In Brief: The Echo of My Days: The Lost Stories and Poems of Bessie Smith Stanton

By Bessie Smith Stanton, edited by Jim Stanton, Bill Stanton, and Lola Stanton. White River Press, 2024. 172 pages. $22/paperback.

In the introduction to the book, the author’s grandson introduces readers to his hospitable and versatile grandmother Bessie Smith Stanton, who, in addition to writing, worked on a farm, managed a home, and cooked copiously. Stanton’s father was a Quaker minister who often traveled to distant meetings. She recalled happy memories of growing up in a small meeting. She was an alumna of the Quaker-founded Wilmington College in Ohio, where she attended in 1900–1904.

The volume contains a novella, short stories, and poems. The novella, “The Voice in the Ether,” starts with an intriguing line: “Without the Voice it never would have happened.” The novella continues with a description of a wondrous and mysterious tale involving suffering. Stanton introduces readers to the protagonist, John Raven, who lives in a shack in the forest with his highly perceptive dog. A physically robust lover of nature, Raven leads a life of solitude broken only by listening to the radio. Stanton describes his intense response to regaining radio reception after an outage:

Raven’s heart seemed like a lump of stone, so still it hung within him. Then it seemed driving the wild joy through him in throbbing surges of blood to his temples, to his pulses as he realized that once more that wide world which lay so far beyond his forest hut could speak to him through the witchery of wires refastened, the uncomprehended power of limitless space.

The novella contains many such eloquent descriptions as the author chronicles Raven falling in love and learning to live with a disability.

The short story, “Amelia’s Awakening,” concerns a harsh and cynical woman who unexpectedly becomes the guardian of her young niece, Mazie, after her estranged sister dies. Amelia had been in love with Mazie’s father and became hardhearted after he married her sister. The story traces Amelia’s emotional journey after she meets Mazie.

One of the poems, “The Pine Tree,” which reflects on nature and the Divine, includes this stanza:

God is often real
Underneath a pine
Maybe he can feel
How I need a sign
Making a pine tree
Giving it to me.

Friends looking for evocative prose and thoughtful poetry will enjoy this volume.

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—Reviewed by Sharlee DiMenichi, staff writer for Friends Journal