Novel
I am happy to announce the release of my novel, Follow the Wind Home, which has been more than fifteen years in the making. Its completion is my own dream-come-true, as well as the dream of my mother, Florence Corlas, who instilled in me the desire to write a novel.
Follow the Wind Home is set in Springfield, Illinois during the Civil War. Written in the literary style of John Steinbeck and Willa Cather, it offers a hopeful message for those who struggle with moving on after loss.
The novel was released on July 18, 2023. The softcover and Kindle versions of the novel can be purchased on Amazon. The hardcover with dust jacket can be purchased on Lulu.
Novel Summary
On a wintry day in 1860, Catherine Corlis and Mary Todd Lincoln cross paths in a Springfield, Illinois cemetery while visiting their children's graves. Catherine, shunned by the townspeople after a brothel owner stole her innocence, and Mary, whose husband is running for president, bond over their deep-rooted grief. Mary invites Catherine to call on her.
Before she can answer Mary's invitation, Catherine must find the strength to break the chains of grief that hold her captive to the past. As war descends on the nation, she inherits her uncle's sheep farm one mile from a Union recruiting camp. While signing the land deed, she meets a charming orphan, sixteen-year-old Belle Peters, who bears a remarkable resemblance to Catherine's deceased child.
That night, Belle's teacher, Sister Ann, appears at Catherine's farmhouse and asks Catherine to board Belle, who will soon be graduating from the Ursuline Academy. Catherine latches onto Belle as a replacement for her daughter. Encouraged that God has given her a second chance, Catherine opens a rehabilitation school for ex-prostitutes at her farmhouse, where Sister Ann and Belle join her as teachers. Catherine writes to Mary Lincoln, sharing her newfound joy.
When brothel owners, Hunter and Lucinda Proacher threaten her, and when former school friend, Fred Winterford, exhibits questionable interest in Belle, Catherine fears she will lose Belle. Additional problems plague her: the loss of her farmhands, a prairie fire, a tornado, and smallpox. When death comes knocking, Catherine struggles to hold onto her school, Belle, and her faith.
Only through Sister Ann's steadfast example and the help of a wandering shepherd, Dandy, is Catherine able to weather the challenges and reconsider Mary Lincoln's invitation on Easter weekend of 1865, the same weekend that President Lincoln is assassinated.
Author Background
Like most of my readers, I've mourned the loss of family members and friends. I've also mourned the loss of a farm that was precious to our family. It was a magical place with its creeks, ponds, cows, and chickens. My siblings and I ice skated, sledded, fished, and swam at my grandpa's farm.
Wired with a sensitive personality, I've always found it difficult to "let go" of people and places. After such losses, moving forward is the logical answer, but how does a sensitive heart move forward?
This is the question posed by Follow the Wind Home. How do you move on when you would rather go back? This question is echoed in this poignant quotation from my mother's diary:
"Everything changes and then the traces even disappear. Small pioneer farms are all disappearing into larger expanses for big machines. Some groups of trees are left standing here and there so you know the houses and barns were torn down or bulldozed into a hole. I wonder if any breath of the people who lived there lingers in those vacant places? Does what happened there matter anymore? Does anyone remember? Only God, probably." (Florence Lebel Corlas Diary Entry, January 18, 2003)
My mother and father raised me and my five siblings in the '60s and '70s fifteen miles south of Springfield in the small town of Auburn. We lived in a modest ranch house next to the town's baseball field. Every day, we walked a block to school. After school, we came home to watch Gilligan's Island on television or to play outdoors. The neighborhood children played outdoors in their yards in those days—spontaneous games of baseball, basketball, football, and plain-old chase. I especially enjoyed going with my dad on Sunday afternoons to romp in my grandpa's pasture at his 50-acre farm a couple miles outside Auburn.
While growing up, I was introduced to the legacy of Abraham Lincoln; almost every Sangamon County child was in those days. I went on school field trips to Lincoln historic sites. My parents took our family on summer outings to a log cabin village, Lincoln's New Salem.
I developed an admiration for all things Lincoln. When my dad plowed the garden every year, I dreamed of finding a Lincoln letter in the dirt. I even tried to build a log cabin with my dad's tomato poles in our back yard. I watched the Civil War movie, Shenandoah, whenever it came on television, and I dreamed of writing a Civil War novel about a big family that had six or seven handsome brothers.
At Lincoln Land Community College, I pursued an associate's degree in English, and then went on for a bachelor's in English and a master's in history at Illinois State University. For my master's thesis, I researched Springfield, Illinois during the Civil War. How did the war affect Lincoln's hometown? What went on in Springfield during the war? For years, I studied the tiny print on microfilm of two Springfield daily newspapers. I loved immersing myself in the world of Civil-War-era Springfield. My master's thesis was published in 1991 by Western Illinois University as a monograph, Lincoln's Springfield in the Civil War.
That research, handwritten on a thousand note cards, served as the historical background for Follow the Wind Home.
Story Background
Here are a few fun facts about the development of Follow the Wind Home.
The setting: My main character's home is a large farm along the Sangamon River east of Springfield. Sunday afternoons at my grandfather's farm had given me a love for the scents of plowed earth and hay and manure; I wanted my character to express the wonders of the Sangamon County countryside. A sheep farm was historically plausible. During my research, I discovered that large sheep farms were prevalent in Sangamon County during the Civil War. I chose a location near Camp Butler because an Army recruiting camp represented the sort of change that would challenge my character.
In the book's epilogue, my character's farm beside Sugar Creek in rural Auburn is meant to honor my memory of my grandfather's farm in the same general location.
The blue jays: The jays are based off a childhood memory when my family raised baby sparrows in our kitchen. My siblings and I found them in an abandoned nest at the baseball field next to our house. We brought them to the house and begged our mother to let us keep them. A breadbasket with a hand towel became their home. We fed them by dropping pieces of hamburger into their mouths with tweezers. They soon took flight in the kitchen, landing on my dad's shoulders.
The day came when we had to release them into the wild. On our first try, we realized that an overnight rain was soaking their feathers. We brought them back indoors for a later attempt, at which time we let them loose in our crabapple tree. For a couple of days, we spotted them in the yard, but soon they mixed with all the other sparrows. These sparrows were the inspiration for the blue jay subplot in Follow the Wind Home. Blue jays were chosen (instead of sparrows) with the advice of my naturalist sister, Maureen, who advised that blue jays would be smart enough to return to the same spot in a subsequent year and land on a familiar human shoulder. (See my mother's rendition of this event in the "Stories" section of this website.)
The Search for Little Dorrit: The chapter in which Little Dorrit escapes on the prairie was derived from an experience I had years ago when I joined strangers in a search for a lost puppy. That day, about forty strangers congregated to search through acres of brush for a puppy that had escaped at a rest stop. Joined by a common purpose and a love for animals, we all became one big family that day.
The Style: I attempted to write the novel in a lyrical style, much like the style of Willa Cather, John Steinbeck, and Frank Norris—all writers whose styles I learned to admire in high school and at Lincoln Land Community College. It's a poetic style that is well-suited to accommodate descriptions of nature.
The Symbolism: The novel is highly symbolic, in the tradition of Cather, Steinbeck, and Frank Norris. For example, the wind, the river, the train, and the clock are symbolic of moving forward. Vigils in the cemetery, burying Little Lamb's grave with leaves, concealing Little Lamb's name, and confining Little Dorrit are symbolic of clinging to the past.
Book Discussion Questions
The questions below can be used in a group setting to discuss the novel.
- Do you believe that your love for a deceased loved one will grow cold if you cease going to the grave to mourn him/her?
- Have you left a former home that you still mourn over? How can you heal and move on?
- Which is worse—to hide your grief or to exploit your grief?
- If you've emerged from a too-long season of deep grief, what will you do differently after the death of your next beloved one?
- After a season of profound loss, what do you have left to look forward to on this side of Heaven? Can you make a list?
- Have you left loved ones (family or friends) without saying good-bye? Do you regret your hasty departure? Is there something you can do to rectify this?
- Have you ever experienced the blessing of a "lost blue jay" [animal or human] returning to your life after a long absence? Did this encourage you? How?
- When/where have you experienced God's presence in nature?
- Have you met strangers like Dandy who passed through your life and changed you in a profound way?
- Have you lost family or friends, thought that you might never recover, and then experienced the blessing of new family or friends?
- Which is more effective? Your prayers, or God's plan?