Our lives are interwoven with all that comes before us. The land we’re born to influences our lives and helps shape who we become. My ancestors lived on and worked the land in Nebraska, Wyoming and South Dakota. They didn’t talk much about their lives or inner worlds. I wrote Stories We Didn’t Tell because I wanted to understand my relatives’ connections to each other, the land, and the times they were born into, and I wished to see more clearly what their lives as everyday people and the values they held could tell me about our story as Americans.
Curious about why I was named after my great aunt, I wrote to her when I was first out of college to ask about her life. My great aunt told me to ask my mother, saying her life was just like my mom’s. Her response disappointed me but it started me on a quest to learn more about the people, land, and wider history of the Western states where my great aunt and other family members lived. What a fabulous adventure it has been interviewing relatives, examining old photos and documents, reading novels, poetry, nonfiction and historical studies. The research and visits to the area allowed me to imaginatively enter my ancestors’ lives and give further voice to those who didn’t fully tell their tales.
The Western Heritage Award encourages people to reflect on the ways the West has shaped us, bringing our attention to the many lives connected to the West like those of my ancestors. The West holds a central role in the creation and development of the US as we now know it. Much of what happens in America today originated with those who were homesteaders, farmers and ranchers, teachers, laundry workers, soldiers, cooks and waitresses, my ancestors among them. They carried out the daily effort of washing clothes, nurturing animals and plants, instructing children, serving food, doing the work that has brought us to the place in time we now stand. As George Elliot wrote in Middlemarch, “for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” These are the people whose stories I tell.
We embody the stories, even the unacknowledged ones, from family, partners, friendships, as well as the land we live on. Stories hold us together. I hope for Stories We Didn’t Tell to be a light that expands our understanding of the West’s significance and draws readers further into their own life’s stories to touch and renew them with beauty found even in the midst of hardships.
