By Debbie Gardner
debbieg@thereminder.com
Dolores Yergeau wasn’t intending to write a novel at all when she started spinning the story of her
40-something heroine, the recently widowed fine artist Eileen, and her chance beach encounter with the handsome, never-married college professor, Eric.
She was just a grandmother trying to prod a grandson to start working on something she believed he could do.
“I was going back and forth in email with my oldest grandson, he lives in Amsterdam; to me, he’s brilliant, so I’ve been pushing for him to write a novel. He didn’t exactly say ‘no,’ but he didn’t say ‘yes,’” Yergeau said of how her desire to prod the budding author, named Jason, to start his own book, turned into something more. “He sometimes would write a little and then stop, so I said, ‘let’s play a game…I’ll make up a story, you make up a story and we’ll go back and forth, chapter by chapter, and that’s how it started.
“I never intended to write beyond a few weeks or so,” she admitted.
The two exchanged story snippets for a few weeks, until Jason stopped sending his chapters. “I got very annoyed with him, so I stopped,” Yergeau said, adding she thought that was the end of her tale.
“Then he scolded me, ‘What happened to Eric?’ ‘What happened to Eileen? He really got into the characters,” she shared. “That encouraged me enough that I thought, ‘what did happen to them?’”
A novelist is born
Yergeau said Jason’s questions sent her back to the drawing board – where she created a tale for a whole cast of characters – some young, some middle aged – and a story set in an oceanfront town based on vacation experiences in her beloved Maine.
“I go up there every summer with my two daughters,” Yergeau said of her choice of setting, adding that like her main character, Eileen, one of her favorite activities during those annual visits is a walk along the beach.
In the opening pages of Yergeau’s novel, “Pink Sneakers,” the two main characters meet when a beach-walking Eileen stops to retrieve her pink sneakers, parked under the beachside bench Eric and his canine companion has chosen as the spot to work on his novel.
Still, crafting the book was a first for the grandmother of 11 and great grandmother of 10 from East Springfield, who turned 88 in December. Before finishing the 148-page novel, her only foray into writing– besides winning a story contest at age 13 – were “correspondence, and little books for two of my grandchildren,” she confessed. Yergeau has written a story for a grandson “about a boy with a newspaper route and a dog” and one for a granddaughter “about dinosaurs” in which each child is the star.
The novel, though, was something else entirely.
“I did not know [what happened to Eileen and Eric],” she admitted. “I had not planned ahead. So actually, if you think about it [the story] mirrors life, because in life you don’t know what the next thing is going to bring. And I didn’t know what was going to happen to the characters in my book.
“I’d think about it, and think about it, and then I’d write a little more, and [eventually] I ended up writing the whole book,” she said. That was, she added, about five years ago.
At first it was just a draft, and she set it aside. “When I’d pick it up, I would go over it, eliminate some parts, add others, correct others, and ended up with the book,” she said.
It wasn’t until she took a short-story writing course with Bellastoripress owner Linda Cardillo at Longmeadow’s Storrs Library in the fall of 2018 that she looked at the novel again. “At the end of [the first] class, I said to her, ‘do you think you would have time to read a novel I wrote?’” Yergeau shared. “She said ‘absolutely!’ and I was so pleased.”
Every week, Yergeau said she asked Cardillo if she had gotten a chance to read her novel. “That went on for about nine classes, so I figured she wasn’t going to, and I forgot about it,” Yergeau said. “At the last class I asked her again, and she said, “Yes, I did,’ and I was so surprised.”
When asked what she thought of the effort, Cardillo told Yergeau “I loved it,” which came as a complete surprise to the novice novelist.
A romance for grown-ups
Even though she wasn’t planning to write an entire novel, Yergeau said when she started thinking about the theme for her back-and-forth writing “game,” she had some specific ideas in mind.
“I wanted [the female character] to be older – because so many books are written about young people – and I wanted her to be an artist, because I am an artist,” Yergeau said. She also shares another trait with her heroine, Eileen. Both take photos of the subjects they plan to paint.
“Eileen was a professional artist and a professional photographer, who took pictures on the beach” where she meets Eric,” Yergeau explained.
Her other characters also reflect traits that are drawn from people in her life. Eric, she shared, was modeled on her father – who entertained his children with fanciful adventures of Lenny Squirrel every night before bed – “Lenny always ended up so tired he couldn’t wait to go to bed, ” she recalled. Her dad would also spontaneously recite poetry to the family while they were riding in the car. “The poem Eileen recites to Eric [in the book] is one my dad used to recite to us,” Yergeau added.
The young college student, Roxy, whose appearance presents the first bump in Eileen and Eric’s budding romance, is modeled, Yergeau said, on young people she’d observed during her life.
“I get a kick out of different personalities – I’d seen party girls like that,” she said of Roxy’s somewhat self-centered, rich girl personality when she first appears in the story.
The character of Eileen’s daughter, Nikki – a recent college grad who comes to stay with her mother at the beach – was loosely based on a granddaughter, also named Nikki – who is in Hollywood on the path to becoming a producer. “But there’s a little more Roxy [in the book’s] Nikki,” Yergeau said. Then character of Tim, the piano player at a nearby high-end resort who encourages Roxy to try her hand at songwriting, and Nikki at a singing career, shares traits with one of Yergeau’s grandsons, who is a composer. “Music and singing are very important in my life,” Yergeau said, adding she had been a member of the Springfield Symphony chorus when her children were young.
The characters aren’t the only part of the novel where Yergeau followed that old adage, “Write what you know.” For example, beyond the beach settings, she said the scene where Eileen and Eric visit an antique shop is drawn from a trip she and her daughters took one time in Maine, down to the items the couple purchased.
“When my daughter read [the book] she said, ‘Oh Mom, I know you wrote this!” Yergeau said.
But not everything in “Pink Sneakers” is drawn from Yergeau’s life and experiences. The character of the Frenchman, Henri, another foil to Eileen and Eric’s relationship, came completely from Yergeau’s imagination. “I just invented him, I thought he was fun,” Yergeau said. “My daughter thought he was obnoxious…I got a kick out of that!”
A message for every age reader
Yergeau said as the story developed she hoped it would “appeal to both” young and older readers. “I don’t want people to feel because they are older they are over the hill...I want them to explore their full talent,” she said. And like her characters Roxy, Nikki and Tom, she said she hoped the novel would “encourage young people to explore and use their talents, too.
“If you have a gift, use it,” Yergeau said.
As for her own storytelling talent, Yergeau said that was a surprise discovery.
“I’m sure everyone who has written a novel knows where it was going,” Yergeau said. “I would wake up and lay in bed at 4 in the morning and I would get ideas [for my story] and I would say, ‘Oh, that’s good!’ and I would get up and write it down. Sometimes it was good, sometimes not so good.” However the idea panned out, she pushed on.
“That’s what I want to see in young people, in older people, she said. “I want to see them push on.”
And she’s still hoping to encourage her grandson, Jason, to follow her lead.
“So far it backfired,” she said, adding she didn’t tell him about her novel being published until she learned he wasn’t coming home this past Christmas.
“He’s thrilled,” she said, adding he went out and bought an audio copy of her novel on Amazon when she shared the news.
He said, “‘They know what they are doing, the publishers. It’s a damn good book.’”
“Pink Sneakers” is available on Amazon or on the publisher’s website, http://bellastoriapress.com/
