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Review:
About the Book
Brenda Shaw was born in the back bedroom of a Maine farmhouse in January, 1928. A blizzard howled outside, and the roads were impassable. The doctor who had been summoned was stuck in a snowdrift. Only her father was present to attend her mother.
Brenda's memoir, The Dark Well, is a vivid depiction of growing up on a Maine farm during the Great Depression and World War II. Her father's generation was the last before farming with the horse, the plow and the hayrick was replaced by the modern era of the mechanized factory farm. Shaw recounts the story of that generation in transition, its struggles, joys and sorrows. Against this backdrop, the author tells a tale of deception and secrecy arising from a family tragedy. She spends her childhood and adolescence trying to unravel the mystery of who her mother was, and what had happened to her. In the process, Shaw confronts several versions of "truth," and learns, in the end, to understand and forgive her family. The mystery theme adds tension and forward movement to the story and gives it a dimension beyond nostalgia.
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Reviews
With grace and intelligence, Shaw stitches together the torn fabric of her
life. She has written a richly-detailed evocative country-quilt of a story,
tracing her growing up on a Depression-era farm and her struggles, from the
dawning of her memory, with the powerful awareness that even well-intentioned
love can hurt. It's a fine story of love and forgiveness.
--Faris Cassell, The Register Guard, Eugene, OR
This memoir will delight anyone who grew up in the Depression, anyone who
wonders what life meant then, and anyone who can enjoy the story of a plucky
girl spiritedly struggling against long odds to live her own life. Not for
the timorous, the book, though warm and generous, is unflinching in its
portrayal of raw cruelty and suffering . . . Rich indeed are the experiences
presented in this memoir. Her account of a time in hell at the one-room
school house will cure anyone's false nostalgia for that institution. Brave
and resourceful, she details learning everything from curing boils to playing
strip poker, from making a frappe to stacking a hayrick. She tells of killing
a teacher with voodoo, reveals a shocking tale of her 12-year-old friend
brazenly carrying on a love affair with a married man 20 years older than
she, and shows how, despite poverty and adult opposition on nearly every
hand, she earned her way to leave Maine and graduate from Boston University
. . . Shaw's sharp sense of character, of the petty, the mean, the narrow, as
well as the big-hearted and the generous, populates her pages with a wealth
of people that Dickens would envy.
--Merle Drown, Maine in Print, Brunswick ME
Brenda Shaw was born into a silent family on a 100-acre Maine farm during a
January blizzard in 1928. Her father was the only person assisting her
mother. Hers was not a simple country childhood, and the family not a simply
family: In silent families, communication takes place, but without words. The
look of an eye, a gesture with a hand, the drawing in of breath, the turning
away from a question, all had their meanings . . . Shaw's story contains
mystery as well as the elements of a historical novel. Her eye for detail and
her exceptional ability to retain early memories bring her own early history
alive. She describes farming equipment, her family's house, her school, the
countryside, the morality of the times and her gradual awakening to the
outside world with precision and artistry.
--Susanne Twight-Alexander, The Eugene Weekly, OR
It's more than the mystery that sustains the reader. It is the author's grit
in coping with the pain of betrayal; it is her struggle with what she
describes as "the twin traps of illness and poverty." She writes, "All my
life my loved ones had been only one step ahead of death." . . . For those of
us who weren't raised on a farm in Maine, Shaw's life becomes a personal
discovery; and for those who were, her firsthand accounts are a return to
that time . . . This is a work of nonfiction that reads like fiction.
Splashes of colorful poetic prose highlight the author's style.
--Doreen Gandy Wiley, Writers NW, Portland, OR
Her recollections of long ago occurrences are unusually detailed and
recounted with great specificity. She pulls few punches: several dark family
secrets and tragedies that most folks might prefer to keep locked up in the
attic of memory are exposed, and the episodes are by degrees stunning,
gripping and fascinating. . The book will appeal to anyone who is Shaw's
contemporary and wants to compare notes about Maine life in those days, but
should also interest those who like well-crafted non-fiction. That's what
Shaw's book is.
--Jeff Hollingsworth, The Maine Event, Washington, D. C.
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About the Author
Brenda Shaw grew upon a Maine farm and worked her way through Boston University. After receiving her Doctorate in Biological Sciences, she lived for a number of years in Scotland with her British husband, and raised two Scottish-born sons. While in Scotland, she worked as a scientist, lecturer and senior lecturer at the Dundee University Medical School. Her scientific writings include two editions of a textbook and thirty-eight research papers.
Shaw's short stories, non-fiction and poems have appeared in various periodicals and anthologies on both sides of the Atlantic. She edited an anthology of recent Dundee poetry, Seagate II (Taxvs Press, Durham, England, 1984), and her first collection of poems, The Cold Winds of Summer, was published by Blind Serpent Press, Dundee, Scotland, in 1987. Both of these books received publication grants from the Scottish Arts Council.
She returned to the States in 1987, and now makes her home in Eugene, Oregon, where she continues her writing career. In 1992 she was one of eight Northwest writers selected to participate in an NEA-funded program sponsored by Centrum, the arts and education organization based in Port Townsend, Washington. The program included a month's residency with time and space for creative work. Two more residencies at Centrum followed in 1993 and 1994, and in 1995 she was awarded a six-week Walden Fellowship, during which residency she completed her recently published memoir The Dark Well (Audenreed Press, 1997).
"With vivid imagery and tender narrative, Brenda Shaw has created both a nostalgic memoir and a personal discovery. Shaw shows that a plain tale, skillfully told, carries a more powerful message than any literary contrivance.
"The Dark Well is really two stories, cleverly woven into a gripping account of a young girl growing up on a hardscrabble Maine farm during the Depression era. One part of the story reflects the harsh simplicity of farm life amidst the disease, poverty and clinging desperation of the 1 930s and 40s in rural Maine. The other part is Shaw's passage through childhood and adolescence in search of the truth regarding her family's dark secrets.
"Shaw was born during a blizzard in 1928, in a farmhouse outside Augusta. Raised by her Pa and Ma, she enjoyed a relatively carefree life as a youngster, playing on the farm, helping with chores, never realizing how poor they were. The farm was not prosperous, not even efficient. All work was done by hand, there was no money for farm machinery. It was an old place, comfortable enough in the summer, but bitterly cold indoors in winter. Everyone worked hard just to scrape by, but Shaw loved her parents for the comfort and unspoken affection they shared.
"Her father was a gaunt, taciturn man who worked too hard and never took care of himself. Her mother was older, firm but kind, always watchful as a doting parent. Shaw's other relatives were an odd assortment of aunts and uncles, with their own mysterious burdens of secrecy.
"In the narrative, at age five, Shaw is stunned to learn from a neighbor that her Ma is not really her mother at all. Who then is this woman and why won't anyone tell her the truth about her real mother? As Shaw grows older, more clues surface, but she is continually thwarted in her efforts to learn the answers to her questions.
"As a young child, Shaw did not know what a lie was, until she found her family lying to her about her mother. She quickly discovered that in her family "truth was a matter of opinion," and that there were two kinds of lies: "ones told to hurt you and ones told to protect you." Her dilemma was trying to figure out which was which.
"Family relationships unravel as Shaw grows older, but it takes years before she finally unearths the truth about her mother, father and grandmother. Revelation leads to understanding, especially the reasons behind her family's silence about events which today would be openly acknowledged. And no, the dark family secrets are not what you would expect at all. They are more touching, more human and more real than today's tabloid fluff.
"This story may seem too gloomy and brooding and some of Shaw's memories are certainly painful, but The Dark Well also provides generous amounts of innocence, joy, humor and warmth. Shaw's delightful recollections of barnyard pets, walks in the woods with her father, home remedies and her first paying job make this a mosaic, as colorful on paper as in real life.
"As an adult, Brenda Shaw earned advanced college degrees and enjoyed a successful career as a medical researcher in Scotland. She now writes from her home in Oregon. Her writing is well-crafted, crisp and colorful, with an appealing blend of honesty and understated emotion that resonates as only the truth. Her story is really a mirror that shows us how families operate, communicate, share love -- and hide their secrets."
-- William Bushnell, The Maine Times, Portland, ME
