Deseret Book Summer 2012 Catalog is Here!

Check out page 5 to find our novel, CHARLIE'S GIRL and save 10% on the purchase price.  Look for Lagoon Discount Coupons on every title in their catalog.

Lisa Faber posts about Charlie's Girl! Watch for her review in the future.

http://networkedblogs.com/xkES7

My Mother's Brother

       
          Herbert Solon Chiles, called Solon, was born in Village Springs, Blount County, Alabama on 13 September 1907, third child of Herbert Sanborn Chiles and his wife Josephine Pauline Bickert.  His father was born Solon Brown Wandell, but was adopted as Herbert Sanborn Chiles at age ten. He gave  his only son both his names.

This photo was taken in Village Springs, Alabama in fall 1907.  From L to R:
William R. Chiles, Josephine Pauline (Bickert) Chiles, Julia Louise Chiles, Herbert Sanborn Chiles (aka Solon Brown Wandell), Herbert "Solon" Chiles, and Bessie Katie Eugenia Chiles.

The next picture we have of Solon is my favorite. It was in a small silver frame when it came into my possession:

          A portrait was made of the four oldest Chiles children:

Bessie Katie Eugenia Chiles (top), Julia Louise Chiles, left, Leonora Josephine "Babe" Chiles (Aunt Bebe) (center)  and Herbert Solon Chiles (right).

Solon

My mother, Helen Marietta Chiles was born 11 October 1911 after the family had moved to Tampa, Hillsborough County, Florida.

Some of these pictures are from photocopies of the originals in the possession of Mrs. Sylvia Danner.

The five Chiles children, Solon reaching for baby Helen

          Some mementos of Solon include postcards his father wrote to him when away with the railroad, and his final report card.

          In 1915 a couple of the Chiles girls came home from school with the dreaded diptheria.  They recovered, but after Solon received a dose of medication from the home nurse, he took a turn for the worse and died on 15 January 1915.  He was buried that same day in a newly purchased family plot at Woodlawn Cemetery. Josephine always believed that the nurse had given him too much of the serum.

          Every day after Solon's death, my grandmother Josephine P. Chiles would walk with my mother Helen to the cemetery to visit his grave.  

          When I was growing up, this urn held Solon's large collection of antique glass marbles, and stood near the piano in the living room of the family home at 406 East Francis Avenue in Tampa.  We children were never to touch it or its contents.  

          My sister Sylvia (Mrs. B.C. Danner) inherited them and I took these two pictures in her home in Norman, Oklahoma.  The vase has since been broken, and the marbles are in another container.

             Mother lived to the age of ninety-four, and passed away in her home in Cocoa Beach, Florida on 11 February 2006.  

          She had expressed her wish to be buried with her parents in Woodlawn Memorial Cemetery in Tampa, but there was only enough space for a cremation urn, so she chose this option.  

Mother was buried at the foot of Solon's small grave.

          In her last days, Helen was heard to ask, "Who is that cute little boy over there?  He's smiling at me."  I choose to believe it was my mother's brother Solon, come to walk her home.  

For All New Mothers on Mother's Day

A Stitch in Time

          The stitchery kit, stretched upon its frame, stands neglected in the corner where my idle hands placed it weeks ago.  I could not concentrate, I said.  I'll finish it later.

          As the days passed I walked the floor anxiously, awaiting a change, a feeling, any sign of readiness.  I passed the picture many times and almost worked on it, but it required such steady hands, such patience; and so it sat there unfinished, with many-colored yarn strewn about on the carpet.

          It was a harvest scene, a front porch with steps, a window and door.  A pumpkin stood sentinel over a basket of corn and apples spilled onto the sidewalk.  Perhaps the lady of the house was canning when something interrupted her.

          A tiny, cranking, relentless noise grows stronger.  I stagger to the semi-darkened nursery.  A dark little head bobs about on uncertain shoulders.  I pick him up and marvel at how wide awake he is, all warm and cuddly, at such an early hour of the morning.  Through bleary eyes I make the change from wet to dry despite the squirming, kicking little legs, and feet with toes spread wide.

          Cradling him in my arms, I sink heavily into the old rocker with well-worn cushions misshapenly padding the hardness.  A few more seconds of anxious seeking and he nurses tensely, his arms held straight down to his sides, his whole body straining to this drive to eat.

          As tummy fills he relaxes and waves his little arm above his head in a ritual, curling and uncurling his fingers with a natural grace no choreographer could dream.  His blue, long-lashed eyes study my face, his gaze steady.  Fullness spreads and warms and he relaxes, his eyes faltering.  I raise him to my shoulder and pat his back to bubble him.  Success!  but still, the little head held erect, he searches the stillness of the room, his expressive eyes filled with uncertainty, his tiny hands grasping my sleeve.

          With my slow, plodding rocking and unsteady hum, he gradually sinks to sleep on my shoulder.  I look about the room and see it there in the corner, that unfinished picture of an empty porch, the basket still untended on the sidewalk.  Now, in my imagination's eye, I can see beyond the door and understand.

          The signal came; the rush; the exquisite agony finally over, leaving a blur like that of emerging from a darkened tunnel.  Then came the spreading joy, the growing bond, the sense of need to serve, to care for, dwarfing all other needs to do, to accomplish, to excel.  The lady of the house has abandoned her work to retire to the peace and tranquility of the nursery for a brief, heaven-filled interlude of holding and feeding, of closeness and warmth.  The corn and the apples will still be there.  The stitchery will still wait.  For busy hands will shape and mold a larger picture than this.  The door holds its secret inside, but so, the door of the future for this child.  I rock, basking in the peace, grasping at the moment and holding it fast, hoping to make it stand still like that scene caught in the picture, all  peaceful, secure and unhurried.  

See these antique dresses from my family

After searching for about twenty years, I finally located my grandmother's wedding dress and my aunt's graduation dress, both hand-sewn and embroidered.  I had come to believe that the box they were in must have blown off the truck when we were moving to our new house in February 1993.  They were finally discovered in the bottom of an old trunk in the garage.

 Slip worn under graduation dress

 Detail on bodice of slip

 Lacy hymn on bottom tier of slip

 Top of wedding dress

 Ruffed border and hem of wedding dress

 Full view of top and skirt of wedding dress

 Top with detail of sleeves on wedding dress

One of two side panels on skirt of graduation dress 

Bodice and sleeves of graduation dress

 Skirt of graduation dress with sign panels

 Full view of graduation dress

 Hand embroidered sleeve of graduation dress

Detail of embroidery on bodice of graduation dress

The wedding dress belonged to my maternal grandmother Josephine Pauline Bickert who married Herbert Sanborn Chiles on 5 July 1903. It's almost one hundred and eight years old.  They were married in a horse-drawn buggy in a driving rainstorm in the town of Lehigh, Blount County, Alabama.  This was Herbert's second marriage, fourteen months after his first wife Blanche McCord died on 10 Apr 1902 as the result of choking when vomiting in pregnancy while home alone.  Blanche and Josephine were close friends.

The graduation dress belonged to my maiden aunt, Bessie Katie Eugenia Chiles, born 22 Apr 1904. She was named for her aunt, Katherine Amelia Bickert ("Aunt Kate") and Eugenia Martinier (Sanborn) Chiles, her grandmother. Bessie never married, and taught algebra and Spanish at Hillsborough High School in Tampa, Florida for many years.

Charlie's Girl Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

4/10/2012 –- Peoria, AZ –- Husband and wife writers Mary-Helen and Daniel Foxx announce the release of their new book, Charlie’s Girl, now available online for pre-publication orders at amazon.com and other online booksellers, and in bookstores on May 8^th. 

Set in the 1960s in South Carolina where the authors first met and married, Dan describes the time as moving at a slower pace. “Charlie’s Girl is the story of fourteen-year-old Rosalind Matthews who had been a foster girl all her life until she is sent to live with her estranged grandmother, Grace Matthews, in a house filled with memories—and secrets.”

Mary-Helen writes, “As Rosalind searches for belonging and connections, she finds she must first earn her place in her father’s hometown and in her grandmother’s heart. When a family history assignment pairs Rosalind and her new friend, Emily, she learns that there’s more to find than just names and dates, as they uncover a mystery to which only Grace holds the key.”

Dan and Mary-Helen concluded by sharing what they hope readers will gain from their book.  “We’ve all struggled with coming of age: trying to fit in, the hurts and betrayal of our peers-- and family-- finding out who we are and what we stand for. Written for young adult and adult audiences, this story has a unique voice, taking place in a small Southern town at a time when classism and bigotry were prevalent, lingering prejudices that we hope readers will want to root out for themselves.” 

To read an excerpt visit the Foxxes blogs, http://ourwaywithwords.blogspot.com, or http://daniellfoxx.blogspot.com.   

About the Foxxes

Mary-Helen earned a BA in History from Limestone College and did graduate work in Library Science at Brigham Young University.  Certified in History and English, she recently retired after twenty years with the Peoria Unified School District where she began as Audio-Visual Specialist at Ironwood High School and then operated the Media Resource Center for the district. An avid genealogist, she has researched and authored five books on her family’s history in Georgia and was a contributing editor to the Georgia Genealogical Magazine. The mother of four sons and grandmother of twelve, she is now indulging her interest in writing.

Daniel is professor of history emeritus at Ottawa University in Phoenix and held history teaching appointments at East Carolina University and Glendale Community College.  He is the author of I Only Laugh When It Hurts (Pelican Pub. 2009) and coauthor of Nathan Bedford Forrest: In Search of the Enigma (Pelican Pub. 2007) that won the Arizona Book Award for biography and was a finalist in the National Benjamin Franklin Book Awards.

First Book Signings Announced!

We're happy to announce that our first book signings for our novel, Charlie's Girl will be :

• June 6, 2012 (Wed) at Deseret Book Store, Henderson, NV
• June 8, 2012 (Fri)    at Deseret Book Store, St. George, UT

Stay tuned and we'll post new dates as soon as they become available. 

Books may be pre-ordered on amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com, and other online booksellers.  The release date is May 8th!