. Both gestures give me hope.

When I say ‘happy new year’,

I’m really wishing you more happy days,

than sad days,

more joy than misery,

more laughter than tears . . .

and the wisdom to accept,

that they all belong.

When I say “Happy New Year,” I am thinking of the new, the now, the opportunity to change habits, to step out of the holy days grounded by the tiny lights that we have shined in the dark Northern Hemisphere weeks. I am thinking of empowerment, of continuing to define, situation by situation, where I can act to shift, to acknowledge, to celebrate, to hold one another dear.

Here’s to you, dear community: may we keep our hearts open, may we notice how happiness sneaks into even the hardest days, may we be fierce and tender to the right degrees. More soon—after Epiphany.

BLESSING FOR THE LONGEST NIGHT

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Thinking we could all use some beauty and light–I am sharing some of my sunset photos–taken from the edge of our neighborhood– and Jan Richardson’s Solstice poem. She is such a generous poet, sending words of comfort, companionship, and wisdom into the world.

(I have adjusted the line breaks to fit in this blog format.)

 

All throughout these months as the shadows have lengthened, this blessing has been
gathering itself, making ready, preparing for this night.

It has practiced walking in the dark, traveling with its eyes closed, feeling its way
by memory, by touch, by the pull of the moon even as it wanes.

So believe me when I tell you this blessing will reach you even if you have not light enough
to read it; it will find you even though you cannot see it coming.

You will know the moment of its arriving by your release of the breath you have held
so long; a loosening of the clenching in your hands, of the clutch around your heart;
a thinning of the darkness that had drawn itself around you.

This blessing does not mean to take the night away but it knows its hidden roads,
knows the resting spots along the path, knows what it means to travel in the company of a friend.

So when this blessing comes, take its hand.
Get up. Set out on the road you cannot see.

This is the night when you can trust that any direction you go,
you will be walking toward the dawn.

~ Jan Richardson ~

Prayers unceasing in whatever ways we pray/in/tend for peace.

And when we turn around… a new day is rising.

Story is a map

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It’s 2:00 AM November 9, 2024 and I wake with moon slanting through window blinds. I’ve been dreaming in a montage of campaign videos of Kamala interacting with the American people—hugging, listening, standing at the lectern. Surely, I am looking at the next President of the United States. It takes several seconds for my mind to catch up to post-election reality. A wave of grief washes through me. I ease out of bed to the far corner of the house where I curl into weeping that doesn’t wake my beloved.

At 6:30 AM I rise again and write in my journal, listen to my prayer chimes. I scroll through the NY Times and read historian Heather Cox Richardson and attorney Robert Hubbell. They do not lighten my mood. Ann puts arms around me, “Not to pressure you, but at 9:00 AM, a bunch of people will be looking to you for guidance and wisdom.”

By 8:45, I am dressed, hair fluffed, composed and ready to Zoom with nearly 40 people who have read my novel, The Beekeeper’s Question, so we can talk about the full arc of the story without spoiling the plot. People check into the chat from across the US and Canada. Ann is the guardian of space—on Zoom and in the heart of conversation.

American troops march through Belfast 1942.

We talk about the book because hindsight offers perspective, and we need that now. Story is a map, and the map that gets one person through helps to get the next person through. Stories of WWII have given us maps of valor, courage, protecting the persecuted. We know how to rise to our best selves in our situation because we have learned from stories of how they rose in their situations. Hundreds of movies, documentaries, memoirs, novels have informed us about fascism and authoritarianism and war in ways people in the 1930s and 1940s were not informed. This education allows us to think differently about what is happening now, and to react more effectively. Resistance is rallying, even in our shock.

Even in an era as horrific as the 1940s, stories model human choices in the arc of history. We learn as we read. We contemplate these “victories of the human spirit.” And now, and for the years coming, you and I are challenged to pluck courage from these pages and apply them in our own lives. We shall need to embrace discomfort, take risks, be bold, brave, extending, careful, compassionate, fierce… take your pick.

I wrote The Beekeeper’s Question during Trump’s first administration and the pandemic. The folks of Pigeon River gave me a place to stand and practice being an elder in unsettled times. Readers can see the influence of current reality in the dialogues of the fictional Doc and Leo and Gramma Josie.  War is upon them, near and far. The consequences of history swirl like a dust bowl.  Young men are in peril, young women in fear and determination. The community struggles to stay strong. I imagined their strength into being. Now I imagine my own strength into action. That’s why we read books like this: they inspire real action in the real world.

At the end of the call someone asked, “Can we all go to Pigeon River?” No. It’s a fictional town. But we can take the best from that place, those characters, and become Pigeon River. We can tend our sense of community, find our inner wisdom, take care of each other. The only place our current rifts can heal is in our own towns, neighborhoods, communities and families. Big work in small places. That’s what Pigeon River models: people doing their best, muddling through, being bold, being forgiving, acknowledging that life is hard and sorrowful and beautiful.

10:00 AM So this is how it goes for now: we fall apart, we rise. We parse what we read and watch. We put arms around each other. We gather and say what is real. We listen and find paths forward. We take care of each other. We read.

 

Next Zoom call for people who have completed reading (so we can talk about the plot and relevance to America today without ruining anyone’s read) is JANUARY 11, 2025 @ 9:00 AM Pacific/12:00 noon Eastern.

And to say—my intention with this blog is to keep writing into the ear of now… it will not become only focused on the book, though these weeks of “newly published” are a significant moment and I appreciate your support and/or tolerance.

What the book needs now: if you are willing.

Thank you for every purchase. Thank you for every review. You can insert the same review in Amazon (both formats), Bookshop, Good Reads.

The book is listed in Ingram, so local bookstores can order it. Please ask them to stock a few copies as you will be referring friends to the title.

The book has a Kirkus Review, so libraries will now order it.  Put in a request.

Please consider giving the book for holidays this year. I will personally inscribe decorative bookplates you can paste in any gift books you want author/graphed. Email your list to christina@christinabaldwin.com. I promise 24-hour turnaround.

Please nominate The Beekeeper’s Question for your book club. I am already booking Zoom sessions with clubs and am available throughout the year—in person when I can.

On-line: Reader’s Circle will be listing the book for 3 months on the home-page. Recommend it please.

Online: talk it up on whatever social media you engage in. You can pull the visuals from https://christinabaldwin.com/books/beekeepers-question/.

I am on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christinabaldwinbeekeepersquestion/

I will soon be starting an Instagram campaign. Watch for it.

I am negotiating an audio version available early next year.

_____________________________________

It is 9:00 PM two weeks later.

Democracy is not over, it is rebooting. We are rebooting.

We will find the road forward. We will walk it together.

We will keep honey in our hearts.