Cut Scenes Part III
Cut Scenes from THE STORY SHE LEFT BEHIND
Hello friends!
I am out on the road for The Story She Left Behind and everywhere I go, I talk about the inspiration behind the novel — Barbara Newhall Follett. I wrote an article for Barnes and Noble. It’s about the story behind the story, the inspiration, the spark of this novel — it’s about the full story behind THE STORY SHE LEFT BEHIND and I encourage you to CLICK here to read it.
Barbara’s story was the original inspiration for this novel, and although the end result is a story inspired by Barbara, and not about her, I still have the scenes I wrote about her and her family.
At the end of my novel, I have a resource section to find out more about Barbara Newhall Follett, but I also suggest visiting this website: FARKSOLIA where the latest on Barbara’s life and disappearance. It is a fascinating dive into her life and work, kept updated by her nephew, Stefan Cooke.
Meanwhile, here it is — the last installment of pages that never ended up in the book. It is the scene where Barbara decides that she must make up her own secret langauge.
BARBARA NEWHALL FOLLETT
EIGHT YEARS OLD
When she was eight years old, it was summertime, and the family spent their days at Lake Sunapee. Barbara carried a secret close to her heart—a secret world she was weaving with words, a story about a little girl named Eepersip, who slips free from the tethers of her family and becomes part of the fairy realm.
Daddy had left his teaching job and taken a position as an editor at Yale University Press, and they had moved to New Haven, Connecticut. But summers belonged to the lake, where wild glades stretched beneath evergreens, and every flower imaginable seemed to bloom—quills and violets, bluets and daffodils, crocuses and snowdrops. Barbara was captivated by the wildness of it all, by the lush greens and radiant yellows, by this world that seemed crafted just for her and Daddy, a world that wrapped them in its quiet enchantment.
Her weekdays were spent immersed in the schoolwork her mother assigned—stacks of books and endless reading. In her room, a tiger-striped kitten and a collection of stuffed animals kept her company, each one named and gathered in piles around her. But none of that compared to the magic of the woodlands. Those moments in the forest were sacred, meant for her and Daddy alone—and, of course, for Eepersip.
When she returned to the cabin each day, the need to give voice to the feelings that overwhelmed her. She must find a way to capture the wonder, to make sense of the wild emotions that stirred within her. So, she spun stories—of goblins lurking among the trees, and of fairies building nests on moss-covered rocks draped in vines.
She understood, even then, that this was her world, her imaginary land. This was where she longed to stay. But something was missing. The language she knew wasn’t enough to contain the wild places of her heart or the boundless love she felt for Daddy—a love too grand, too fierce, to be confined by ordinary words.
What word could mean “a flower that blooms in May” or “something too beautiful to name” or “a Saturday spent wandering the woodlands with Daddy”? She didn’t know—but she needed to know.
In that moment, she realized what she must do: she had to create a language of her own, a dialect for the wild, the wondrous, and the untamed places inside her.
I really hope you’ve enjoyed this series as THE STORY SHE LEFT BEHIND releases into the world.
THE STORY
xo
Patti