Discover. . .: Sally Brandle

Friday, August 30, 2019

Fearless Women: Grandmother and Granddaughter by Sally Brandle #fearlessfriday

FEARLESS FRIDAY

I have a special place in my heart for grandmothers, maybe because I am one. Please welcome my guest, Sally Brandle, who has that same special spot in her heart.

I imitated the grandmother I never met.

My Irish grandmother, Margaret (Maggie) Mary Gallagher, boarded a steamer for New York in 1902 at the age of nineteen. Seventy-six years later, at twenty-one, I moved from rural Michigan to Seattle. Both of us followed brothers to a new life—a fact I realized upon writing this post. Maggie bid goodbye to her Irish sister and parents in Newcastle. I hesitated to vacate Saginaw, knowing my newly divorced mom-my best friend-would reside alone in our empty childhood home. Mom devoted her life to her family and insisted I pursue my dreams. The saving grace was my other brother who visited Mom daily.

And so, I drove 2,200 miles in my yellow Firebird Formula, towing a turquoise utility trailer. An observer may have concluded the circus was coming to town. At times I hovered on a high wire. My Seattle brother encouraged me and remains a part of my life.

My grandmother

Sadly, Maggie’s brother died in a tragic accident a few months after her arrival in her new country. Maggie dealt with a time period of disdain for the Irish, being a pretty single woman in a huge city, and employment as a domestic servant for the wealthy Gould family. I’d recently graduated from college and acclimation to a bigger city and an unexpected teaching job challenged me. I wish I could’ve spoken to her about shared feelings of insecurity, missing friends and family, and her sense of self. She died during the Great Depression, leaving behind a small metal trunk filled with postcards and a diary of her life in 1907. A photo shows we share a love of riding horseback. Piecing together the snippets of her life into a story will be my tribute to an adventurous woman.

The first three heroines in my Emma Springs series leave Seattle for a new life in a picturesque Montana town. Deep down, do I long for the simplicity of my childhood in scenic Michigan? Hmmm. The book I’m editing now features a thirty-nine-year-old heroine with twin sons in their first year of college. I understand her bittersweet emotion each time

Me on Lance

she ends a phone conversation with them after she’s moved to a job she wasn’t trained for in an unwelcome environment. Her hunky, annoyed employer thought he’d hired a man as his welder. I trained for teaching second and third grade special education and ended up in a high school behavior disorders classroom. At the beginning of the year, a few of my students were my age.

Strong women survive and trust their instincts. That’s what I’ve learned to do over the years, and I hope my books encourage others to do the same. The opening book in the series features a woman who is in the right place at the right time. You’ll understand if you dive into The Hitman’s Mistake.

Happy trails,

Sally