Dear Carol, Kitty, and Holly
by
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It was my grandfather's house too, of course. But his focus was a world of banking, crossword puzzles, morris chair reading, and an inviolate and gentle silence. He lived there, my parents also, plus other assorted relatives as occasion permitted or demanded, as during the great depression years. My grandmother ruled there. But it was my whole identity, and I dwell there still in my thoughts whenever I need my spirit challenged to revival and hope. It held a secret, then as it still does, which if discovered would satisfy every yearning of my heart, even reveal to me what those unknown yearnings are. The secret was in the attic, in a special part of the attic called "the dark attic," where I loved to play being me! Not that I ever thought of it in that way. I simply slipped into a space there of unfettered beingness with myself. I would like to be there again. I've tried to retrace the steps– It began as I reached for the doorknob at the stairway entrance to the third floor. I pulled it forward, stepped through, then closed the squeaky door behind me. I could feel the cold immediately. It was part of the utterly different, utter privacy I was entering.
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About the Book
From the cultural advantages by proximity to New York City in the 1920s to the harsh realities of life in the mountains and deserts of Colorado, Utah and Nevada, follow Belle, a World War II bride, in a series of true-life adventures in this gracefully written memoir of high stakes mining claims and spirit crushing loss. Within these pages is the stuff that makes up our history: a childhood of privilege during the Depression years marred only by her mother’s death from tuberculosis in 1936, marriage to a serviceman during the war, life on a university campus on the GI bill interspersed by periods of hardrock mining jobs in the field to maintain cash flow, six pregnancies and the death of an infant son, hears of privation due to her husband’s gambling instinct that kept life on the edge, and his eventual emergence in the uranium boom of the ‘50s as a major holder of some of the richest ore ever mined on the Colorado Plateau. With unbridled optimism and faith, Belle embraces all the turns of her life in this compelling testament to the strength and resiliency of the human spirit.
About the Author
Nothing in her New Jersey suburban background prepared Belle Motts for life in the west as a miner’s wife during the turbulent uranium frontier days of the ‘50s. Plans to enter the New York Julliard School of Music as an advanced piano student were aborted by the untimely death of her mother when she was seventeen years old. She redirected her passion toward literature and creative writing at the State Teachers College, a pursuit confined after marriage to journalizing and letter writing about her colorful but harrowing experiencing on properties fringing civilization in Colorado, Utah and Nevada. Often questioned about her fortitude and unflappable attitude through the stresses of her early married life, the later loss of fortune, raising children during the turbulent ‘60s and ‘70s, a 1981 divorce, and the separate violent deaths of two adult sons, Belle simply sees herself as tender of the hearth and keeper of the faith. She has three daughters. Carol, Kitty, and Holly, who live in Seattle, Washington. Remarried in 1986, Belle now lives in Grand Junction, Colorado with her husband Louis Motts.