Making “Sense” of the Past

This post is the seventh in a series-in-progress by company president Megan St. Marie about heirlooms and objects related to her family history that she keeps in her office to inform and inspire her work at Modern Memoirs. 

See.

Hear.

Taste.

Touch.

Smell.

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Unless they are somehow compromised, all five senses guide us through the world, working with our minds to help us “make sense” of our experiences. Sights, sounds, tastes, textures, and scents can therefore serve as powerful memory prompts. Memoir writers often seem to know this intuitively, and during the editorial process they will sometimes say things to me like:

• “I want this chapter to really capture the flavor of my childhood.”

• Or “This should give readers a taste of what things were like.”

• Or “I need to add a little texture to the description of my grandmother.”

• Or “Can you help me smooth out this paragraph?”

• Or “This scene needs more color, don’t you think?”

Whether or not they use such sensory language to describe what they feel their work needs, I often encourage writers to engage their senses when they are trying to add detail to their manuscripts so that readers can more fully appreciate the context of their life stories. I might offer prompts like:

• What could you see from your childhood bedroom window?

• What did your uncle’s laugh sound like?

• What is a favorite flavor or spice in your family’s cooking?

• Can you describe how the dress you’re wearing in this photograph felt against your skin?

• What did the perfume your great-grandmother wore smell like?

When I was teaching, a colleague gave me the good advice that I should never give an assignment that I hadn’t completed myself at least once in order to align myself with my students’ experience as learners. In that spirit, I will use the final question posed above to let the sense of smell guide me through memories and connections to family in the rest of this piece.

Close-up of dried lavender in a vase from Megan St. Marie's wedding-day centerpieces, now placed in her Modern Memoirs office

My Modern Memoirs office usually smells like lavender because of an essential oil diffuser I set up across from my desk. I placed it there after putting dried lavender in vases from my wedding-day centerpieces atop two bookcases and lining a small shelf with three sachets. I’ve always loved the clean, floral scent of lavender, and although my French ancestors mainly came from the Normandy and Île-de-France regions of France, rather than Provence with its famous lavender fields, the flower and its perfume make me feel connected to that part of my heritage.

Megan St. Marie's great-grandmother Pamela "Pom" Gertrude Cantin Meyer, circa 1962

One reason for this sense of connection may be that my great-grandmother Pamela “Pom” Gertrude Cantin (whom I called “Memé”) wore Jean Naté perfume, which includes lavender notes. She was une femme fière (a proud woman), with hair perfectly coiffed in keeping with her decades of work as a hairdresser, and always dressed to the nines in her pearls and colorful dresses, blouses, and slacks. Her outward appearance and Jean Naté fragrance now strike me as representative of her fierce independence and drive.

The sixth of fourteen children born to French Canadian immigrants Eugenie Duchesne and Magloire Cantin in 1899, my Memé suffered a childhood illness that left her functionally deaf for the rest of her life. She never learned sign language, but got by in the hearing world by reading lips, using hearing aids, and speaking very loudly. She raised her two daughters Rita (my maternal grandmother) and Dorothy (called Dottie) on her own after her husband abandoned them during the Great Depression. I imagine this was a particularly difficult situation for her as a Franco American Catholic woman, but she rose above it with determination and dignity, eventually opening her own hair salon in the Boston area.

Memé was about to turn 77 when I was born, and she died when I was 20. I feel very fortunate that I had her in my life for so long. My mother was close with her, and their closeness inspired my own efforts to bond with Memé during visits in Vermont and at her apartment in eastern Massachusetts and through cards and letters sent back and forth in the mail. During a lonely time spent travelling with a family as a nanny during the summer before I went to college, I sent Memé a postcard every day, and she responded with great frequency. Homesick and nostalgic, I remember smelling the stationery on which she wrote, trying and failing to pick up the Jean Naté fragrance I knew so well.

Close-up of lavender sachets in Megan St. Marie's office, made by her aunt Rita Lambert Lavallee with fabric upcycled from placemats stitched by Anastasie "Tazzy" Raymond Lambert. Left to right, the designs embroidered on the sachets symbolize: the 4th of July when the Lambert family gathers for an annual family reunion; a lamb for the surname Lambert; and a heart in honor of Rita's late sister Barbara Lambert Chevalier, whose birthday was on Valentine's Day

Megan St. Marie's great-grandmother Anastasie "Tazzy" Raymond Lambert, circa 1905 

I didn’t know my other great-grandmothers, who all died before I was born. And yet, the scent of lavender connects me to one of them, as well. My aunt Rita Lambert Lavallee, who made the sachets now in my office, made this connection for me when she wrote about her decision to fill them with dried lavender. The sachets’ fabric originated as placemats made many decades ago by her paternal grandmother, Anastasie “Tazzy” Raymond Lambert. Aunt Rita told me that she remembered visiting this grandmother’s house as a little girl and really liking a scent in the bathroom there, though she didn’t know what it was. Years later as an adult, she bought something with a lavender scent, and only then did she realize that it was the same fragrance she’d loved when visiting her grandmother’s house.

Lavender in a garden bed at Heather Lambert Bessette's home in Vermont, grown in honor of the late Barbara Lambert Chevalier, who was an aunt to her, Megan St. Marie, and their Lambert cousins

Perhaps this association with their Lambert grandmother was what inspired my Aunt Barbara Lambert Chevalier (Rita’s elder sister) to plant lavender in the beautiful garden beds she placed around the family homestead in Highgate, Vermont. I can’t ask her now because she passed away a few years ago before I realized this familial proclivity for lavender; but, I know that at least one cousin, Heather Lambert Besette, picked up on Aunt Barb’s love of lavender and planted some at her own house in a garden that now stands as something of a memorial to our aunt.

Being surrounded by things—including scents—that ground me in a love of family and remembrance of those who came before me sparks affinity with Modern Memoirs clients, who are often moved by those same feelings when they come to us with their book projects. And although I can’t make the soothing lavender that inspired this piece waft out through the words you are reading, I can offer a closing invitation to engage your senses and inspire creativity:

See.

Hear.

Taste.

Touch.

Smell.

Remember.

Write.

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Reflections from Modern Memoirs Client Elizabeth Tan Tsai

Elizabeth Tan Tsai is a repeat client with Modern Memoirs. Her first book, entitled A Grandmother’s Diary, came out in 2021 and took one year from the day Tsai first contacted us to the day the books arrived on her doorstep. Immediately after that, she began her second project, a two-volume memoir entitled The Story of an Asian American Immigrant: An Autobiography, which published at the end of 2022. We asked the author to reflect on what the publication process was like for her, and what it has meant to share her books with others.

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1. Your ancestors emigrated from China to the Philippines, where you were born the last of fourteen children. As a child, what were the challenges and rewards of being part of such a large, multi-cultural family?

Elizabeth Tan Tsai: As the youngest of 14 children, I was the baby of the family—privileged to sleep with Mother for 14 years, cared for and protected by my siblings. But I had to obey them and, in case of differences in opinion, defer to theirs. Why? We were brought up with the tenet that the older protect the younger, and the younger respect and obey the older. As for my multi-cultural heritage, I grew up among Filipinos, attended public schools, and spoke our Capiceno dialect, neither understanding or speaking Chinese, nor associating with the Chinese community. The Filipinos accepted me as one of them, and I did not feel excluded from any childhood activities, nor did I feel any racial discrimination against me. I elected Philippine citizenship when I ceased to be a minor (at the age of 21 years) and freely exercised all the rights and privileges appertaining thereto. Thank God, I have never experienced racial discrimination in the U.S. either.

2. You studied law in the Philippines and worked for a firm in Manila before coming to the United States and graduating with an LL.M. from Yale Law School in 1965. You decided to remain in the United States, where you worked as a legal writer/editor at a law publishing company, a member of the California State Bar, a practicing lawyer in San Diego, a member of the Bar of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, and a special counsel at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. What was one of the most rewarding events of your varied and distinguished legal career? Also, what was your experience as a woman in the legal field and in law school at that time?

Elizabeth Tan Tsai: The most rewarding event of my career was graduating with an LL.M. from Yale Law School. It opened doors of opportunity and brought me in fellowship with great lawyers imbued with the spirit of service for God, for country, and for Yale.

In law school at Yale, I took nine courses. In eight of these, I was the only female student and all the professors were white men. None of them called on me to recite even though I often raised my right hand. At that time, students were to observe silence until the professor called their name; whereupon they would rise for the Socratic method of interlocution. My ninth class was taught by Professor Ellen Ash Peters (the law school’s first tenured female professor and later the first female chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court). She was born in Berlin in 1930 and, when she was nine years old, fled with her family to the U.S. I will always remember how wonderful I felt when she called on me to recite, saying, “Miss Tan.”

After getting my LL.M., I received two job offers: associate attorney in a mid-size law firm in Utica, New York, which I declined; and junior editor at the Lawyers Co-operative Publishing Company in Rochester, New York, one of 10 hired in the summer of 1965 and the first of my cohort to be promoted to editor. At the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, I was promoted to special counsel, doubling my salary in four years and supervising a diverse staff that included three white male attorneys, one white female attorney, one Black female attorney, and the Black librarian of the Division of Investment Management.

3. Your autobiography entailed translation of oral history and numerous family letters from your native language to English, and transcription of these and other materials, such as diaries, speeches, and emails. How do you feel these primary sources enhance the retrospective narrative portions of your autobiography?

Elizabeth Tan Tsai: Since these records are contemporaneous to the experiences and events described in the writers’ own words, they reflect the writers’ personality, excitement, and frustrations, while lending an immediacy to the reader. Thus, they are more vivid and factual than a pure retrospective narrative.

4. As a pastime, you love to dance. How does dancing enrich your life and inform your writing?

Elizabeth Tan Tsai: Social dancing lifts me up, makes me feel ethereal and larger than life. It is artistic self-expression and a beautiful way to know people. Greeted by smiling faces—happy to see me and dance with me—I feel one with my dance community, an extension of my sweet family; we care about each other and support one another.

My book describes the venues where I have danced and the joys of dancing there, and I see connections between my writing and dancing lives. When learning complex dances, I concentrate and keep practicing. After two hours of dance classes, I stay for the two to three hours of dance party that follows to practice what I’ve learned. Similarly, when I write, I concentrate and keep writing. Also, just as I watch dance competitions and performances to improve my dancing, I read autobiographies to craft my own, such as the one by Edward Gibbon, who wrote his autobiography when he finished writing The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In fact, I got the idea of beginning each chapter with an epigram from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s Lazy B: Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest.

5. What was it about your first Modern Memoirs experience that convinced you to pursue your second project with us as well?

Elizabeth Tan Tsai: A Grandmother’s Diary was a way to test the waters. I thoroughly enjoyed working with Modern Memoirs, and I was confident that they would be as superb and as encouraging, if not more so, with the second project. The experience of working on the autobiography was akin to, but more fun and fruitful than, taking a course on memoir writing at a university. I learned a great deal, I had the fervent support of experts, and I exulted in the friendship of noble souls.

6. You said that you undertook the autobiography project at the behest of your two children. What were your goals in creating it? Whom do you intend your readers to be, in addition to your immediate family?

Elizabeth Tan Tsai: I wrote my book to leave—in one compendium—records of my life and family felicity. I meant it for my children and grandchildren, my siblings’ descendants, and organizations interested in preserving this family history. This book is my best piece of writing—useful and beautiful. I am happy with the finished, designed product, and have given copies to my close and extended family, Yale University’s Sterling Memorial Library, the Yale Law School Library, the Law School Alumni Reading Room, the Chinese American Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Library of Congress. I feel that, having discharged my duty to record our family history and ensure its preservation for posterity, I can die without regrets.

Though it is still early, I have already received congratulations on what readers have described as “an amazing undertaking” and “a spectacular product.” One grandniece said she is happy to learn the story of our family, and another said that it stirred her to tears. My daughter, Pearl, is also a graduate of Yale, and I included some of her letters from school in one of my volumes. A fellow resident in my retirement community, who attended Yale for eight years, said he found her letters to be “downright nostalgic,” and said, “I was really taken by Pearl’s experience with Yale’s internationalization, both in the student body and the curriculum.”

My husband has read my autobiography, as well, and said that he learned a lot about my parents, how they raised me, and how I raised our two children to be great parents, capable professionals, and good and useful citizens of a modern society. It’s wonderful to know that after 55 years of marriage, my husband is still learning about me.

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Reflections from Modern Memoirs Client Ellen Kanner and Book Artist Annie Zeybekoglu

Ellen Kanner and Annie Zeybekoglu published their book entitled I, Teresa de Lucena: Reflections on the Trial of a Conversa with Modern Memoirs in 2022. For Modern Memoirs, this unique microhistory project, which features translations and text by Kanner and book design and illustrations by Zeybekoglu, took one year from the day the duo first contacted us to the day the books arrived on their doorsteps. We asked Kanner and Zeybekoglu to reflect on what the publication process was like for them, and what it has meant to share their book with others.

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Ellen Kanner and Annie Zeybekoglu working on their book, I, Teresa de Lucena: Reflections on the Trial of a Conversa

1. Through primary sources, your book tells the story of Teresa de Lucena (1467–1545), who was born in Toledo, Spain and faced the Spanish Inquisition twice. How did you uncover Teresa’s story in the first place, Ellen, and what inspired you to pursue it?

Ellen Kanner: Teresa de Lucena first appeared to me as a footnote in a book I was reading about the Spanish Inquisition. The reference numbers that locate her trial in the Inquisition archives caught my eye, but most of all, I recall thinking, “I bet there’s a story there.” What inspired me to pursue Teresa’s story for the next forty years is harder to describe. My passion for Spain and intellectual curiosity kept me moving forward, but what continues to inspire me is the realization that in ways large and small, understanding Teresa’s life helps me to understand my own. For example, as I watched Teresa’s relationships with family and friends unfold, it gave me cause to reflect on mine. And in order to finish writing the book, I found inspiration in Teresa’s strength and perseverance.

2. How was your research complicated by issues of transcription and translation?

Ellen Kanner: Setting out to research Teresa’s life, I had no idea where the journey would lead. The first step was obvious: a trip to Madrid to obtain a copy of her sixteenth-century trial dossier from the vast National Historical Archives. I’ll never forget the thrill of holding the original parchment pages in my hands—a sensation followed almost immediately by the crushing realization that I could not read the old handwriting. Using a partial transcription published by a scholar in 1902, I taught myself to decipher the handwriting. Then I transcribed the documents in Spanish, translated them into English, and only then, created a timeline and a system to cross-reference the 101 people mentioned in her documents.

3. At your book launch in Lexington, Massachusetts in October, Ellen talked about history as viewed through two lenses: a telescope and a microscope. What do you mean by this concept, and how does it relate to your project?

Ellen Kanner: I, Teresa de Lucena is a work of microhistory, a genre that puts the individual at the center of the narrative and then zooms out to create the larger context of her life and times. My intention was to tell Teresa’s story as accurately as possible based on the information revealed in her trial documents. I wanted to understand the details of her life—Where did she live? How old was she when her father fled? Who were the witnesses against her? And this required examining her life in minute detail—as if under a microscope. By contrast, most history is the story of events seen from afar—as if through a telescope. The far view makes it possible to count things, like the stars in the sky or the number of people condemned for heresy in a given city, but it doesn’t give you a sense of what a real person experienced who was living at the time.

4. The book’s design and illustrations are as integral to the power of the book as its text. What were the goals that you set out to achieve visually, Annie? And how did you collaborate with Ellen to achieve those goals?

“The wall” in Annie’s studio, on which Ellen and Annie storyboarded the book in two-page spreads

Santa Maria la Blanca (formerly Ibn Shushan Synagogue), Toledo, Spain, illustrated by Annie Zeybekoglu

Annie Zeybekoglu: We set out to create a book to honor Teresa that was both beautiful and accessible. Ellen’s writing and my design and illustrations evolved together, in support of our decision to focus on the trial and to have Teresa speak in her own voice. I knew there had to be plenty of “air” to help readers decipher the complex narrative, and that we needed to create a format that would help readers know where they were in the trial. Early on we also decided to put Ellen’s research and reflections in sidebars instead of at the bottom as footnotes. Our design decisions, including where to put the sidebars and the illustrations, were meant to evoke an old manuscript. We storyboarded the book on a large wall in my studio in two-page spreads which helped us to see how the trial and evidence flowed and to determine where to place the illustrations.

Ellen, is there anything you would like to add to Annie’s account?

Ellen Kanner: Annie and I were classmates at Smith College, and when I arrived at her studio in 2018 with my translations and research, I already knew I greatly admired her design sense and book experience from other projects we had worked on together over the years. The true gift of working with Annie on I, Teresa de Lucena was the degree to which the design shaped the text and the text shaped the design. I think it’s fair to say our collaboration shows, and that ultimately we found a way to allow Teresa to speak for herself.

5. Your book is available for sale through a Modern Memoirs printer affiliate in an arrangement we set up for you. What drew you to work with Modern Memoirs, as opposed to a commercial publisher? What target audiences do you hope to reach? And can you share any initial reader feedback?

Ellen Kanner: Since Annie and I see the content and the design for the book as inextricably linked—the yin and yang of the reader’s experience, as it were, we were determined to find a publisher who would allow us to stay true to our vision. With that in mind, two friends from Smith referred us to Modern Memoirs, Inc. We brought a very detailed mock-up of the book to our first meeting with Megan and Ali, and when Megan declared, “This is an archivist’s dream,” we knew we had found the right home for Teresa.

From reader feedback, we know that Teresa’s story has moved some people to tears; others have commented on the book’s cultural and religious content. Many have noted how Teresa’s story resonates today, bringing issues like multiculturalism, racial intolerance, and antisemitism into the twenty-first century.

Annie Zeybekoglu: We’re fascinated that every reader we’ve heard from has had their own personal experience with Teresa’s story. As Ellen says: “We set out to create a book about Teresa de Lucena and it seems we created a mirror.”

Interested in reading more? Readers can purchase Kanner and Zeybekoglu’s book at the link below:

Left to right: Megan St. Marie, Annie Zeybekoglu, Ellen Kanner, and Liz Sonnenberg at the book launch for I, Teresa de Lucena: Reflections on the Trial of a Conversa, hosted by Lexington (Massachusetts) Community Education, October 17, 2022

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In Praise of Sewn Bindings

Are cookbooks a thing of the past?
This I don’t know.

But recently I pulled my mother’s 1963 edition of Joy of Cooking off the shelf as I do whenever I want to plan a traditional meal. The robin’s-egg blue cover is always easy to see. I grabbed it and the book careened out of my hand to the floor.

Rrrrrrrrip. Binding broke through.

There lay 830 pages still held together by a string. By the strings of the loyal sewn binding.

If the cookbook was opened an average of 3 days a week for its first 20 years, that’s 3,120 openings of the book. And then averaging once a week for the next 40 years, that’s 2,080 openings. In its lifetime of 5,200 openings, I reckon it held up beautifully.

It has lasted 60 years! And that’s a book with very heavy traffic. Can we say the same for our paperback books, textbooks, hardcover books, or even eBooks, with their ever-changing digital platforms? Unlikely.

If you have a book project and are contemplating the variety of bindings, spend the extra cash on a sewn binding. Your children or grandchildren (or great-grandchildren) will thank you some day.

My late mother’s handwritten recipes for Apple Crisp and Meat Loaf, c. 1965

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How a Soul Becomes a Flower

Art can offer a powerful means of helping us honor monumental events like Veterans Day or Armistice Day so that history remains alive in our hearts and minds. One such art installation appeared in London, England in 2014. I didn’t actually see this grand-scale installation, mind you. I only saw photos, but it continues to inhabit me, rattling and haunting my soul as if I’d been there in person. I revisit the photos every year:

Picture the Tower of London, surrounded by a dry moat of grass. The massive stone structure, comprising 19 towers built from the 11th to the 14th centuries, spans about 18 acres.

Now imagine waves of blood pouring from the tower into a river of red in the moat. Yes, blood is cascading from the windows, over the walls, and down into the moat. 

But as you approach this monstrosity, you notice that it isn’t blood at all. It is, in fact, a flood of red poppies. How can this be?

Ceramic poppies.

Artists Paul Cummins and Tom Piper created the installation to honor fallen British soldiers of WWI—888,246 to be exact. The vision was to create one clay poppy for each lost soul. Volunteer teams hand-made, glazed, and fired 888,246 ceramic poppies at a studio in Derby. Each poppy stood about knee-high on a metal rod. These were “planted,” one by one, in and around the Tower of London moat between July and November of 2014. Every day at sunset, the names of Commonwealth troops killed during the war were read aloud at the site. By the time the installation was finished, it appeared as a flowing sea of red. And when it was dismantled, the poppies were sold and the proceeds donated to military charities.

Incidentally, if you haven’t been exposed to the significance of red poppies on Armistice Day, read the poem “In Flanders Field” penned by John McCrae in 1915. (See below.) It is a poem that inspired the name of Modern Memoirs’ imprint, White Poppy Press.

I could go on about what all of this means to me, but I want you to have your own experience of the installation, since that is the purpose of art. (See links below.*)

When I look at these photos, I mostly think of the millions of men and women who have served throughout history and sacrificed their lives for the greater good. And when I feel small and hopeless and unable to change the world, I think of one poppy standing in the Tower of London moat, then two poppies, then three poppies, then more… and how the power of the collective good can make a difference.

And how a poppy can hold a soul. 

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*To view the art installation at Tower of London:
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2014/11/blood-swept-lands-and-seas-of-red/100851/

*To see the making of the ceramic poppies:
https://ceramicartsnetwork.org/ceramics-monthly/ceramics-monthly-article/Clay-Culture-Blood-Swept-Lands-136481#

IN FLANDERS FIELD
by John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

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Reflections from Modern Memoirs Client Michael Van Ness

Michael M. Van Ness, M.D. published the first softcover edition of his book entitled To the Front: Grandfathers’ Stories in the Cause of Freedom with Modern Memoirs in 2022. This Assisted Memoir took twelve months from the day he first contacted us to the day books arrived on his doorstep. While he is selling this edition of his book (see purchasing details below*), he also engaged our services to publish an expanded hardcover version with an extensive genealogy section for his family and friends. In anticipation of Veterans Day, we asked Van Ness to reflect on what the publication process was like for him, and what it has meant to share his book with others.

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1. Before this book, you published General in Command: The Life of Major General John B. Anderson in 2019, telling the story of your maternal grandfather and his leadership of the largest combat corps in Europe in World War II. What inspired you to write the recent, second book that is also in large part about Anderson? How did you want to make it different from your first?

Michael Van Ness: As I wrote General in Command, I realized I had grown up amongst heroes, but I didn’t know it. My home of Washington, D.C. in the 1960s was a hotbed of retired officers who had served with distinction in the Second World War. They got together to drink at the Army-Navy Club, but grandchildren like me were rarely privy to their tales of love and loss, triumph and despair. So I used diaries and letters for source material for General in Command. Friends reading that first book responded with their own family stories, stories of both desperation and redemption. I thought there was lots there for another book. I also reflected upon my own career and the many men I attended during my own service as a physician at Bethesda Naval Hospital. To the Front expands beyond the story of Anderson in General in Command to stories of other men of high rank and low—soldiers, sailors, and aviators—and their families, locked in desperate battles for survival in both war and peace.

2. In To the Front, some of the narrative is recreated dialogue between characters in the book and you. Why did you choose this literary device, as opposed to writing the stories in the third-person point of view?

Michael Van Ness: Recreating dialogue brings the characters to life. I wanted to use my imagination and memory of events to help the reader experience the moment, to be with me whilst I spoke with heroes large and small.

3. What drew you to the Modern Memoirs editorial and design process?

Michael Van Ness: After my first book, I knew I needed a publisher who cared deeply, who could be a partner in writing and publishing To the Front. Ali de Groot and Megan St. Marie proved to be those partners. Megan challenged me to dig deeper, to find the truth of the stories, to reveal the power and significance of the subject. Her questions were akin to those posed by the best psychologists—open-ended questions like, “Why is that important?” Or more pointedly, “Who cares? What is the significance here?” The text evolved from a list of random incidents to a coherent narrative of discovery, highlighted by carefully selected photographs and maps that were integrated into the layout by Nicole Miller. Nicole’s cover design, adapted from art in a 1943 magazine, captures the spirit of the times, a fierce determination to win the war, an unshakable confidence in our fighting men.

4. You engaged Modern Memoirs to research your genealogy and to summarize the findings in a family history section of the expanded edition that will be distributed privately to family and friends. How did this genealogy work enhance your book project?

Michael Van Ness: Liz Sonnenberg’s genealogy uncovered veins of rich family history that were long lost and deeply buried. For example, I had always known the stories of my maternal grandmother’s Confederate soldier relatives. Who knew there were Union soldiers on my father’s side? Not me. I came to discover aspects of family life that were more complicated and more nuanced than expected. Thus, I am now determined to delve deeper still into the unknown territory of my father’s family, previously hidden by distance and time, a valuable addition for future generations and an ennobling process for me.

5. What outcome surprised you most in the publication process? What did you learn along the way—about yourself, your family, or our country?

Michael Van Ness: I was surprised by the rigor of the publication process. Since my partners at Modern Memoirs kept every deadline they set for themselves, I felt duty bound to keep every deadline they set for me. Thus, the project never languished but moved forward steadily from beginning to end. Having said that, when I needed a little more time, Ali and Megan reminded me that I must take all the time I needed. So the partnership was one of give and take. In the end, I realized the stories I was telling were the sermons these men and women preached with their lives, doing the best they could under circumstances that none of us ever want to know. To honor them, I resolved to make the text as good as it could be. Modern Memoirs helped me to achieve that goal.

1947 illustration used for the endsheets of the expanded edition of To the Front: Grandfathers’ Stories in the Cause of Freedom by Michael M. Van Ness, M.D.

Image attribution: Created by T/Sgt. Walter H. Croft, T/4 Elwood P. Engel and Travers E. Dowling, and T/5 Russell H. Hadden of the XVI Corps Historical Association and the Infantry Journal Press, Washington, D.C. (1947)

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*Interested in reading more? Purchase Van Ness’ recent book at the link below: