Sybil Stone Van Antwerp

Virginia Evans

Sybil is a small woman with black hair and dark skin, a watchful child in photographs. When we meet her (in The Correspondent by Virginia Evans [published 2025]), she is already 72 years old. She is told she is losing her sight. But in letters she writes and receives over the course of this novel, we learn the story of her life.

Sybil and her brother were adopted by a well-off family. Sybil became an attorney and was for 30 years the working partner of an influential judge. She was married to a man from Belgium whom she loved and with whom she had three children. Their middle child died in a swimming accident at the age of eight, however, and their marriage did not survive this terrible event. Sybil turns in on herself and her husband, Dan, must care for the remaining kids, Bruce and Fiona, who was only four at the time.

At 72, Sybil is reluctant to leave her house and garden at the edge of a river in Maryland, where she sits with her paper and pens. A rich life flows from her forthright writing. In a letter to a friend, Sybil writes: “Relationships are the meat of our lives. They are links in a long chain … a story is thus preserved in some way. They are the original civility.” 

Sybil writes to her brother, a journalist and writer, who lives with his partner in France. She writes to authors she admires and to a friend, Rosalie, with whom she has corresponded for years. She writes to the child of a colleague, Harry, who is probably autistic, brilliant at math. When this kid runs away from home, he comes to live with Sybil for a while.

After their divorce, Dan returned to  Brussels, taking Fiona, who, as an adult, lives in London. Sybil has trouble speaking to her daughter, who professes not to understand her mother. When Dan is dying, he writes an anguished letter to Sybil, forgiving her of any guilt over Gilbert’s death. Sybil tries to answer the letter, but is unable to before Dan dies. When she doesn’t come to the funeral, Fiona is outraged.

Bruce, Sybil’s son, lives near her. At Christmas, he gives her the gift of a DNA matching service, which Sybil at first resists. She has a cordial relationship with a neighbor, Theodore Lubeck, a German who escaped before the war. She is also introduced to a colleague, Mick, whose company she enjoys. She even visits him in Texas and he proposes marriage.

In other correspondence, Sybil tries to get a Syrian refugee engineer a better job, fights to be able to audit classes at a nearby college and hears from a young man who wishes her ill, since a case she worked on went badly for him. She quarrels with her good friend Rosalie, who tries to get her to reconcile with Fiona. And finds that she has a 49% DNA match with a woman named Henrietta Gleason who lives in Scotland.

When Sybil procrastinates and the trail on Ms. Gleason goes cold, Harry, with his superior Internet skills, steps in and finds her address. Sybil writes to her and finds that Hattie is indeed her sister! Hattie can also tell Sybil more about her birth mother and father, though she does not know why Sybil was given up for adoption. 

As Sybil grows closer to Theodore Lubeck, he confesses his feelings of guilt, as he escaped while his father and brother died at Dachau. Sybil confesses to him the circumstances of her son’s death, which include her inattention. Confession lifts the inner scream which has lived in Sybil all these years and she feels more peaceful.

Sybil finally does reconcile with Fiona and goes to London to see her. Fiona drives them to Scotland, where they visit Hattie and her brothers. Sybil’s experience in Scotland is “magical and painful.” She invites Theodore to come. By the time they return to the United States, Sybil and Theodore move in together. Sybil, at 80, is indeed losing her sight and Theodore must read and write her correspondence. They take a last trip to Paris, but then Sybil dies suddenly of a pulmonary embolism.

I found Sybil’s story movingly told. After a long life of work, a certain amount of strain, but also quiet dignity, Sybil slowly opens herself to a time of happiness with her daughter and her newly-found sister. She also finds a companion in Theodore Lubeck. I highly recommend the audiobook of this title, as those who perform it have just the right emotional tone for the characters.

 

Abigail Adams

Engraving by Joh Sartain

Abigail Adams was the wife of the second president of the United States. She and her husband, John Adams, had a relationship, preserved for us in their letters to each other, which shaped them, as did their work as founding mothers and fathers.

Abigail was born in 1744 in Massachusetts. She was 15 when she first met John. They were unimpressed with each other, but soon began writing bantering letters back and forth. Abigail had been educated only to domestic management, but she “read too much,” even in French. They married in 1764 and lived in John’s small house on a 60-acre farm near Braintree, Massachusetts, where John also practiced law.

It turned out to be a rare match of equals. John was mercurial, ambitious for fame. Abigail created a calm and comfortable home, becoming the ballast to his insecurity. They had four children. John began to write articles for the newspapers, complaining that the British colonists had begun to feel more like subjects rather than equals. His articles were the clearest and most powerful expression of colonial anger. All of a sudden, John was famous. Though warned it would jeopardize his career, John didn’t quit. Abigail was also defiant, supporting him.

John left for the Continental Congress in Philadelphia while Abigail managed the farm and their children for four years beginning in 1774. They wrote many letters, which took two or three weeks in the mail. But it became a conversation. “My pen is freer than my speech,” wrote Abigail. They longed for each other. John thought their letters important, that Abigail’s were better than his. Abigail pressed for women’s rights and education. She watched as the British evacuated Boston.

Abigail took the family to be inoculated against smallpox. John came home, but was only there for three months before he was asked to go to France to negotiate with the British. He took his oldest son, John Quincy with him. Abigail was devastated. Letters were much harder to come by. Some were thrown overboard off ships. In France, John could do little. He went to Amsterdam, achieving loans for the colonists, and then back to France, to make sure the newly formed United States retained its sovereignty.

Finally, in 1784, at 40, Abigail braved the Atlantic crossing and joined John. They rented a large house near Paris and learned the ornate etiquette of European capitals. Abigail was not used to such luxury. It struck her as decadent. Everyone was acting. The Adamses became close to Thomas Jefferson who was a frequent guest. Jefferson had not previously met women who were as intellectually capable as Abigail.

When John and Abigail were then sent to England, their reception was frosty. They were at the Court of St. James for three years, but hostilities didn’t cease. Abigail wanted to go home. “I am more American than ever,” she wrote. When they were able to go home, they bought a large house in the same town as their farm. John began writing notes on a constitution. Abigail wanted him to retire, but John wanted to claim his place in the new federal government he had done so much to create.

Receiving the next amount of electoral votes to George Washington, John became vice president. He presided over the senate in New York. A rented house became their social headquarters, with Abigail as hostess. For John’s second term, however, when the government moved to Philadelphia, Abigail stayed home. She had begun to have bouts of rheumatoid arthritis. In 1796, Washington stepped down and John became president. Abigail predicted it would be a “most unpleasant seat,” but “I dare not influence you,” she told John.

Abigail was right. Hamilton and the “extreme Federalists” were pulling in one direction, while Jefferson and his republicans were intriguing and pulling in the other. John would have liked to remain above the fray, as Washington had, but this was no longer possible. When the government moved to the new capital on the Potomac, John wrote to Abigail, “you must come, I can do nothing without you.”

Hamilton wanted to recruit an army to withstand a French invasion, but John felt that the country was too young to stand another war. He sent a delegation to sue for peace. In the end Napoleon’s army was spread too thin and nothing came of the conflict. John lost control of his presidency, however. His achievements had all been done by himself alone. He had never managed staff. Abigail thought him too contrarian to rule. When he realized he would not get a second term, he was glad.

Abigail and John retired to their home in Braintree. Of their four children, only John Quincy was a success. Nabby and Thomas came to live with their parents, bringing their children. Charles died of alcoholism and his family also arrived. When John Quincy was sent to Russia, his children also lived with Abigail and John, bringing the number of grandchildren to 15!  John sat writing in the middle of the melee, with Abigail as the center of gravity in the household.

John was trying to protect his legacy and settle scores. He began writing to Jefferson late in life, repairing their enmity as if it had never happened. The loss of her daughter Nabby to cancer brought Abigail to despair, but she reigned supreme until 1818, when a sudden illness felled her. She was 74.

The 250th anniversary of America’s birth next year is prompting our interest. Abigail’s letters are frequently quoted in the Ken Burns’ documentary, The American Revolution, and I have taken much of her story from First Family: Abigail and John Adams by Joseph Ellis [published 2010]. As the historical dust settles, the courage and hard work of our founding parents emerges, their successes and failures. Abigail’s common sense, her intelligence and her support of her volatile husband are to be celebrated.

Veronica Troy

Mother and Child, Wade Reynolds

In 1962, Veronica Troy, who is always called Ronnie, is 29. She is beautiful, like her two younger sisters, with waves of auburn hair and green eyes. She lives in the dilapidated, but once grand, Avalon House with her father, a doctor who runs a surgery in the house. Ronnie shows patients in and makes sure her father has a wardrobe full of clean shirts.

The Troys live in Faha, a tiny village in County Clare in the west of Ireland, where rain is a constant feature. Ronnie has a natural flair for organization, but she is serious and solitary. Her notebook is her closest companion. As a girl she had written stories for her sisters, but at one point she realizes they are romantic trash and she burns them. She begins writing in her journals what she sees in the surgery daily instead. 

Dr. Troy knows that Ronnie should get married, but she says she would rather stay at home and help. Ronnie and Noel Crowe had once had a friendship during which there was no end of talk between them. But the doctor was gruff with Noel and he fears he scared him off. Noel has since left for America. Another suitor also comes calling, but Ronnie gently rebuffs him. She feels more free living at home, and in her mind. Like the doctor, Ronnie cultivates a reserve between herself and the town.

On the first Sunday in Advent, a Christmas fair is held in town. That evening, Jude finds a baby in the churchyard. He believes it is dead, but he brings it to the doctor. Taking the child into the surgery, it revives. In the kitchen, the men who brought it are praying the rosary on their knees and Ronnie joins them. The doctor puts the baby into Ronnie’s arms. He admonishes the men to tell no one in town about the baby. “I’ll mind her. I promise,” Ronnie tells Jude. She and the doctor improvise a way to give the baby warm milk until a bottle can be purchased.

The doctor is inspired by the child’s revival and struck by how natural Ronnie is with it. It was as if she was more herself. Ronnie learns to do things with the baby tucked under one arm. The kitchen becomes a laundry for nappies, because they are trying to keep the baby a secret. As an unmarried woman, Ronnie cannot adopt the child. They are both afraid the authorities will arrive and take the little girl away.

The doctor is so moved by the attachment between Ronnie and the baby, that he conceives a plan to get Noel Crowe to come home and marry Ronnie, without telling her. When the secret does come out, inadvertently, Ronnie is outraged. She throws a dish at the doctor and shouts at him. “Father, I won’t marry anyone. Not every woman wants to marry.” Their conversation is heard by waiting patients and is passed around town.

The doctor has many glasses of brandy and falls asleep. Ronnie slips out the door, leaving a note. She walks for miles with the baby and a suitcase filled with milk bottles. She will take the bus to Dublin, and then a ferry to England, where she can raise the child. But then, she returns, saying to the doctor, “I know what we’ll do.”

At midnight mass on Christmas Eve, Ronnie proudly carries the baby to church. When the baby cries, she passes it around to several mothers, but the old priest, who has dementia, waves at the baby and it quiets. The next day, the Troys introduce the baby to Charlotte, Ronnie’s younger married sister. Charlotte and her husband can adopt the child and Ronnie can then care for it.

It is possible that this is not the last we will hear of Ronnie, who appears in Time of the Child, by Niall Williams [published 2024], as Williams has so fallen in love with the characters he created for his novel that he intends to keep writing about the imaginary town of Faha.

As the eldest in my own family, and having lived in several small towns, I quite identified with Ronnie’s reserve and her notebook companion! My father was a pastor, and I was shielded from most of the town’s secrets by my parents. I did get to take care of my newborn brother and sisters, however. It is thrilling to watch Ronnie’s growing attachment, her intelligence and courage as she stakes her claim to the abandoned child. And it doesn’t hurt that the story is told in wondrous languag, filled with human compassion.

Patience Stanham Gray

Patience Gray was born in Surrey into an Edwardian home, which she found oppressive, in 1917. She got an excellent education, however, at Queens College and then at the London School of Economics. At 20, she and a friend hitchhiked to Hungary, and again, a year later, she and her sister went to Romania, as well as France and Germany.

As World War II began, Patience worked briefly for the Foreign Office and had a passionate affair with Thomas Gray. They didn’t marry; however, their son Nicholas was born in 1941 and their daughter Miranda in 1942. Patience found Gray irresponsible, and separated herself from him. As a single mother, she was shunned, and she went to live in Sussex with her mother during the war. The cottage had no electricity, heating or hot water. 

Patience discovered the beauty of the woods, and began collecting fungi. These broke the monotony of a rationed diet. Patience learned from her mother, who was a gardener and a good baker. They had fruit trees and could barter preserves with neighbors.

After the war, Patience rented space in Hampstead in London, participating in a vibrant artistic community. Everyone was poor and the area was somewhat decayed and wild. With Miranda, Patience walked a lot and spied on people’s gardens. She was working on freelance writing projects.

In 1953, Patience and Primrose Boyd submitted a plan for a cookbook entitled Plat du Jour. The timing was right. Rationing had finally relaxed and people were doing their own cooking. The book, published in 1957, reached a wide audience, even in America.

While Nicholas and Miranda felt their grandmother’s house in Sussex was home, Patience worked in London and traveled, taking advantage of offers to learn, about wine, cookery and craft. She was the women’s editor at The Observer for three years. She wanted to “bring Europe home to England.” To others she seemed “eccentric, refined, above the fray.” She often went back to the country, and she and her children walked for miles in the woods, collecting.

In 1958, Patience met Norman Mommens, a Belgian sculptor. He was married, but he and Patience were drawn to each other, writing many letters. In 1962, when Norman moved down to Carrara, Italy, to work in stone, Patience went with him.

They lived in and around Carrara until 1970, where Norman worked with other sculptors, coming back to London in the winters, spending a summer in Catalonia, and almost a year on Naxos, a remote Greek island. All the while they were looking for a place to settle, where there was good stone. Patience spent her time foraging, learning from the neighbors about plants and cooking. Neither of them wanted to live in England, which was drifting toward “consumer land.”

At last, they went down to Puglia, “the end of the world,” the heel of the boot that is Italy, and happened on a sheep ranch, called Spigolizzi. They camped in the house, basically a cow shed, while they bought it from five peasant families. It was set in a flowering wilderness, the macchia, and difficult to get to. Water had to be hauled, there were no doors or windows and certainly no electricity. “Ideas of comfort are replaced with moments of intangible poetry and delight,” said Norman. They made it habitable with the indispensable help of a neighbor.

Patience and Norman settled down to work, Norman at sculpting and Patience at silver and gold jewelry. They took time out for agricultural work when the season demanded it, bottling many liters of olive oil (from almost 75 trees!) and wine. Patience kept in touch with friends and family through voluminous letters, and when visitors came, she cooked. 

Throughout their itinerant years, Patience had been collecting recipes and writing stories for a book which would eventually become Honey from a Weed.  Editors loved the drafts Patience sent them, but they didn’t see that the book could be economically viable. Patience saw it as a handbook for the time to come, when people had an interest in self-sufficiency and were reacting against consumerism. It wasn’t meant to be polemical, but its themes overlapped with a growing interest in ecology.

Honey from a Weed was about wilderness. The recipes in the book detail everything Patience learned about foraging and cooking from her peasant neighbors. Patience was intimate with the surrounding macchia, loved to wander alone. She also didn’t want people to have romantic notions about their life. Fields were sprayed, a nuclear reactor was being considered for their area and people increasingly wanted “American kitchens”! 

Alan Davidson, who had started Prospect Books, agreed to publish the book in a limited edition. Davidson and Patience worked on it by letter and then Davidson came down to the Salento for a week. Every detail was discussed. The book is full of drawings, has a detailed bibliography and an unusual format. Patience went to London for the book launch in November, 1986.

Honey from a Weed got a great reception, particularly from other food writers. It was pronounced “a classic” and “life-changing.” Patience was profiled in magazines and did many interviews. Both Norman and Patience were intimidating, “relentlessly natural.” After 30 years of work at Spigolizzi, Norman died in 2000, and Patience, of a stroke, in 2005.

Adam Federman’s biography of Patience, Fasting and Feasting: The Life of Visionary Food Writer Patience Gray [published 2017], is a wonderful introduction to her. As he says, Patience Gray’s book “is an antidote to modern life. Things are sacred.” In Honey from a Weed, Gray writes “poverty rather than wealth gives the good things of life their true significance.” I am fascinated by the life of this woman, who gave up a rich cultural and intellectual life in London to live in the wild and isolated Salento. What she found, of course, was that the world came to her.

Elnora Comstock

Heather Fairfield as Elnora, 1990

A Girl of the Limberlost tells the story of Elnora, a “country girl” living at the edge of the Limberlost Swamp and gathering moths and other creatures for study, as its author, Gene Stratton-Porter, did. In 1909, when the book was published, the Limberlost was a dwindling 13,000-acre swamp in northeast Indiana, being drained for farmland, for its exotic timber and drilled for oil.

Elnora’s father drowned in the swamp at her birth. Her mother mourns extravagantly, blaming Elnora and treating her roughly. At 16, Elnora goes to high school, but must endure the ridicule of the other girls for her uncouth looks. Elnora’s neighbors, the Sintons, go to town and buy material for nice dresses and good shoes for her, but neither she, nor her mother are willing to take them until Elnora finds she can pay for things by selling her collected moths to the Bird Woman, who is writing natural history books.

Elnora eventually makes friends of the girls in school, sharing treats with them. She has never known anything of her father. When she falls in love with the music of a violin, her mother hushes her. Elnora’s father had played and Mrs. Comstock cannot endure it. The Sintons find Elnora’s father’s violin for her, however, and Elnora secretly learns to play.

At a school play, Elnora plays the violin, bringing in all of the music she has learned from the natural sounds of the swamp. Elnora’s mother, who had never been to the high school before, faints when she hears this. Elnora is to lead the graduation procession, as she is valedictorian. She asks her mother for a new dress to wear, but her mother only produces one from last year. Hopes dashed, Elnora puts on a gingham dress and rushes to the Bird Woman to ask for help.

When Mrs. Comstock arrives at graduation, Elnora leads the procession in a beautiful white dress the Bird Woman has concocted from an old trunk. When Mrs. Comstock slaps Elnora, destroying an important yellow emperor moth, Mrs. Sinton has had enough. She tells Elnora’s mother that her husband wasn’t worth her tears. He had been planning an affair when he died. Mrs. Comstock changes completely, fearing she has lost her daughter. She finds two yellow emperor moths for her, and Elnora is induced to come home.

Elnora would like to go to college, but she has also been offered a position teaching nature classes in the school. During the summer  she works hard to complete her collections. Philip Ammon, a young banker who is recovering from a serious illness, arrives in town at his doctor’s recommendation. Upon meeting Elnora, he begins to help with collection.

Philip stays all summer, helping Elnora and eating the good food produced by her mother. When Elnora plays the violin for him, her mother hears it, takes it back to the house and in the evenings, Elnora plays for them. Philip, who is engaged to a childhood sweetheart from Chicago, finds Elnora quite different from the society women he knows. He senses her sympathy and comprehension. “She had known bitter experiences early in life,” but “she seemed to possess a large sense of brotherhood for all human and animate creatures.” He also finds her lovely, with her vibrant hair and striking eyes.

Philip, Elnora and Mrs. Comstock are all awed by the emergence of moths and butterflies from their chrysalis. They have lovely evenings, eating in the arbor. One night Mrs. Comstock dances in the moonlight. Philip is called home to Chicago by his father’s poor health. Elnora is very sad, but honors Philip’s engagement.

Planning to teach for the school year, Elnora goes to an institute for a week. While she is gone, her mother rents a house in town, so Elnora won’t have to walk three miles to school and back every day. She cleans up her appearance and buys nice dresses. When Elnora starts school, Mrs. Comstock makes a fine hostess for Elnora’s friends. They are happy during the school year, but in the spring return to their cabin near the Limberlost.

In Chicago, Philip plans a ball for Edith, his intended. She is to wear yellow, trimmed with lavender and the hall is decked with these colors. Edith is beautiful in a delicate dress and jewels. When they are about to lead the grand march, however, a yellow emperor moth strays into the room and Philip catches it, leaving the hall to give instructions to have it sent to Elnora.

Edith is furious, throwing Philip’s ring on the floor. “I step aside for no one,” she says. Philip is embarrassed by the scene and decides it is the last straw. Edith has been toying with him too long. He now realizes he should have a care for himself in his marriage. He rushes to the Limberlost, but both Mrs. Comstock and Elnora are cool to him. Elnora does not want him to regret his previous commitment. 

Elnora expects Edith will turn up and look for Philip. She does, arriving with friends and Philip’s sister. She berates Elnora, insisting,”I have been promised to Philip my whole life. I will not give him up.” Elnora says she has made no promises to Philip, has honored their relationship. When Edith leaves, Elnora writes to her mother and Philip, slipping away without leaving an address.

Elnora goes to Mackinac Island in the very northern part of Michigan, where she knows that “Freckles,” the previous caretaker of the Limberlost, is living with his family. They, the O’More family, welcome her. For two months, Philip does not know where she is. He is fearful for her and has a nervous breakdown. 

Edith also arrives on Mackinac Island, a popular summer resort for city people. She has also been suffering. She tells her friend Hart that she no longer believes Philip belongs to her. As they sit near the ferry, they watch the O’Mores get off the boat, and with them Elnora. They write to Philip, telling him they have found Elnora. 

Mr. O’More asks Elnora whether she likes the island, but Elnora is homesick for the Limberlost. “I like enough of a fight for things that I always remember how I got them,” she says. “I like sufficient danger to put an edge on life. This is so tame.” 

Edith bemoans her former selfishness and pride, says she is sick of society. When a yellow emperor moth appears, she carefully captures it and brings it to Elnora. And when Philip comes to find her, Elnora at last accepts him. She is “unspeakably happy.”

It may seem at first that Elnora is collecting only for the sake of money for books, tuition and clothes, but she has love and reverence for everything she has learned from the swamp. Philip even suggests she has no need for college. Stratton-Porter (the Bird Woman in the story) herself worked to protect the Limberlost and wrote nature study books, even making the photographs herself. Collecting aims at scientific study and habitat protection.

Though Stratton-Porter’s writing is somewhat treacly and she seems to enjoy portraying over-wrought emotions, the characters are honest and their relationships plausible. The book is a testament to the beauty of the natural world, contrasting it with man-made beauty. Something of a country girl myself, I loved the many descriptions of light, landscape, woods and plants.