Sapphire: a Celestial Twist Historical Fiction: Based on True Events of a Family’S Emigration from Joplin, Mo to Burke, Idaho

By Julie Lilienkamp and Nicole Choquette

"Sapphire" takes the reader on a journey through time from a bird's eye view. This is a story based on true events of a family's emigration from North Dakota to New York to Joplin, MO and Tulsa, OK, ending in the small mining town of Wallace, Idaho [Burke, ID]. The novel is full of roller-coaster events and emotion, suspending the reader for a part II story and the history of Wallace, Idaho.

"Sapphire" is a novel style inspired by renowned African-American novelist, Toni Morrison and her novels "Love" and "Home." Sapphire herself, struggles with truth, temptation, and toil leaving the reader on a quest to find the narrator's voice. "Sapphire" is a journey within a journey. The setting is late Nineteenth Century to modern day. This is the first of a two-part collection, true and historical events mashed with fiction. "Sapphire" is a must read for the Twenty-first Century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9781491710739

Julie Lilienkamp

Julie Lilienkamp resides in beautiful Liberty Lake, near her family in Hayden, Idaho and Spokane, WA. Her grandfather used to say to her mother, “Northern Idaho is God’s country.” That explains her failed attempts to live in other part of the country such as Colorado, California, and even New York, where many writers/artists find their niche. Idaho has allowed the author great escapes into fresh air, beautiful open landscapes, and four extreme seasons. She enjoys family time and her granddaughter, and working outside of writing in sales, tutoring, traveling, teaching, public speaking, and sports entertainment. She considers herself a “chronic starving artist,” mostly due to her giving nature, and jokes she will probably always stay busy with more than one job. Julie attained her Associate's Degree in Communications with emphasis in English in 2004, from North Idaho College and her Bachelor's Degree in English, Creative Writing in 2012, a late academic bloomer following a career in Banking and raising two children. She now works for the CdA Press, in beautiful Downtown Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. She is a second generation Idahoan, and plans to eventually retire to full-time writing in Idaho, within the next 10 years. Ms. Lilienkamp's hobbies are biking, trail running, camping, hiking, snowboarding, traveling, hopes of mountaineering again, interviewing inspiring people in the Pacific Northwest, and mentoring kids whenever possible. You can find and chat with Julie on social sites such as LinkedIn, Skype, and MySpace. "Sapphire" is her life-long work of art, now in print in its first stage. Plan to see more, along with "Daisy Tails" a children's book, with an adult version of a Beagle's life with her owner/master in epic travels.

Book preview

SAPPHIRE: A CELESTIAL TWIST HISTORICAL FICTION

Based on true events of a family’s emigration

from Joplin, MO to Burke, Idaho

Copyright © 2013 Julie Lilienkamp.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Certain characters in this work are historical figures, and certain events portrayed did take place. However, this is a work of fiction. All of the other characters, names, and events as well as all places, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4917-1072-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-1073-9 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 12/09/2013

Table of Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgements

British Slang

Preface

Chapter I.   Sapphire

Chapter II.   The Wedding

Chapter III.   Joplin

Chapter IV.   Farm Life

Chapter V.   The Storm

Chapter VI.   Railroad Romance

Chapter VII.   Oklahoma Territory

Chapter VIII.   The Last Northbound Steamer

Chapter IX.   Life in Burke

Map of Stanley Family Journey

Bibliography

Dedication

I dedicate Sapphire to Christ my Lord and Savior, Jesus, my best friend. And also to my beautiful children Tony and Randi Marie, and to their loving spouses Lisa and Brandon. I also dedicate this book to my wonderful, angelic granddaughter Rilee Marie and her brother or sister on the way. And, to my dear mother, Michelle, and my dad Mike, who not only encouraged but believed in me, in all of my crazy endeavors. I cannot forget my dad Gene and his kindhearted wife Sandy. And, I especially want to dedicate, thank, and remember my dearest late Grandma Madge, because without her mentorship through my childhood, her light-hearted spirit, love, and courage, I would have lost faith in the love of life.

Finally, in loving memory of my departed family members awaiting us in Heaven: of all whom I have not mentioned by name; my sincere and eternal gratitude to you.

Acknowledgements

I want to thank all of my sisters, Tracey, Jodie, Kelly and Jenna, and their families, my step sisters and brothers, and their children, for their ongoing prayers & concern, and for being there for me when I need a shoulder to lean on.

I also want to thank my aunts and uncles, Marsha and Dick Lilienkamp and Sherry and Gary Woody, for believing in me when hope teetered. Dick and Marsha, you are one of the reasons I found passion for the mountains and to seek adventure. Others I want to thank are my good friends, Johnny Conners, Cassandra Guay, Chris Ankney, my departed friend Sam Wormington, who told me, Gosh, you sure know how to write; you’re smarter than you look.

And I could not have been in this moment without my friends Carolyn Weil and her deceased husband Clarence, John Smerer, Jean Schulhauser-Reynaud, Cathy Bell-Shaffer, Melanie Sheldon-Smith, Shawna Sullivan-Smart, Ruth Smith-Brinton, the Johnson-Wheeler sisters, the Giles’, the Hess’ and all my other childhood friends, my dear friends throughout the years, and my climbing and mountaineering friends, Stephanie, Gerri, Pem Dorjee Sherpa and his wife Moni and little girl Pelzom, Brandi and Dan and the other Mt. Everest Team of Educated Elevated, along with all the Sherpas who risk their lives on a daily basis to help change the world. Thank you. Namaste’.

British Slang

Xf= Integrated in text as Footnotes for

(Wikipedia.uk; 2010-11)

1—King James Version—Holy Bible, Psalms 104:18

Preface

Sapphire is based on true events of a young girl’s journey and her encounters and life with a British-American Homesteader, farming and raising a family in Joplin, Missouri in the early 1900s. The story is a bird’s eye-view from a celestial entity’s perspective and who was guide to the Stanley family for years before and after Joplin. However, the family fled Joplin, a short time following a tragic act of nature, a life-changing tornado. The family was never the same, they lost, they loved, and they were constantly chasing pushf.

British slang became part of the entire family’s dialect; even I found it entertaining in bits and pieces, and it was passed through the family to generations into the 1980s, when the last of the Stanley children passed back into the Universe. The story is about the Stanley family’s travel from Joplin to Tulsa, Oklahoma, later known in history as the dust bowl state because of Pioneers turning rested lands to farm lands, to their final reprieve in the small silver mining town of Burke, Idaho.

I was six years old when I started to remember the things He allowed me to. I had always thought Sapphire was a dream, only to year by year realize she was from a place called the Virgo Cluster. She was real. God’s creations were from everywhere and anywhere in the Universe, creating diversity on this beautiful planet Earth.

Chapter I

Sapphire

I recall resting, gazing into the iridescent Virgo Cluster, the same way humans gaze and are drawn to the hundreds of lights overlooking a city, or brilliance of fireworks on the 4th of July. I had awaited on Him on some celestial shore, for God’s nod of approval to be out on my own, graduating as a guide.

My name given was Sapphire, or it used to be. Some on Earth would consider me a mystery, others a simple phenomenon or ghost, and others might use the term spiritual being.

However, my existence as I knew it, just was. I journeyed with the Stanley family until the 60s. I remember a ringing of a memory year after year, as I regained most of what I had known—from the stars. My beginning seems timeless.

I know I come from the heavens, or a place known as the Virgo Cluster and born within the billion buried stars. I remember elders, Lynelle and her partner Cecil, who both had been my teachers training me to guide. My first assignment was the Schneider family; mostly to guide and protect their daughter Cemma. I can remember having feelings for Cemma, feelings that grew stronger as she grew. I somehow became a part of her.

My post-apprenticeship [as a guide] started about the same time Cemma was born, in 1879. She was a darling. A freckled-faced, stout baby, who matured into a fine young lady and a talented poet—eventually finding a home in Joplin, Missouri, with William Stanley, a handsome, but thin yet strong Englishman—a man nearly fifteen years her senior. He fell hard for Cemma. And, because of his love for her infant daughter, born out of wedlock, before he’d even met Cemma, her admiration for William came natural.

Baby Mabel, or Effie, as William had nicknamed her, was born just before Cemma’s twentieth birthday. During the first months on the farm together, they swore to make their humble homestead a ‘small piece of heaven.’

I kept busy with the William Stanley family for years. When Effie was only three-years old, Cemma and William had their first baby together, little Ruth. They named her after Ruth Cleveland—President Grover Cleveland’s daughter. One year later, Cemma birthed Thomas, followed by Alfred, Madge, or Meal as the 1910 Census reported, hearing her immature annunciation, and Robert William, their last daughter before Bythel was born in 1912.

The hardest day for me, as Sapphire, was the day the tornado hit. I had wished I could help more than I did, but all I could do was comfort Cemma and her children, encouraging them through their daily routines. Then as loneliness seems to do, the year was 1922, Cemma was tired and tired of being alone and she announced to the children she had sold the farm. The whole family moved to Oklahoma, otherwise known as the Oklahoma Territory.

They eventually all prospered, even Cemma, who found odd jobs, she eventually even sold some of her poetry as greeting cards. Occasionally, she’d work in food services as a restaurant server, but never gained significant financial ground until later. Cemma remained a single mom until she met John Maynard after the entire Stanley family moved to Burke. That was the eighth month and just three years before Black Tuesday.

Cemma and the kids had heard gossip of other towns booming in growth and wealth just as Joplin had. The far west was growing and prospering in all industry, filling the air with anxiety, not slowing with the rest of the United States’ economy. So I was told to direct them to Burke, Idaho. And, although Burke had been negatively reported in the news because of the horrific 1910 Fire, newspapers across the entire country as described ‘fires ripping through the area, destroying acres of timber’ in and near small mining towns, emigration to those places continued. The Stanley children and Cemma all agreed on Idaho and up and moved with most all of their belongings. The year was 1926.

Cemma and the children remained one family unit—other than the time the military took from the boys, and the short period of time Effie, the oldest, moved to Oregon with her love Rex Nutt. There they had two baby boys before settling back into Burke, or the Silver Valley; where she could be close to Cemma, the mother whom she considered too dear to her heart to be distant from. It made it so much easier to have the family all in one place for me—it seemed to be God’s plan for to keep them together.

A memorable second tearful day was the day Madge’s husband, George Fred Van Slyke, disappeared and was considered dead. The year was 1935. After a near, ten-year run of playful, good times, all except for what seemed to be Madge’s idea of a ‘dark curse’—her hidden emotional toil and wrestling of her inability to bear children, she lost her first love. God also kept Fred’s story from me.

The Stanley family became somewhat reckless, but appeared in a good way and to be enjoying life to the fullest when they settled into spicy Burke, Idaho,. They laughed and partied together near every day—except for Cemma who ran the household. They’d go from Burke to gold-placer, Murray and sometimes even the bigger and more populated town of Wallace. Hype was everywhere.

‘People are striking it rich everywhere,’ the Wallace Press and papers throughout the country released. This brought more and more people to the Silver Valley. They came by carriage, car, train and horseback. There were Presidents, politicians, infamous renowned faces—male and female alike. All seemed to want a piece of the action, including religious groups and cultures of all kinds, Catholics, Germans, and Italians settled into the area, and soon churches of all denominations were built