The Weight of Snow And Regret Blog Tour: Inspiration- #NewRelease @lizgauffreau.bsky.social

I am thrilled to welcome Liz Gauffreau to my blog today to tell you about her newest book release. I cannot wait to read this one. But I’ll step aside and let Liz share!

Thank you, Jan, for hosting me to kick off the blog tour for The Weight of Snow and Regret, Jan! For today’s stop, I’ll tell your readers about the initial spark of inspiration for writing the novel and share the images that pulled me into the story. But first, here is what The Weight of Snow and Regret is all about.

Description

For over 100 years, no one wanted to be sent to the Sheldon Poor Farm. By 1968, no one wanted to leave. 


Amid the social turmoil of 1968, the last poor farm in Vermont is slated for closure. By the end of the year, the twelve destitute residents remaining will be dispatched to whatever institutions will take them, their personal stories lost forever.

Hazel Morgan and her husband Paul have been matron and manager at the Sheldon Poor Farm for the past 20 years. Unlike her husband, Hazel refuses to believe the impending closure will happen. She believes that if she just cares deeply enough and works hard enough, the Sheldon Poor Farm will continue to be a safe haven for those in need, herself and Paul included.


On a frigid January afternoon, the overseer of the poor and the town constable from a nearby town deliver a stranger to the poor farm for an emergency stay. She refuses to tell them her name, where she came from, or what her story is. It soon becomes apparent to Hazel that whatever the woman’s story is, she is deeply ashamed of it. 


Hazel fights to keep the stranger with them until she is strong enough to face, then resume, her life—while Hazel must face the tragedies of her own past that still haunt her.

Told with compassion and humor, The Weight of Snow & Regret tells the poignant story of what it means to care for others in a rapidly changing world.

Inspiration: The Story

After finishing my debut novel, Telling Sonny, I didn’t intend to write another novel right away. I fully intended to return to the short story collection I’d been working on. Then I read an article in the Spring 1990 issue of Vermont Life Magazine: “Over the Hill to the Poor Farm: How an Era Ended Quietly on a Back Road in Sheldon Springs” by Steve Young.

Seeing the photographs and reading the history of the place, I was struck by the fact that while I was growing up, I’d lived only seven miles from the Sheldon Poor Farm—yet I knew nothing about it. I’d been by the poorhouse building once in the early 1970s, but it didn’t register with me that it had ceased being a poorhouse only a few short years before. I had to know more.

Around the time I read the Vermont Life article, I’d also been toying with the idea of a woman running away from her family with a blues musician, so I thought I’d combine the two ideas. It would be a lark, something fun before I went back to the short story collection. Little did I know where this idea would lead me!

Inspiration: The Images

More often than not, an image will prompt my imagination for a short story, a poem, or, in this case, a novel. These are the images that pulled me into the story of the closure of the Sheldon Poor Farm.


Books2Read Purchase Link: https://books2read.com/WeightofSnow

Author Liz Gauffreau

Elizabeth Gauffreau writes fiction and poetry with a strong connection to family and place. Her work has been widely published in literary magazines, as well as several themed anthologies. Her short story “Henrietta’s Saving Grace” was awarded the 2022 Ben Nyberg  prize for fiction by Choeofpleirn Press.

She has previously published a novel, Telling Sonny: The Story of a Girl Who Once Loved the Vaudeville Show, and two collections of photopoetry, Grief Songs: Poems of Love & Remembrance and Simple Pleasures: Haiku from the Place Just Right.  

Liz’s professional background is in nontraditional higher education, including academic advising, classroom and online teaching, curriculum development, and program administration. She received the Granite State College Distinguished Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2018. Liz lives in Nottingham, New Hampshire with her husband. Find her online at https://lizgauffreau.

Click/tap to follow blog tour: https://lizgauffreau.com/the-weight-of-snow-and-regret-blog-tour-2/

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