Book Review/The Trip North
The Trip North
And other writings
By Lucille Newton
Paperback $10.95
By BILL DUNCAN
The News-Review
This Sunday, Mother’s Day, mothers all over America will be getting Mother’s Day cards and gifts from their offsprings. Some may even receive a book as a gift, but few, if any, will receive the gift that Lucille Newton will receive.
Her lifetime dream.
The gift will be from her daughter, Kathleen. Unfortunately, it will be delivered posthumously. Regardless, it fulfills a lifelong dream of Lucille Genevieve Smith Shaw Newton, who is described by her daughter in the foreword as “an extraordinary woman, who was not famous, not rich, and she probably “never achieved a great many of her dreams in life.”
Interestingly, every word Kathleen writes about her mother is true. I know that first hand. I had the good fortune to have worked with Lucille for five years at the end of my daily newspaper career in California. She was a newspaperwoman’s woman and in my newspaper career I have met some real dynamos on the Nelly Bly side of journalism.
Kathleen writes:
“Growing up, I always knew that Mother was the glue that held our family together. I always felt that home was simply wherever Mother was. When times were lean – which was often – she always managed somehow. She could work longer, harder and with more determination than any three people I have ever known. She was a natural leader.”
Lucille in her lifetime was a weekly newspaper publisher, but in truth she worked in all phases of the newspaper business. Her daughter, Kathleen followed in her footsteps and until recently was editor-publisher of newspapers in Lincoln City and Tillamook and now owns a consulting business in Oregon.
The book her daughter painstakingly edited for publishing, is indeed indicative of the writing talent Lucille had, including sparkling poetry she wrote in her 20s. The pages of the memoir about an adventure of moving her family to Alaska in 1946, reveals a sensitivity, idealism and depth of feeling that Kathleen said was hidden until she discovered her mother’s manuscripts.
“Perhaps I am saddest over the realization that the talent exhibited in the pages of the book was never shared with the world,” Kathleen writes. “As a lifelong writer, editor and publisher, I believe Mother could have been a successful writer.”
Kathleen is the very clone of her mother, concludes her foreword in the book by saying that the publishing of “The Trip North,” is the fulfillment of a dream her mother for many years.
Lucille begins the story of how in August of 1946 she had an idea of pioneering in Alaska and moving her family there, but got little encouragement from her husband, George, who had just returned to civilian life from the armed forces in World War II and had a good job in a printing plant. But once Lucille had an idea, it was going to happen and the book is about that great adventure of moving North, achieved with the determination that only Lucille could possess.
Lucille writes with polished storytelling, not only the adventure of moving an entire family to a strange place such as the Alaska territory and all its promises those with a for pioneering spirit. “…finally on October 31, 1946, we loaded our worldly goods into our G.I. surplus 1942 Dodge Carryalls and left Los Angeles up ol’ 99. We rolled along the highway looking slightly like a renewed version of ‘The Grapes of Wrath.’”
What the family experienced in a tarpaper shack on the Alaskan tundra that first winter is in itself a priceless tale of the pioneering spirit of the American, but is also telling the story of this determined woman.
The final part of the memoir, is about Lucille’s growing up years and a revealing part of what made her the strong person she was in life. She tells about the time when she her parents were divorced and her mother had to work to support the family of four. “She just turned the household and shopping over to me,” Lucille wrote “I was in the last of my sixth grade and felt grown up and capable.”
With the same determination of the grown woman who moved her family to Alaska, Lucille freshened up the front bedroom, ran an ad in the newspaper and rented out the room for extra money. She cooked the meals, did the shopping and said in this
part of the memoir, “I didn’t realize that it wasn’t the way most kids my age were living.”
She literally became the mother to her siblings, admitting that “sometimes I got a little to bossy,” but adds “I seldom felt resentment at my role in life.”
I thought I really knew Lucille Newton until I read the words she had written. I often wondered about the resilience of her daughter, Kathleen, who was one of my best reporters as editor of a daily newspaper in California and has remained almost like a daughter to me over the years. Her tribute to her mother is a gift to me and to anyone who reads this memoir.
(Bill Duncan can be reached at bduncan@nrtoday.com or by writing to P.O. Box 812,
Roseburg, OR 97470. Lucille’s book can be ordered online at www.lulu.com in softcover print for $10.50 or as a download pdf for $5.)