The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Wars, and Why We Read and Why We Write What We Do

I love this book. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society By Barrows Annie Fiery and Shaffer Mary Ann Fiery.

I feel like I took a trip back in time and visited the British Channel Islands during World War II and saw these Island people's lives under occupation. I could smell their roast pig. I could hear the fishing boats coming into the dock. I could see the waves lapping into the windy shore. I could hear the voices of all the Guernsey people who wrote letters(well that helps because I listened to Guernsey on Audible.) It's the best book I've read in a long time.

Will it be everyone's best book? I don't know. And that made me start thinking about why we connect to certain books we read, and why we choose against all odds to write about certain subjects, times, places and people.

I have been haunted by two wars.

The Civil War because my great grandmother Rebecca, for whom I was named, was born on a southern plantation, she and my great grandfather grew up in families who owned slaves. As a young couple they joined the Mormon Church, left the South and moved to Canada to a tiny Mormon community. I grew up in Utah, and always associated myself with the North. We weren't for slavery. But when I found this out about my past,about my great grand parents, it was probably the same year that I began reading Gone With the Wind. I read it every summer, starting at age 13, because I wanted to know why, how, what, when and where of the whole war.

I read Gone with the Wind every summer even when I came home from college. I stayed up all night to finish it. I cried and was depressed for two days and didn't want to talk to anyone. I was haunted by my heritage.

I am also haunted by World War II.

My father was born in Canada in a tiny Mormon community, ironically nearby where my mother's mother with Southern slave owning parents was born and raised. His people, his parents came from Poland, but were German speaking, German people. My German grandparents left all their siblings and parents behind in Poland. I was able to finally meet my father's people in East Germany the year before the wall came down.

One of my great uncles I met had been a prisoner of war in Scotland. Two of my other great uncles I met fought for Germany. My great aunt who I met was displaced, and homeless during and after the war, her four daughters and husband scattered. The four daughters and mother were finally reunited, but they never heard of or found their father, her husband my great uncle.

My father, back in Canada had an older brother who did not get along with their father, my grandfather. Uncle Eric left home when he was 13 and lived with a near by neighbor and worked on their farm. When World War II came along my uncle could have received permission not to enlist in the war because he was needed on the farm. All he had to do was ask his father to sign the papers. Instead of stooping to ask his father who he did not like, he joined up to fight with the Canadian military against his cousins in Germany.

Uncle Eric was killed in the invasion of Normandy. My father says although he's lived in the states since he was in his early twenties, he could still go back to their farm, in Welling, Alberta, Canada, and still find the very piece of ground in the middle of the fields where the Currier came to deliver the telegram about Uncle Eric's death. My father cannot talk about his brother all these years later without tearing up.

My Uncle Eric found happiness in England. He found a young woman who he was in love with, who he wanted to marry. But then he was shipped off to France, and then he was killed. I often think about that woman that brought my uncle happiness. I wonder what happened to her, if she knows someone in New York City at four a.m. on the morning of March 27th, 2009 is thinking about her? I am haunted by this story. I am haunted that my other relatives were part of the Nazi resume, that they were part of that horror.

So reading Guernsey somehow helped make sense of it all. I don't know why. But somehow for me, it brought England and the place my Uncle found joy, and my German relatives together on the Channel Islands and helped me imagine more fully what their lives had been like.

I know my writing comes from other stories that haunt me, my religious past, my heritage, my love of my daughter who died. Some things are so deep in us, that they need to find a way out, a safe, quiet way that won't tear the memories apart, but keep them precious. If that makes sense.

My niece is living with us for a few months between college semesters. She's reading Gone with the Wind for the first time. The same old copy I read every summer when I was growing up. After she finishes it, I'm going to tell her about her great great grandmother Rebecca, the slaves, the plantations and our heritage.

I love books. I love reading them. I love writing them. I love the places they take me.