Ivy's Ghost

Ivy's Ghost

IVY October 17, 1972

"One, two, button my shoe-three, four, open the door," Ivy recited as she walked along the roadside on her way home from the store. "Five, six, pick up sticks-seven, eight, lay them straight." Today was Ivy's tenth birthday. "Nine, ten, a noisy hen."

Stories such as Ivy's Ghost can open closed doors of the mind. As victims vicariously walk with story characters whose experiences parallel their own, they are empowered to face difficult memories. As general readers immerse in a story filled with unfamiliar challenges, they discover empathy.

Inspired by true events and set in the author's hometown, Ivy's Ghost is a sensitive and poetic story that follows the fictional Abbott family in their attempts to deal with abuse juxtaposed against fervent religious ideals. The story is notable for its compassionate portrayal of both perpetrators and victims. Ivy's Ghost is written from L.D.S. family and community perspectives and portrays the complex web of pain, guilt, and secrecy experienced in homes where sexual abuse occurs.

"The raucous throaty call of sandhill cranes sounded in the fields. Then wings like capes lifted the huge birds right off the ground, hurling the creatures into the sky. Ivy lifted her face to the sun. It was warm now, but each night felt colder than the night before.

Ivy slowed as she drew closer to the home where she now lived in Mendon, Utah. One, two, rip my shoe-three, four, lock the door. She still would not permit herself to think of it as her very own home, even though she'd lived there since April. Six months. Five, six, stabbing sticks-seven, eight, never straight. Ivy had a room with a big bed, a closet, and a bureau. On top of the bureau was a doll. Ivy named the doll Nanette the first night she moved in. Nine, ten, hide the hen...."

In 1972, Tristan and Ivy Hart are placed by the California child welfare system into the Northern Utah home of their nearest relatives, the Abbott family. As brother and sister seek to navigate their new morally strict household and traditional church-going township-they soon grapple with inner-family secrecy. Even in the midst of idyllic rural charm and small personal victories, we watch in grief as innocence is swept up in the undercurrents of cause and effect. Yet this story's questions glow in the dark-profoundly illuminating the power of choice, love, and change.

The illustrations in Ivy's Ghost combine rapt visual elements with deeply expressive themes. The artwork is composed of mixed media materials; watercolor, textiles, charcoal, oil/acrylics, and pencil.

Ivy's Ghost is a masterful blend of character-driven narrative and etheric, lyrical prose. An evocative family saga, it reaches younger readers to older adults whose lives have been touched by similar circumstances.

Ivy's Ghost is the seventh story in the MERGENCE series, which consists of illustrated, standalone novellas connected by an ancestral chest. https://sites.google.com/view/nellarowehn