The Eisenhower Years

I recently realized that the first book in my series, "The Pastor's Kids," is almost exactly co-existent with the years that Eisenhower was president. Though kids that grew up in cities may have felt the pressures of the Cold War during those years, in North Dakota, on the wheat-growing flood plain of the Red River, it didn't feel real. Those were stable years. We were still helping a few Displaced Persons from World War II, but our main thoughts were about school, church, friends and ourselves.

Though our life would look a little bleak to a kid from today, we had the richness of the seasons and plenty of playmates. And the world did trickle in to our little town. Crates of peaches and cherries, Sears catalogs, many glossy magazines and books found their way to us. We sometimes went to the neighbors to watch television, but in 1956, Dad and Mother rented one to watch the elections, and couldn't part with it when they were over.

The kids in the photo above (which I found somewhere on the internet), are actually quite close to my characters. Paul, on the left, a few years younger than Marty, the next, and Line (short for Caroline) in the middle are the three protagonists, the kids through whose eyes we see the world. Their Dad calls them "Sparky and the gang," as Line, always bright-faced and out in front, calls the shots for the other two and they can hardly be separated.

The next kid, Kristen, should be a little bit younger in relations to the others, but she is a stolid little kid, like the one in the picture. The last one, Ellie, should be older and blonder. Ellie was the first child, born in 1941 and of a different cast of mind than the younger kids. Their parents were scrambling when she was born. Their Dad was still at the seminary and their Mother worked at an orphanage, the three of them only getting together on Sundays.

The conflicts in the book are thus the age-old sibling rivalries, as well as the inner conflicts of kids who want to be richer, or more heroic, or just more ordinary than they actually are. Paul contracts polio, and his struggles with it, and with his desire to be a naturalist, are a constant theme. For him the grail is truth, painful though it might be.

Line is struck most by the general unfairness of the world. Kids on farms seem poorer than the town kids, illness strikes her beloved brother, and she has a hard time reasoning out how the loving hands of God can hold her, when she and others have so many troubles. For her sister Marty, the beautiful is the good. Her main problem is that it is elusive. A thing may shine with light one day and not the next. It may grow in importance for you, but then you become so used to it you can't even see it.

It remains to be seen whether I can make anything interesting, or even readable, out of my characters and their conflicts, but I am certainly going to try!