My First 2026 Encounter with History

Today is the birthday of Ethan Allen, the most profane and hardest drinking noise to come out of pre-Revolutionary Connecticut. A legend in his own time, but not in ours.

Yet sometime in the 1990s while researching a book, I went into the late Briggs Carriage Bookstore in Brandon, Vermont, when it was in its first, smaller location, and said, "Do you have The Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen?"  Jeezum Crow! They did! The bookseller went right to the shelf and put his hand on it as if he sold copies of it every day.

This past Saturday I was in Dakin Farm in Ferrisburg, Vermont, a store known primarily for ham, cheese, and pancake mixes, not books. What do I see in its little Vermont book area? You guessed it! The Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen! Since I already have a copy, I didn't buy it, though I did get a book there on the nineteenth century prohibition era in Vermont. As well as a bottle of my favorite Vermont wine. 

Allen's book is what is known as a captivity narrative, which were popular in his time. They usually involved Europeans being held captive by Native Americans. The Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen is about an "American" of European decent being held captive by Europeans. (He was a prisoner of war for around two years during the Revolution.) It's supposed to have been a bestseller when it was published in 1779.

Published in 1779 and still on shelves. Well done, Colonel Allen.

My The Hero of Ticonderoga was originally called The Narrative of Therese LeClerc, but the marketing people at G. P. Putnam's Sons thought that sounded like a nun's diary. Middle grade readers don't like nuns' diaries?

I plan to focus on reading history this year, so I'm delighted to have had this encounter with a historical narrative without even trying. 

Coming Back To Life

I'm sure you all recall that last fall Gyldendal Undervisning renewed our agreement to use some material from Saving the Planet & Stuff in one of its textbooks for teaching English. Last week they notified me that they've decided to increase the first-print run of the edition. More books!

And then just a couple of days ago I learned that my flash creative nonfiction, Heroes, has been included in The Bending Genres Anthology 2018-2019. The piece was published at Bending Genres in 2018.

Writing can be a discouraging slog. But one of the neat things that can happen in publishing is that sometimes something you've published in the past suddenly gets a little new life, as was the case for me this past week.

I can remember back in the day suddenly hearing from my editor that foreign publishers wanted to do editions of my books.  My Life Among the Aliens was published in Japan. Japan! (And Italy and Germany, which also did editions of two of my other books.) And then there was that time I was notified four times that states had included A Year With Butch And Spike on their student readers' choice award lists. When Happy Kid! went on to one of its two award lists, it resulted in a second printing for the book, because those lists generate sales and the book was right at the point where it needed a new printing to meet demand. Another year I got an e-mail from my editor to let me know that The Hero of Ticonderoga was being talked about at that year's ALA conference. And the next thing I knew (seriously, it was within a day or two) I found out that the ALA was naming it a Notable Book for that year.

Now, yes, I am using my recent news as an opportunity to relive past glories. But I have a point apart from that. The point is: I was through with those books. I may have still been promoting them at school visits or where and when I could, but the writing, the editing, the publishing was all done. I wasn't working on those books any more. And, yet, things continued to happen for them. 

That these kinds of things happen is one of the many things I didn't know about writing and publishing when I was getting started. Yes, it was one of the better things.

Happy Birthday, Ethan Allen

Happy 271st birthday to Ethan Allen, rogue historical figure and hero of Ticonderoga. The Hero of Ticonderoga, a twentieth century Franco American girl's take on "one of the wickedest men that ever walked this guilty globe" is no longer available in print. I own the rights but haven't done anything about an e-book, so you can't read it that way, either.

However, the print book is available at many libraries.

And to celebrate E's big day, you can still see my Ethan Allen talk given at the Ethan Allen Homestead in Burlington, Vermont.

Writing Who You Are

One of my French-speaking aunts.

The Therese Book

No Time Management Tuesday this week, because instead of writing a TMT post I spent a three-day weekend in Vermont for a Celebration of Life ceremony for my aunt. Aunt Tessy was one of the four Theresas/Thereses in my Gauthier family for whom Therese LeClerc in The Hero of Ticonderoga was named.

Butch and Spike's ancestors.

The Cootch Book

One of my Couture cousins came down from Ottawa for this event. Actually we're all
Coutures through my grandmother Gauthier, who was originally Beatrice Couture. And that is where Butch and Spike's last name came from in A Year With Butch and Spike.

My father referred to one of my grandmother's brothers as "Uncle Cootch," and now you know why Butch and Spike became known as the Cootches.

Still Another Couture Book

My Couture family also is responsible for the last name of the family in the Aliens books. Beatrice's youngest sister, Anna Couture, married a Denis. She died around the time I was writing My Life Among the Aliens, so the main characters became Will and Rob Denis. Which I pronounce "Deh knee" not "Dennis," since that's how my Canadian family pronounce that name.

Yes. I do obsess over names.

My Atticus Finch Story

I am not a To Kill a Mockingbird groupy. I wasn't delighted when I heard there was a prequel/sequel coming out, and I'm not shocked and disappointed over what I've been hearing and reading about Atticus Finch's racism in Go Set a Watchman, that prequel/sequel. I actually find it interesting. Not interesting enough to read what sounds like a rough draft, but interesting.

This is not to say I didn't like To Kill a Mockingbird a great deal when I read it in my early teens. I read it the way a lot of young people read it back then--on my own. It hadn't become part of the American high school curriculum. It was probably among the first adult books I read, and I read it without anyone interpreting it for me in a classroom. Years later, I would speculate with a friend about how soon my kids could read it, because I couldn't wait. She said something like, "Ah...and the rape?" And I said something like, "Ah...rape?" I had no memory of that at all, just that I'd loved the book.

Now I reread Mockingbird as an adult. It was one of the rare situations of a book I'd liked when I was young holding up. At that point, though, I saw it as a father worship book. Atticus was a fantasy dad.

Years later, when I wrote The Hero of Ticonderoga, I would model Andrew Churchill, the out-of-state lawyer father of one of Therese LeClerc's classmates, on the Gregory Peck version of Atticus Finch. Andrew Churchill is educated, which Therese's own father is not. He wears a suit, which her father does not. His hands are clean, he doesn't work in a barn, he doesn't speak with an accent. He is Therese's fantasy dad.

He ends up being a disappointment, though, like the Atticus in Go Set a Watchman.

Talking About Ethan Allen At The Ethan Allen Homestead

Tomorrow at 4:00 PM I'll be speaking at the Ethan Allen Homestead in Burlington, Vermont. That's why I've been tweeting Ethan Allen articles lately.

This will not be my first visit to the Homestead. You can see me sitting in front of the reproduction of the home Allen shared with his trophy wife, Fanny. That was taken back in the '90s while I was working on The Hero of Ticonderoga. That book, and my spin on why Ethan Allen was such a wild man, will be the focus of my presentation. If my traveling companion is able to get a decent (by which I mean a flattering) picture on my cell phone, I'll post it at Facebook. I may also try to tweet it.

We're taking a long weekend in the Green Mountains, so I don't expect to be back at Original Content until Wednesday. I hope to be biking Monday and hitting relatives along Rte. 7 on our way south on Tuesday.

New Biography Of Ethan Allen

Real Estate and the American Revolution in Slate describes Ethan Allen: His Life and Times by Willard Sterne Randall. The essay by François Furstenberg about the book makes Allen sound very much the way I found him to be when I was researching him for The Hero of Ticonderoga. Furstenberg says, "Randall wants to cast Allen as "a leader and moral figure to be trusted. But that rings hollow."

What makes Ethan Allen so fascinating to me is that he wasn't a "moral figure" anyone ought to have trusted, and he probably wasn't even much of a leader. He was an unsuccessful everyman with a gift for gab (Furstenberg says Allen's prison memoir--still in print!--was the "second-greatest best-seller of the Revolutionary Era") who became a big name in his own time in spite of himself.

What's inspiring about him is that his life experience suggests that given the right combination of circumstances, a self-educated, opinionated, unpopular, professional failure whose consumption of alcohol was the stuff of legend can become immortal. I can't help myself. I have to love the guy.

You Never Know Why Someone Might Like Your Work

Yesterday I spent three hours at a bridal shower. I've written before about how lame I am at conferences. Showers, the same thing. There is some question about whether or not I have a hormone defiency that makes it impossible for me to get all excited when some poor engaged woman has to cut a ribbon on a package and everyone cheers because that's supposed to mean another child for the happy bride. What the hell century are we living in, anyway?

Here's what's weird, though. If you look at the picture at the right taken at the shower, you will see that it looks amazingly like lunch at a writers' conference. Seriously. I'm not making this up. Other writers--am I right?

But that's not the point of this post. The point is...is...yeah...here it is:

One of the other guests was a reading teacher from the local middle school, whom I just happen to know. We chatted for a bit, and she told me that she's still using The Hero of Ticonderoga with some of her slower readers, even though it's a middle grade novel and thus somewhat young for her seventh graders. She says that what ups the difficulty level for this book and her readers is the father's dialect. He speaks with a French accent, him.

The fact that Nancy, she grew up in Vermont, her, with two Franco-American parents who spoke like that is a draw, too.

Happy Birthday, Ethan Allen

Today is Ethan Allen's two hundred and seventy-first birthday. We celebrated here at Chez Gauthier with a cake and a stonewall, a vile drink Ethan is supposed to have been fond of tossing back.

Stonewalls are made with warm cider and rum. I'm not fond of rum, myself, so I mulled the cider first, thinking that might mask the flavor. Not a particularly good idea. On top of that, I believe Ethan's stonewalls were made with hard cider, which isn't particularly easy to find around here these days.

In addition, we picked the winner of the copy of The Hero of Ticonderoga. So someone will actually be receiving a gift to celebrate Ethan's birthday.

I didn't make that cake, by the way. Not that I couldn't have. I am perfectly capable of making a cake, just so you know. I could have decorated it, too, if I had been feeling ambitious. However, this is a work day, and what with the holidays, vacation, snowstorms to deal with, and what have you, I haven't done much work this past month. I couldn't justify taking more time off to bake a cake for someone who would never see it because...he's been dead for over two hundred years.

I'm not actually crazy.

Greetings From The Land Of Ethan Allen

I'm here today to remind you that you still have a week to wish Ethan Allen a happy birthday, thus earning yourself a chance to win a copy of The Hero of Ticonderoga.

As it turns out, I'm spending the week in the New Hampshire Grants. On Sunday, I wasn't far from Ethan Allen's final home. That same day I drove by the chapel named for his brother. (From what I know of that family, naming a chapel for any of them would have left their contemporaries scratching their heads in wonder.), as well as the hospital named, in part, for his daughter, Fanny. (Fanny, the daughter of at least an ardent agnostic if not a hardcore atheist, became a Roman Catholic nun, proving, once again, that God has one heck of a sense of humor.)

Start Your Partying Now

The Big E's birthday is two weeks from today. Get your birthday wishes in now for your chance at winning a signed copy of The Hero of Ticonderoga, which deals with a sixth grade student who finds herself forced to do an oral report on Vermont's famous old dead guy.

Now, I'm interested in this nearly eight-year-old book because I'm the author, and I have a box of copies of the thing. But why should you care? Well, Hero was an ALA Notable back in 2002, right around the time I started blogging but before most of you knew me. And the ALA citation includes the word "ribald." How often do you suppose that happens?

In addition, the book has been used in schools in Vermont and New York. Just last month it was used as an enrichment-type reader for a fifth grade class in Connecticut during its Revolutionary War unit.

If you're thinking, "Ew. That sounds educational and improving," remember, the ALA used the word "ribald" when describing it. Don't you want to be the one to give your school something like that?

By the way, no portraits of Ethan Allen exist. Thus that incredibly unflattering depiction of him at the site I linked to was just pulled out of the air.

Yikes! I Forgot About The Book Giveaway!

It's been a while since I've given away any books here, so I thought I'd give a copy of The Hero of Ticonderoga away this month because Ethan Allen's birthday is in January. Not that Hero is technically about Ethan Allen. But he does figure in the story. And I just like him, so we're going to celebrate his birthday here.

More details to follow.

Ethan Allen On My Mind

Next month I'll be taking part in a blog tour for Susanna Reich's nonfiction book, Painting the Wild Frontier: The Art and Adventures of George Catlin. I started reading the book and was soon reminded of my favorite nineteenth century guy,Ethan Allen.

Reich reports that George Catlin's father, Putnam, was born in Litchfield, Connecticut as was Ethan Allen. (Allen would have been around twenty-five when Putnam was born.) Putnam (a significant name in Connecticut) Catlin is described as having been descended from Puritans, and there's an implication that the strict way in which he ran his family may may have been the result of Puritan influence. That he could have been influenced by Puritan thinking makes sense to me because Puritans dominated Connecticut in the sixteenth century and experienced a resurgence (the Great Awakening) in the mid-seventeenth.

The seventeenth century Puritan mindset and world figures in Ethan Allen's life story, too, though he could be described as the anti-Puritan. He rejected all things Puritan.

So, that's why I had Ethan on my mind last week. Then I found that J. L. Bell at Oz and Ends wrote a post about my book relating to Ethan Allen, The Hero of Ticonderoga. And then he wrote another.

But that's not all!

Yesterday I was visitng a family member who had recently returned from Ireland where he had been in some coastal city where...the prison ship on which Ethan Allen was held after being captured by the British during the Revolution made port!

What are the chances that Ethan Allen would come up (okay, only sort of come up as far as the George Catlin book is concerned) three times in a week? Come on! The guy's been dead nearly 220 years.

Attention For Gail's Vermont Books

A Guide to Fiction Set in Vermont for Children & Young Adults by Ann McKinstry Micou was published this spring by the Vermont Humanities Council. Both my Vermont books, The Hero of Ticonderoga and Saving the Planet & Stuff are included in the guide.

Too bad Planet has gone out of print, huh? I've just had the rights reverted to me, which means that when I can get organized and serious I can try to find a paperback publisher for it.

Speaking of Hero

Speaking of The Hero of Ticonderoga, as I was yesterday, look whose first line is is twittered at Kidderlit.com today.

I Was Called To This Obituary

So Thursday evening I still hadn't made my way to the book review section of last week's Sunday Times. But in said paper I stumbled upon an obituary for a man named John K. Lattimer. This was a long obituary for a person I'd never heard of. But I kept reading it. He was an interesting guy who, in addition to doing important things within his profession, maintained what was described as a "virtual miliary museum" at his home "until his collection when into storage last year."

That kind of hooked me because though I'm not into collecting historical artifacts (or anything else), I am interested in history. So I kept reading and reading and reading.

I got to the third from the last paragraph when I found what I clearly had been meant to read:

"Among Dr. Lattimer’s most prized possessions was a sword that belonged to Ethan Allen, who in the predawn hours of May 10, 1775, led a band of Green Mountain Boys in capturing strategic Fort Ticonderoga, on Lake Champlain in upstate New York — a turning point in the Revolution. Two hundred years later to the hour, Dr. Lattimer — Ethan Allen’s sword in hand — led a re-enactment of that battle."

Oh. My. Gosh. Ethan Allen is my main historical man. (To date, anyway). And, you know, I lived about thirty or forty minutes from Fort Ti back in 1975. I remember a big event going on there around then. I remember it because I didn't go, and I always remember all the fun things I missed.

The fact that I have not always realized that the desire to attend big celebrations you can't get to leads to nothing but unhappiness is neither here nor there. What is significant about this story (and it is significant) is that this guy, John K. Lattimer, was thirty or forty minutes from my house on May 10, 1975. And he was holding Ethan Allen's sword!

And then, twenty-some years later, I would write a book in which Ethan Allen played a part. And still later, I would read John K. Lattimer's obituary.

Come on. Tell me this isn't some kind of psychic connection across time and space.