Dried Roses

Summer Sequence
from
I Will Go Barefoot All Summer For You, Toby Bright
by
Katie Letcher Lyle (1938 - 2016)

For me, the nostalgia of this coming - of - age novel goes back to the summer of 1976, when I enrolled in a week - long meet - the - author seminar at Lindenwood College with guest speaker Katie Letcher Lyle. I could not believe my good fortune!

I Will Go Barefoot, featuring 13 - year - old Jessie, takes place in a small Virginia town during the early 1950s. I grew up a decade later in Missouri, and was already nineteen when I first read this novel. Still, our experiences were much the same.

In a touching and excellent review on goodreads, Anna Bowling decribes the novel as "a poignant slice of life look at the transition from child to young woman. . . . Set during the postwar years of the Truman presidency, this story has the feel of a medieval ballad, the lazy sprawl of late summer, and the lacy veil between innocence and lessons learned."

In a story filled with gorgeous natural description, Jessie marks the passing summer with repeated references to lilacs, honeysuckle, and roses.

32: The smells of honeysuckle and wild roses and tar, the cool wind sound and the droning of bees, the waterfall sunshine in cascades, lay heavy upon this day, upon all the world, it seemed . . .

97: I closed my eyes and tried to keep everything just as it was, to remember for always church, its smell, this most beautiful summer. . . .

102 - 03: I tried to suck in as many good smells as I could. The summer had all been like that . . . roses so lovely my throat ached knowing they had already begun to die at the moment they were most beautiful, honeysuckle so sweet-smelling it made my stomach churn, grass green enough to hurt my eyes, and leaves so tenderly delicate they could not possibly last.

"I wish it could be summer all the time, don't you?"
I began to agree, found that I didn't. . . .
I only wished it would smell like summer all the time. But that would probably be boring. What made lilacs so marvelous was that they were only here for about a week, and you waited for them and got ready for them, and maybe even the getting ready was better than the lilacs themselves. Lilacs were even better than honeysuckle, which lasted nearly all summer. Maybe that was why.

106, 158: Summer hurt too much, starting with its lilacs that were dead so soon, its roses that were gone in a day, its moment of Toby Bright. It occurred to me at that instant that I was very tired of it, tired even of the honeysuckle and the roses. It was time for a change. I did not wish it could be summer all the time all, was anxious for burning leaves and red-gold color to replace the endless greens; longed for even the dull blue-whiteness of November . . . some distant lavender winter day.

**********************

I realize this kind of seems like a book post,
but it's also a nature post & and an end - of summer post.
Here are a few more posts following my re-read of
I Will Go Barefoot All Summer For You, Toby Bright:

Going Barefoot
Summer Books
Sparkle Plenty
Dried Roses
Circle of Bronze