The Backstories

Each Other was a tough baby to deliver. I tried many times to let the story go, to put it away, shelve it and forget it but it wouldn't let me go. The outline for the story came to me one afternoon while I was at home in Tucson, AZ. It felt as though the main characters, Annie and Warren, were tapping me on the shoulder, tugging at my sleeve and saying, "Tell our story." In fact, about one year into the writing, my family made a dramatic move from the southwestern U.S. to the northeast and in that long process of selling a house and 70% of our belongings, packing up, finishing school schedules and finding new jobs, my book was put on hold for several months and eventually, packed up too. We drove two cars across country in June of 1997 with a very patient and adventurous eleven year old son and no relief driver. Exhausted, I had nightmares each night. The theme of the dream was the same in each nightmare: I had neglected a child, a young baby, only to find it in its crib, hungry and whithered where I had forgotten it. I was haunted by this image and had to figure out what the baby represented. Rubbing my  tired eyes over a cup of coffee in a restaurant somewhere in Iowa one morning, I realized it (the baby in my dream) was symbolic for my book. The baby , neglected and needing care,had been abandoned and was waiting for me. Then finally, many weeks later when we got settled in a new home, I returned to my box of books and papers and the beginnings of a novel that I was determined to reconnect with, to research and write.

Annie Cunningham, the main character in Each Other is a Union spy living in nothern Virginia. As a writer and reader myself, I had never been interested in the topic of female spies of the Civil War until one day  when I was purchasing books for a library that I managed, and I became intrigued by a book that told the stories of many women spies from history, some of whom had dressed as men and were not discovered to be the opposite sex until they were wounded. As I read on about the topic, I discovered that women spies were key to important events on both sides of the (American) Civil War.
They passed notes, gave safe harbor to other spies who had to pass between the lines, learned of troop movements and battle plans all at their own peril to follow their convictions.

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Each Other Available at Smashwords.com!

Finally! After 17 years of writing, researching and sitting on the bookshelf in my home,  Each Other: A Novel is available for downloading from Smashwords.com. If you'd care to start off with an excerpt at no charge, go for it. That's a good way to tell if this is a book you'd like to read.

Each Other has many back stories in the making but the bottom line is that this is a story that wouldn't let me go, no matter how hard I tried, and the topic of the Civil War...? I thought it would be the last topic I'd write about. However, as a librarian, purchasing books  for a high school library in the southwest, I found a book about women spies of the (American) Civil War (1861-1865) and was intrigued by the means those women took to follow their convictions, whether political, social, moral or emotional. As a former history teacher having just returned from the set of a major Hollywood film as an extra where stories 'magically' came to life, I saw the scenes from Each Other develop in my mind before I could put them down on paper. This book and their characters wouldn't let me go and I found myself researching and writing late at night, during my son's roller skating parties, riding as a passenger in the car and any place I could squeeze in time around my very full-time job. As a wrap-around novel that begins and ends in 1891 when Annie Cunningham is called to the death bed of a woman she had never met and never planned to meet, most of the story is set during the Civil War in 1862 in northern Virginia where Annie is living as a spy for the Union.

Next time....the back stories of Each Other

Each Other - A New Novel Set in the Civil War

Coming Soon!  Each Other - A Novel  by Pamela Erickson will soon to be published on Smashwords.com.  Each Other is the story of Annie Cunningham, a Union spy during the (American) Civil War and the complications created against the backdrop of her love affair with Warren Dodd, a Confederate Captain.

Beginning and ending in 1891, the novel wraps around a story of Annie and Warren through the events of 1862 in northern Virginia. Historical events are woven through the story and fictionalized for the novel. Watch Night celebrated by new England churches on New Year's Eve 1862 to honor those who fought for freedom was held on the eve of ushering in the Emancipation Proclamation. This event is described in Each Other and potentially significant in the year 2012, the 150th anniversary of the event.

As the story unravels, we learn that Annie and her sister Sarah, encouraged by the Abolitionist movement in their native Massachusetts take great risks to  join the spying effort after the death of their youngest brother, one of the war's early casualties. An herbalist and healer, Annie works in extreme conditions as a nurse in a nearby hospital, mainly as an attempt to work her way into the adjacent prison to arrange an escape fo the Union captives there.

Set in a slower time, Each Other and the historical events that create a backdrop for this work of fiction, remind us that we are who we are because of one another. The themes in Each Other still ring true today
as the characters and events of the book express the themes of life during war, personal freedom and conviction, empowerment and connection across Time.