Avalon

AVALON

Margaret Bradley, age 21 and very ill, travels 1600 miles west in November 1899 with her sister, Grace, age 20. In Colorado’s dry climate, Margaret fully recovers and teaches first graders in the Denver Public Schools for 25 years. She lives with her sister’s family. When she retires, she goes on a grand tour of Europe. Avalon is both a memoir and a novel, a family saga matching the first half of the twentieth century. Avalon is two love stories. On her first tour stop, Margaret meets Augustus Turtle. She marries him in 1926, and moves 4,000+ miles to North Ireland. In May 1933, Margaret’s niece, Helen, marries Lancelot Turtle, a young cousin of Augustus. It is The Depression. In January, Hitler has just become Chancellor of Germany, and in March, Franklin Roosevelt is the new President of the United States. Helen also moves to Ireland, to Belfast, and the family of Lancelot and Helen begins to grow as year by year Europe moves closer to war. As memoir, Avalon in its entirety is tethered to real documentation, real memory and a strict real chronology. From the first appearance of automobiles to the dawn of atomic energy, Avalon offers personal glimpses of Denver and Colorado, Los Angeles, the American South, and New York City, and also of North Ireland, through the lens of imagined conversation and family events. The letters sent by Helen Turtle to her mother and sister are a rich resource for the years 1933 to 1946. They are part of the book's narrative. Their perspective is that of a curious young expatriate American woman joyfully setting up a household and starting a family amidst growing signs that war is imminent. The book burnings in Germany were 9 days after Lancelot and Helen married, and more followed: 1935, military conscription and the Nuremberg laws decreed; 1936, troops in the Rhineland. The German takeovers of Austria and Sudetenland were in 1938, and in November, Kristellnacht was the day after Helen’s second daughter was born. War was declared in 1939,and it arrived in the United Kingdom with air raids on London. The Battle of Britain included Belfast. Avalon is a 50 year transatlantic and transamerican family saga. It focuses on two love stories. There are others as well. Throughout the novel, the perspective is of those in the family and those close to them, the conversation level of experience.