by Lorna Lee
They found a one-bedroom apartment to rent. Meri did not care about the small and shabby apartment, which had a proper floor and no lecherous drunk to deal with. Since Meri withheld her affections from Joe, privacy was not an issue. Meri had decided that, while Joe seemed to be trying his best by moving them into a better living situation, he had still betrayed her by luring her to America. How many times did I ask him about New York City while Gratien was there to make sure we understood each other? He could have clarified. I never would’ve married such a homely man if he didn’t hold the promise of New York City in his hands. I’ll never forgive him for his trickery. He ruined my life, and I’ll never let him forget it.
Joe got a job working for a contractor who built houses. He did the plumbing work. Within a year he saved enough money to buy a small plot of land just outside of town and began building them a proper house. She made sure the house had three bedrooms: one for him, one for her, and one for Jeannine. Her bedroom was the largest—she wanted room for a sewing machine and storage for material. Once she learned that Montreal, Canada was approximately an hour’s car ride away from her new home, she insisted on regular visits to the French-speaking metropolis where she could buy fine material from which to fashion dresses for her and now her fifteen year-old daughter.
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Three years passed when Meri had her first bit of luck in her new country. A neighbor admired one of her dresses and asked Meri if she would sew her daughter’s wedding dress.
“Yes, I to happy do it.”
“How much do you charge?”
“I get back to you.”
Meri asked Joe and Jeannine how much she should charge. She discovered she needed more information. Will I have to purchase the material? Do I charge extra for alterations? Should I charge by the garment or by the hour? There’s a great deal of complexity to being a businesswoman!
Meri seemed happy for the first time since she realized New York City was not going to be her home. She devised a pricing list she thought seemed fair with as many contingencies she could imagine and presented it to her neighbor. The woman hired her on the spot. Perhaps my prices are too low. I’ll change them next time.
The wedding gown garnered a great deal of attention and, with it, so did Meri’s fledgling sewing business. Soon, Meri’s schedule filled with both new women’s garments to make and alterations of both men’s and women’s clothing.
Her bedroom became overrun with garments either waiting for her to sew or waiting for customers to pick up. Having strangers come to her bedroom felt awkward for both Meri and Joe. Something needed to change.
She asked Joe to build her a small shop on their property. She had a business and it needed a name. La Couture de Meri was Jeannine’s idea. Meri approved wholeheartedly. Her dream had been to work for a famous fashion house in Paris. “My dream too small!” She told Jeannine and Joe over supper one evening. “I have my fashion house. Paris, no. New York City, no. Here, yes! Papa be proud of his little girl. Joe, you building me shop near house for my sign.”
Jeannine smiled. “Maybe someday you can sew my wedding gown, Mamma. I’d be proud to wear a La Couture de Meri original.”
Meri grasped her daughter’s hand and squeezed it. After all my mistakes, I’m a good mother. Not like Mamma. My daughter loves me and wants me.
Joe interrupted the tender moment between mother and daughter. “Aw, Meri. You know I was gonna build me the garage I always wanted next to the house.”
“Joe Trottier, you bringing me here to New York Nowhere. You building me sewing shop.” Meri released her hold on Jeannine and stood up to face the still-seated Joe. She placed both hands on her hips and planted her feet firmly on the floor. Her eyes, however, remained a cool light gray.
Joe looked up at his determined, never-take-no-for-an-answer wife. “Sure, Meri. I know when I’m beat. I saw that look too many times from my Sarge in the Army.”
“Yes, you build shop?” He still talks too fast. What is this “sarge” he talks about and what does this have to do with building my sewing shop?
“Yes, I build shop.” He smiled his goofy, crooked smile.
At that moment, Meri could have sworn she saw her Papa wink behind the thick spectacles framing Joe’s jovial eyes.
Epilogue
“Fiction is the truth inside the lie.”
Stephen King
My grandmother, upon whose life this book is based, was a woman with a past worth knowing.
Unfortunately for me she did not make a habit of dwelling in the past. When she talked about her early life, she tip-toed around the details that mattered. Why was her relationship with her mother—my great-grandmother—so contentious? What made her love her seafaring, and mostly absent, father so much? What was life like in Nazi-occupied Paris? Why did she remain in America after she realized she would not be living in New York City, especially since the United States government offered free passage back to disillusioned war brides? I knew more about the big, white dog she looked after for one of her Parisian employers than how she managed to raise her daughter (my mother) in the midst of a war or how she met my step-grandfather and finagled her way to America after the war.
As a young child, I always characterized my grandmother as moody and rather boring, watching her do her daily routines without a smile. Afternoon tea time was when she became more animated, more interesting, more human. My grandmother, my mother, my two sisters and I would all share sugar-sweetened tea she had made. Sometimes, when she felt like it, she would reminisce about her life in Paris or, more rarely, her girlhood days in Finland. The stories she told, however, were the same ones, much like cooks always preparing the same dishes for which they are known or with which they are most comfortable.
When she was in her early eighties and thought she was dying, she revealed the identity of my mother’s real father. For most of my mother’s life and my life, she told us he was a French soldier who died in “the war” (even though my mother was born in 1933, well after World War I and well before World War II). She only revealed that he was a Jewish merchant and never revealed his name. The astonishing revelation that my mother is half Jewish and that she raised her during the occupation of France prompted this book.
This book is a work of fiction based on the puzzle pieces of her life she chose to reveal. I was able to gather those disparate pieces and put them loosely together. I filled in the many holes with my imagination, but the chronology and substance of what you read is true. Many specific events are also true. To preserve my family’s privacy, all names and specific locations in the United States are fictional as well.
Book Club Discussion Questions
“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”
Dorothy Parker
How did you experience the book? Were you immediately drawn into the story, or did it take you a while? Did the book intrigue, amuse, disturb, alienate, irritate, or frighten you?
Do you find the characters convincing? Are they believable? Compelling? Are they fully developed as complex, emotional human beings, or are they one-dimensional?
What do you see as the main characters’ biggest strengths and their biggest weaknesses?
Which characters do you particularly admire or dislike? What are their primary characteristics?
What motivates a given character’s actions? Do you think those actions are justified or ethical?
Were there moments when you disagreed with the choices of any of the characters? What would you have done differently?
How does the way the characters see themselves differ from how others see them? How do you see the various characters?
Do any characters grow or change during the course of the novel? If so, in what way?
Who in this book would you most like to meet? What would you ask—or say?
If you could insert yourself as a character in the book, what role would you play? (You might be a new character or take the place of an existing one.)
Is the story plot or character driven? In other words, do events unfold quickly? Or is more time spent developing the charactersʼ inner lives? Does it make a difference to your enjoyment?
What scene resonated most with you personally in either a positive or negative way? Why?
What surprised you most about the book?
Were there any particular quotes that stood out to you? Why?
How does the setting figure into the book?
How would the book have been different if it had taken place in a different time or place?
What are some of the bookʼs themes? How important were they?
Consider the ending. Did you expect it or were you surprised? Was it manipulative? Was it forced? Was it neatly wrapped up—too neatly? Or was the story unresolved, ending on an ambiguous note?
If you could rewrite the ending, would you? In other words, did you find the ending satisfying? Why or why not.
Can you pick out a passage that strikes you as particularly profound or interesting or perhaps something that sums up the central dilemma of the book?
Does the book remind you of your own life? An event or situation? A person—a friend, family member, boss, coworker?
Have any of your views or thoughts changed as a result of reading this book?
If you were to talk with the author, what would you want to know? (Many authors enjoy talking with book clubs. Contact the author to see if you can set up a phone chat.)
Have you read the author’s other book? Can you discern a similarity—in theme, writing style, structure—between them? Or are they completely different?
About the Author
Lorna Lee
In her former life as a sociology professor, Lorna published many academic and research papers. Creative writing is a new path taken since her premature disability retirement in 2006 due to Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome.
Never Turn Back is her second book and first novel. Her first book is a memoir entitled How Was I Supposed to Know? That book was awarded Best Memoir, 2012 by the Adirondack Writing Center in their Annual Literary Award Contest. In 2010, she was a finalist in the memoir genre of the Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Contest with her short story, Monkey Business.
Lorna currently lives with the man of her dreams and the dog of her dreams in the home of her dreams in the Portland, Oregon area. She keeps herself busy by writing, quilting, walking, meditating, and blogging.
To find out more about Lorna and her current shenanigans, visit her blog, lornasvoice.com. She can be contacted via a page on her blog dedicated to this novel.
Shameless Self-Promotion
Thank you for choosing my book. I hope you enjoyed reading it. I enjoyed writing it. And rewriting it. And rewriting it. And…you get the picture! No less than two years of my life went into researching and writing this novel. Weaving the real with the imaginary was an interesting challenge. I wonder, as an author, if you, the reader, can tell which parts actually happened and which parts came from…well…from the place writers get inspiration.
No matter how much marketing an author does, nothing promotes a book like positive reviews from readers.
Please take a few moments of your time and go to Amazon.com where you can find this novel by searching by either the title or the author and submit a review. Tell the world (and me) what you thought of Never Turn Back.