There remains, in my grandmother's house, in a room that was my mother's fifty years ago, a bookshelf filled with yellowed volumes, perhaps fifty of them, each a hundred years old. Rows and rows of books by an author dear to my gramma, then to my mom, and now to me.
It is curious that it has taken me so long to read a book by this author. As dear as my gramma was, and as fiercely as I cling to anything that was hers, one might think I would have done it decades ago. Part of me assumed it would be treacly fluff, along the lines of Pollyanna or Anne of Green Gables, neither of which spoke to me; her taste was definitely along such lines. Another part of me simply didn't want to think about that part of her, the Romantic romantic, a hothouse flower whose ways of escaping her reality were often unhealthy and destructive.
And so it was not until I spent some time in her abandoned house, with nothing else to distract me, that I actually picked up one of those old books and allowed myself to be encased in it. The treacle was there, yes. There is an unshakeable faith in the goodness of humanity that colors Porter's world. There is also darkness: death, child abuse, betrayal, event the hint of rape. Unlike many other books of this genre and era, Porter does not flinch from the darkness in humanity. The light is merely stronger. I may never know exactly what drove my gramma to do the things she did, what her inner world was like, but surely her affinity for this writer is a clue.
Later today I will meet my second cousin once removed, a seventeen year old girl who is going through many of the same things Elnora did in this book. I cannot say that this book helped me to face the darkness; I have long come to my own way of doing that. But perhaps it helped my dear, sweet gramma, long gone from this world, to see something bright in it, and perhaps it can help others yet.
