JR Reynolds’ grandmother braved six months of treacherous traveling in search of a new life across the massive expanse of America’s West in 1860. Edna Hazel Burt-Reynolds documented the trip from Chicago to Oregon City, Ore., in diaries and letters. Reynolds used those writings to detail the struggles endured by her grandmother and other 19th century women in her self-published book, “Sustenance and Courage: Pioneer Woman.”
Her book was one of more than a dozen presented to the Puyallup community by local Puget Sound authors at Meeker Mansion on Saturday.
Reynolds said it is difficult to get bookstores to sell self-published books because retailers primarily use publishing houses. At 75, she said she doesn’t have much time left to wait for a publisher to promote her.
“This book was a great opportunity to tell the story of my family, specifically my grandmother, who had to travel 2,000 miles across the Great Divide,” Reynolds said. “The book is told from a woman’s standpoint, which is rare for most pioneer books, which are usually told through men.”
The majority of the authors at the Meeker Mansion event wrote historical non-fiction books, which worked well with historical setting, said Andy Anderson, president of the Ezra Meeker Historical Society.
But Casey Czichas liked the mysterious and ghostly aspects of the house to sell his horror fiction books. Czichas, a Tacoma resident who was born in Puyallup, has written seven books. He was marketing two of those for the event: “The Candlelight Reader” and “Stories From Earth,” written under his pen name Max Poppit.
“My sleep suffers from my writing, but I have to get something down on the page everyday,” Czichas said.
He uses the stream-of-consciousness technique to make his terrible dreams and ideas come true.
“I do it to make zero money; if I can just make someone smile from my words, then I’ve accomplished my goal.”
Taking home several of the authors’ works was Eileen Heapes, who has lived in Puyallup all her life. She remembered visiting Meeker Mansion as a Campfire Girl in the 1960s, when the house used to be a nursing home. Heapes is a volunteer at the McNeil Island Correction Center, and uses events like these to find ways to connect the prison inmates to the outside world. She wanted to rally up support from the authors to speak about their experiences to the inmates on the island.
“I’ve done events like this before, and the inmates really enjoy seeing and hearing the authors tell their stories,” she said.
While this event was directed to the literary community, the mansion is host to many more events for Puyallup residents throughout the year, Anderson said.
“Everyone knows about the house; the problem is getting them to come into it,” he said. “The community needs to help preserve history and this house to keep events like this going.”
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