2022 E-BOOK EDITION NOW AVAILABLE!
Honor in Concord by Cathryn McIntyre
IF YOU ENJOY CONCORD'S LITERARY HISTORY AND ARE LONGING FOR AN UPLIFTING STORY TO READ, HONOR IN CONCORD IS FOR YOU!!!
A Short Description - Click here to read latest review. Click here or scroll down to read an excerpt.
In Honor in Concord, Cathryn McIntyre tells the story of the first year she lived in the historic town of Concord, Massachusetts in an antique home she calls “Quiet House” on a street named for Henry David Thoreau. One day she sets out to record the images of Concord’s past that are always on her mind and what results is a fictional story told within the pages of memoir in which the writers of mid-19th century Concord (i.e. Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller and Alcott) are living new lives in Concord in present day. Throughout the book there are windows that open up onto their lives in the past. One moment we see Julie watching her young daughter performing at her dance recital and the next we see her as Sophia Hawthorne walking in the yard of the Wayside as her children run about in play and her husband Nathaniel looks on.
Richard and Julie Hazzard are happily married but one day Richard wakes up feeling bored. On the train into Boston he meets Sarah and what begins as an innocent flirtation soon becomes the catalyst that prompts Richard’s self-reflection. Will he risk losing all that he has to break the monotony of his life and satisfy his desire for Sarah? Not if his friend, Ed, has anything to say about it. Ed lives a life of honor and Richard admires that but he doesn’t believe he can live up to the code that Ed lives by. Julie is an artist who has set her art aside and devoted herself fully to Richard and their children. Now she wonders if in doing so a part of herself has been lost. She envies her friend, Emma, who in her past life as school teacher, Martha Hunt chose to drown herself in the river in Concord rather than live her life in the way Julie does now.
The themes of love, trust, freedom, devotion, ghosts and reincarnation are there in the memoir as well, as McIntyre also struggles with her desire for freedom and her inability to trust her instincts that have led her to Concord in the first place and to a destiny that hadn’t yet been fully revealed.
PLEASE NOTE:
PRINT COPIES OF THE ORIGINAL EDITION OF HONOR IN CONCORD ARE AVAILABLE THROUGH AUTHOR HOUSE, AMAZON, BARNES AND NOBLE AND OTHER INTERNET BOOKSELLERS. SIGNED COPIES ARE ALSO AVAILABLE FROM THE SHOP AT WALDEN POND.
THE 2022 E-BOOK EDITION INCLUDES A NEW INTRODUCTION, ONE OR TWO NEW PARAGRAPHS AND REWORDED SENTENCES, AND TYPOS, MISPELLINGS, AND CONTRACTIONS HAVE BEEN CORRECTED. THE STORY REMAINS THE SAME.
AVAILABLE NOW - BookBaby.com, Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com,
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EXCERPT FROM HONOR IN CONCORD
Honor in Concord by Cathryn McIntyre
THE EXCEPT OF HONOR IN CONCORD PRESENTED BELOW IS PROTECTED BY U.S. COPYRIGHT 2022 & 2008. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. IT IS ILLEGAL TO COPY OR REPRODUCE IN ANY FORM WITHOUT THE WRITTEN CONSENT OF THE AUTHOR.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The following excerpt is from Chapter Six of Honor in Concord where I wrote about a tour I took of the Emerson home in Concord in 1999. It is a true account of the psychic impressions I had at that time as I walked through the old home where moments of the past seemed to come alive for me. This excerpt shows the way the present fades to the past and then back to present again. It is a technique I used throughout the book.
- Cathryn McIntyre
HONOR IN CONCORD: SEEKING SPIRIT IN LITERARY CONCORD - CHAPTER SIX
BY CATHRYN MCINTYRE
The tour begins as the guide, a kind-eyed older woman who is well-versed on the history of the home, explains that the actual contents of Emerson’s study are on display in the Concord Museum across the street. It is a fact that I learned on a previous visit, still I examine the bookshelves and their contents with interest, as the guide explains how the shelves were designed in sections to allow for fast removal of the books from the home in case of fire. Some of the books in the room are original to the house, so I attempt to read the titles on the tattered bindings but find few, if any, titles or authors that I recognize. The guide then directs my attention to the table in the center of the room. I have recently seen a picture of Emerson in his later years, sitting at a table in this room with a book in his hands. She points to the small drawer of the table as the place where Emerson would have stored his manuscripts, and I think of my manuscripts that are stored on hard drives and floppy disks and on occasional printouts that clutter my living room floor.
The guide leads me on into the parlor, a room whose walls are covered with portraits of the men and women who once lived in the home. I admire the portraits of Emerson’s obviously formidable daughters; Edith Emerson, their second daughter, who married William F. Forbes and moved to the town of Milton, south of Boston, and Ellen Tucker Emerson, their first daughter, named for Emerson’s dearest love, his first wife, Ellen Tucker, who died from tuberculosis at age 19, just over a year into their marriage. Ellen is a person I have come to admire, more for her own intellectual achievements than for her connection to her father. She spent her entire life living in this home in Concord. I look around and wonder whether her spirit remains here, but I have no sense of her.
From the parlor, we step into a hallway that leads to the side entrance of the house. This is the doorway where so many of the visitors to the house once entered, the doorway that Margaret Fuller often walked through. Emerson’s hat still hangs on a nail there. I want to reach up and touch the hat, but don’t dare. The pattern in the wallpaper is pineapples and as the guide explains the significance of pineapples as a symbol of welcome, I can hear the sounds of a horse-drawn carriage arriving outside, followed by the sounds of footsteps on gravel that slowly approach the door.
***
“It is good to see you, Margaret.”
“And Waldo, it’s so good to see you.”
Waldo is genuinely happy to see his guest, but Lidian is less so. She stands a few feet away in the parlor, hesitant to welcome this woman into their home again. The attention Margaret receives from Waldo is attention Lidian is not so willing to share. With each of Margaret’s visits, Lidian grows increasingly weak with inefficiency and self-doubt and Waldo seems not to notice or care.
Still, Margaret is mindful of Lidian’s feelings and will find time during her stay to urge Lidian, “Come for a walk with me. Tell me your thoughts.” Lidian lacks the patience for that pretense.
She knows Margaret is only there to spend time with Waldo and, although she will graciously tolerate her presence, it will be all she can do to keep from reminding Margaret, “He is my husband!” For Margaret, there is no need for the reminder. It is a point with which she is acutely aware.
***
In the dining room, I am struck by the enormous and beautifully preserved dining table. It is the table where Emerson and his many guests once gathered. Thoreau, Channing, Parker, Ripley, Hawthorne, Alcott and Margaret Fuller have all dined here, and as the guide describes the meals once served to Emerson’s many exceptional guests I get a sense of a more intimate setting, of a family gathered at the table on the first sun filled day of spring in 1842.
***
“Momma, is Wallie in heaven now?”
“Yes, I believe he is, dear.”
“I want to go to heaven to be with him.”
“We will all go someday, dear…when God calls us home.”
“I want to go to heaven today.”
“You will go when God calls you, and not before.”
Waldo sees the tears in Lidian’s eyes. There is nothing to say to comfort her.
And young Ellen continues, “I saw Wallie in the garden yesterday.”
“You did?”
“Yes, Daddy, he was standing near the gate.”
“What did he say to you?”
“Nothing, Daddy, he smiled, that’s all.”
“Then you can see he is happy.”
“Yes, Daddy, he is happy in heaven.”
***
In the hallway under the staircase a baby’s high chair is stored. In the children’s room on the second floor, the children’s toys are preserved in a glass front cabinet. There are cloth dolls and toy soldiers, playing cards and pick-up sticks, and on the floor in front of the cabinet a rocking horse like the one that Wallie had loved. A few feet away is the bed that he died in.
***
Lidian’s wails of sorrow are heard throughout the house as she clutches the boy’s body to her.
“Please, God, no, not my baby, not my baby!”
Downstairs, a stricken Emerson opens the front door of the home and tells a young Louisa May Alcott, who has come to inquire about the gravely ill boy, “Child, he is dead.”
***
Lidian’s presence is strongest on the second floor, strongest in the room where she and Emerson once slept. After I spend a few minutes in the room I conclude that like Dr. Roland, Lidian resides there still. The room is much as it was in their day. There is the alcove where the special silver pitcher kept the water warm, the lace coverlet on the bed, the small velvet chair where Lidian spent so many solitary hours. Her presence in the room is all at once overwhelming. This is not an imprint, not a moment in time. Lidian’s spirit is actually here. She is not yet free of the life she once lived here, and as the tour guide goes on with her description of the Emersons’ life together, I can hear Lidian’s rush of words.
"He was like a phantom in our lives. He loved the children but there was no love for me. I am appreciated, but never loved. I am in service to him, to bear his children. "
I do my best to connect with her psychically, to pass along the same “go into the light” message that I had used on Dr. Roland, but Lidian resists.
“You cannot make me go! I will not leave my home!”
I can’t help but feel sorry for her. It is her home and it must be difficult for her to see this constant stream of people walking through. I follow the guide out of the bedroom and into the hallway and as we pause there, I feel Lidian brush past me and watch as she slowly descends the stairs. She is dressed in black and her face is encircled by a dainty white veil. Half way down she turns to look back at me. I can see her eyes and her message is clear, “It is you who must go,” and with that the specter of Lidian vanishes.
I follow the guide down the same stairs to the entry hall and there, as the tour concludes, I ask, “Have you ever experienced any ghosts in this house?”
The guide’s astonished answer is an abrupt no. She wishes me luck with my “project” and quickly ushers me out the door, no doubt as glad to be rid of me, as I am glad to be out of the house. I had hoped to find Mr. Emerson there, to directly connect just once with his kindness and wisdom, but there was no sense that he remained there. The work he was meant to do was completed in his lifetime. There were no regrets, no unresolved pain and no need for him to stay. Lidian’s regrets are unresolved still. She needs to move on into the light where her family is no doubt waiting for her, but until she is ready to let go of this place and the pain that she felt here, it seems clear to me that she will remain.
I should take this opportunity to get safely away, but before I do, I want to see Lidian’s garden. I am surprised this late in the season to find the plants looking so full and green. They are descendants of the same plants she brought with her when she moved here from Plymouth, plants that she so carefully tended. She had enjoyed her garden, especially in the early years, when the children were young, when Wallie was still living and when Henry Thoreau came to stay.
***
Lidian is kneeling as she puts her hands into the earth, taking refuge in tending to the vegetables that will feed her family. Waldo is off again on yet another lecture tour, leaving her alone with their children. She is becoming more accustomed to his absence and more comfortable with Henry living in their home. He stands protectively along side her, gathering up each potato and turnip she hands to him.
“These will make a fine stew.”
Lidian is silent.
“I will prepare it myself.”
Still, she is silent.
“I am a fine cook, I assure you, Lidian. My mother has taught me well.”
Then she speaks, in no uncertain tone. “Mr. Emerson pays for a cook for this house, Henry. There is no need for you to prepare the meal.”
***
In the Concord Museum, across the street from the Emersons’ home, I spend several minutes at the display of the desk and chair from Henry’s Walden Pond cabin, and linger even longer over the John Thoreau Company pencils that are in a protective glass case. Here are some of the actual pencils, with the lead that Henry helped to perfect, and one of which he may have used to write Walden. I could stay here all day looking at these objects, but decide I will come back another time, when the museum is less crowded and when I have more time to take in the feelings there.
THE 2022 E-BOOK EDITION IS NOW AVAILABLE!!!
BookBaby.com, Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com,
and other internet booksellers.
AVAILABLE NOW - BookBaby.com, Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com,
and other internet booksellers.
REVIEWS
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR COMPLETE REVIEWS
While there seem to be various avenues to the attainment of joy in this book, it is not about "lessons learned." Honor in Concord is, rather, an intimate tour of a marvelous, historic town where people live their lives as best they can, some achieving happiness, both past and present. Thanks to Cathryn McIntyre for this chance to ride along. - Chris Maddix, Author, Teacher & Musician
***
This book crosses the boundaries of the literary into the spiritual in the most glorious way. A must read - can't wait for the next book!! – ~ Deborah Beauvais, Dreamvisions 7 Radio Network – www.dreamvisions7radio.com, www.lovebyintuition.com
***
Ms. McIntyre challenges all our preconceived notions and gives permission for each of us to explore the expanded reality we know somehow IS. - Connie Baxter Marlow, filmmaker, author, futurist, social philosopher. Producer: www.InSearchofTheFutureMovie.com; www.TheAmericanEvolution.com www.TheTrustFrequency.net
***
Reading Honor in Concord was intellectually stimulating, but also as pleasurable as eating chocolate and drinking a fine red wine. If we listen, these writers of the past can help us with honorable choices today. And if we listen, perhaps Cathryn McIntyre will have more to say to us, as well. - Cynthia G. Neale, Author of Norah: The Making of an Irish-American Woman in 19th-Century New York and other works www.cynthianeale.com
***
Honor in Concord is a compelling, entertaining and provocative read. The past and the present are woven together so uniquely giving life to the issues and subjects too often left to collect dust on library shelves. ~ Janis Pryor, Author, Producer & Radio Host
***
An enjoyable read - the author skillfully weaves historical fact with fiction and provides wonderful insight into the private lives of some of Concord's most famous literary authors. - Jennie Sandberg, Artist, Photographer, Intuitive Energy Healer
Honor in Concord is available in both hard and softcover editions from Barnes & Noble; amazon; and other internet booksellers. It can also be ordered through your favorite local bookseller. The 2022 E-Book Edition has just been released and is also available from the usual internet booksellers and can also be purchased directly from www.BookBaby.com.
Please scroll down to read complete reviews.
Please Note: The Thoreau Whisperer is in some ways a sequel to Honor in Concord but there is no need to read Honor in Concord first.
Print copies are available from AuthorHouse.com, amazon.com, barnes&noble.com, and others.
HONOR IN CONCORD
Honor in Concord by Cathryn McIntyre
A Longer Description
In Honor in Concord, Cathryn McIntyre tells the story of the first year she lived in the historic town of Concord, Massachusetts in an antique home she calls “Quiet House” on a street named for Henry David Thoreau. One day she sets out to record the images of Concord’s past that are always on her mind and what results is a fictional story that she tells within the pages of memoir in which the writers of mid-19th century Concord (i.e., Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller and Alcott) are characters living new lives in Concord in present day. Within the fictional story are windows that open up into their lives in the past. One moment we are reading about Julie, a mother watching her young daughter performing at her dance recital and the next we see Julie in the past as Sophia Hawthorne, looking out into the yard as her other children run about in play and her husband, Nathaniel looks on. We read about Sarah who is having a flirtatious lunch at the West Street Grill in Boston and walking across the same floor where she once stood as Margaret Fuller conducting her “conversations”.
These moments capture the magic of this town that holds such a place in American history. It is the place where the revolutionary war began out near the North Bridge and the place where some of America’s greatest writers and thinkers once lived as neighbors and friends in the mid-19th century. In Honor in Concord, they are back. Julie is Sophia and her husband, Richard, is Hawthorne. Thoreau is also there as their son, Alex, and his best friend, John, is the brother he lost in his life as Thoreau, but now they are together again. Emerson is there, too, as Julie’s wise but aged father, and Bronson Alcott has also returned as a wise old sage in the form of Richard’s neighbor and best friend, Ed, who seems to be the most insightful of them all in this story where they find themselves reevaluating their lives and questioning the choices they have made.
Richard and Julie Hazzard are happily married but one day Richard wakes up feeling bored. On the train into Boston he meets Sarah and what begins as an innocent flirtation soon becomes the catalyst that prompts Richard’s self-reflection. Will he risk losing all that he has to break the monotony of his life and satisfy his desire for Sarah? Not if his friend, Ed, has anything to say about it. Ed lives a life of honor and Richard admires that but he doesn’t believe he can live up to the code that Ed lives by. Julie is an artist who has set her art aside and devoted herself fully to Richard and their children. Now she wonders if in doing so a part of herself has been lost. She envies her friend, Emma, who in her past life as schoolteacher, Martha Hunt chose to drown herself in the river in Concord rather than live her life in the way Julie does now.
The themes of love, trust, freedom, devotion, ghosts and reincarnation are there in the memoir as well, as McIntyre also struggles with her desire for freedom and her inability to trust her instincts that have led her to Concord in the first place and to a destiny that hadn’t yet been fully revealed.
Honor in Concord concludes atop Author’s Ridge at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord where McIntyre is attempting to connect psychically with the authors who are buried there. But where that scene in Honor in Concord is mostly playful, in McIntyre's next book, The Thoreau Whisperer, she is actually doing it and it is serious and powerful and impossible even for her to believe.
Honor in Concord is available in both hard and softcover editions from Barnes & Noble; amazon; and other internet booksellers. It can also be ordered through your favorite local bookseller. The 2022 E-Book Edition has just been released and is also available from the usual internet booksellers and can also be purchased directly from the publisher, BookBaby.
Please scroll down to read complete reviews.
PLEASE NOTE:
PRINT COPIES OF THE ORIGINAL EDITION OF HONOR IN CONCORD ARE AVAILABLE THROUGH AUTHOR HOUSE, AMAZON, BARNES AND NOBLE AND OTHER INTERNET BOOKSELLERS. SIGNED COPIES ARE ALSO AVAILABLE FROM THE SHOP AT WALDEN POND.
THE 2022 E-BOOK EDITION INCLUDES A NEW INTRODUCTION, ONE OR TWO NEW PARAGRAPHS AND REWORDED SENTENCES, PLUS TYPOS, MISPELLINGS, AND CONTRACTIONS WERE CORRECTED. THE STORY IS THE SAME.
AVAILABLE NOW from BookBaby.com, amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com and other internet booksellers
Complete Reviews of Honor in Concord
Complete Reviews
In some places you can just feel the history. I have resided in or visited several places where the greatness of the author who happened to have spent time there pervades the locale. A visit to Mancelona, Walloon Lake, or Big Two-Hearted River Michigan leaves no doubt as to why Hemingway wrote the Nick Adams stories. Travel to Cooperstown, New York, and you can almost feel the Leatherstocking Tales and James Fenimore. The greatness of Shakespeare is in the air and everywhere in Stratford, in England. In this book, Cathryn McIntyre clearly relishes the history of Concord. She seems to be among those who, having discovered the abode of a historic author, would, in addition to reading everything the author ever wrote, track down information about the author's habits, family, likes and dislikes, and she's found a fellow traveler in me. Concord, of Lexington and Concord and "shot heard round the world" fame, home of the "God of Concord", Ralph Waldo "Wallie" Emerson, fellow transcendentalist HD Thoreau, authors Nathaniel Hawthorne and Louisa May Alcott, and lecturers Bronson Alcott and Margaret Fuller, provides the setting for this stream of consciousness memoir which is also a dedication to these great people. The authors' and lecturers' lives are not just recalled, studied and revered in this book; they are, in a couple of cases, re-lived. Lives of modern day folks are interwoven with those of the famous people. Amidst a dalliance between Richard and Sarah, a high school graduation of Alex and John, and a book tour of Emma which is interrupted by a phone call informing her that her latest married boyfriend has sought divorce and wishes to marry her, we meet famous folks who experience lives similar in ways to the moderns. We meet these heroes, find out a few personal details, and tour their homes, variously named Orchard House, Quiet House, Wayside House, and the Old Manse. Why? Partly to show what the authors and the contemporary characters have in common. And they do share characteristics. How do the authors, using methods similar to those of the moderns, attain happiness? By sharing an "instinctive understanding of spirit." And how does one go about that? One suggestion is that one way is not to be "buried in work, concerned with possessions and social status" but rather "living economically, striving for self-sufficiency, and embracing ideas, not possessions." Another is that understanding that "freedom is an illusion, honor is more important, and that if you stick to your principles, people will come around." A third is that love is essential to a real life, and not, as Emma suggests, an "addiction."Going one step further, Jim, a Yale educator, has devised a different method by which Concord folk may attain happiness. He sees himself as having in another life been the son of Hawthorne, and he purports that Richard and Julie once lived as Hawthorne and wife. Richard thinks he's crazy. Maybe.
While there seem to be various avenues to the attainment of joy in this book, it is not about "lessons learned." Honor in Concord is, rather, an intimate tour of a marvelous, historic town where people live their lives as best they can, some achieving happiness, both past and present. Thanks to Cathryn McIntyre for this chance to ride along. - Chris Maddix, Author, Teacher & Musician
***
Reading Honor in Concord was intellectually stimulating, but also as pleasurable as eating chocolate and drinking a fine red wine. In fact, each evening I climbed into bed with a glass of good wine and escaped from my daily concerns and my own writer worries. I was able to turn off the editor in me and engage myself in this novel because the prose is natural, alive, and believable. The Transcendental Period is my favorite time in American history and Cathryn captured the heartbeat of some of my favorite writers of long ago Concord and gently, but powerfully, revealed their touch upon the present. Combining memoir, fiction, and the historical facts of the writers from Concord was innovative and daring. And it worked! Memoirs can oftentimes bog down the reader with too many intimate facts, but there was just enough candid and pivotal information to keep me interested, leaving some mystery for me to ponder. The interconnectedness of Concord's writers of the past with contemporary fictional Concord residents, and Cathryn McIntyre as a writer and seeker in Concord, created an enjoyable and satisfying reading experience. There was indeed transcendence and beauty in the quest for what might be honorable today. If we listen, these writers of the past can help us with honorable choices today. And if we listen, perhaps Cathryn McIntyre will have more to say to us, as well. - Cynthia G. Neale, Author of Norah: The Making of an Irish-American Woman in 19th-Century New York and other works.
* * *
In Honor in Concord, Cathryn McIntyre weaves a multi-faceted tale of Transcendental truths, explored and experienced then (19th Century) and now (21st Century). Is it the place itself (Concord) that engenders such insights? Is the veil between dimensions, between illusion and Spirit thinner there? What is real? What is fantasy? Ms. McIntyre challenges all our preconceived notions and gives permission for each of us to explore the expanded reality we know somehow IS. Through the emotions, thoughts and challenges of the characters, real and fictitious, as well as those of the author herself, we witness the evolution of the human condition as the profound ideas of Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott and Hawthorne become a basis for action. - Connie Baxter Marlow, filmmaker, author, futurist, social philosopher. Producer: IN SEARCH OF THE FUTURE www.InSearchofTheFutureMovie.com; THE AMERICAN EVOLUTION: Voices of America-www.TheAmericanEvolution.com Co-Author: THE TRUST FREQUENCY: 10 Assumptions for a New Paradigm. www.TheTrustFrequency.net
* * *
Honor in Concord is a compelling, entertaining and provocative read. The past and the present are woven together so uniquely giving life to the issues and subjects too often left to collect dust on library shelves.
~ Janis Pryor, Author, Producer & Radio Host
* * *
Honor in Concord is beautifully written...time transcends as the story begins from long ago when Thoreau, Emerson and Hawthorne knew the spiritual essence of who they were and not intimidated to speak about it... the story weaves to the present and the excitement is in the comparison of the families from one century to another - could it be that Thoreau and Hawthorne are really living in today's world? This book crosses the boundaries of the literary into the spiritual in the most glorious way. A must read - can't wait for the next book!! – ~ Deborah Beauvais, Dreamvisions 7 Radio Network – www.dreamvisions7radio.com, www.lovebyintuition.com
* * *
An enjoyable read - the author skillfully weaves historical fact with fiction and provides wonderful insight into the private lives of some of Concord's most famous literary authors. After reading this book, I wanted to learn more about the historical figures mentioned, especially Margaret Fuller and Martha Hunt. - Jennie Sandberg, Artist, Photographer, Intuitive Energy Healer.
Print copies are available from AuthorHouse.com, amazon.com, barnes&noble.com, and others.