Creating Community as a Character in Our Books ... M. Lee Prescott

 

“Community is the single most important factor in learner-centered classrooms.” (Carol Avery)

Hello,

It’s Mary Lee (alias M. Lee Prescott) saying hello. The quote above is from my life as a teacher (retired in June 2021). Creating a community in one’s classroom is critical if a teacher wishes to build trust among all stakeholders – adults and children – and encourage the kind of risk taking that allows learning to thrive. You might be asking yourself—why in a writer’s blog, is she writing about teaching and classrooms? The answer is simple creating a supportive, nurturing community where my characters live is at the heart of most of my fiction. Certainly, community is, indeed, a main character in all four of my series. I thought in this post, I tell you a little about these communities. Perhaps you’ll come and visit someday?

The Morgan’s Run books are set in the southwestern United States in the fictional town of Saguaro Valley. An orographic effect characterized by unusual cloud formations and abundant moisture has created this extraordinary green valley that lies between two mountain ranges, vast deserts beyond.

Home to six thousand residents—ranchers, farmers, entrepreneurs, and others – much of the land is owned by a few wealthy ranchers, Ben Morgan among them, who take their stewardship seriously, providing livelihoods and support to every resident. The undiscovered valley mostly remains isolated in its pristine beauty and agricultural abundance, except when the occasional movie star arranges a pack trip up into the mountains. Saguaro Valley is a place where everyone knows everyone and takes care of everyone. If you’re in danger, trouble or need, you are never alone. Many beloved characters leave home and return, to heal, to find love, and to raise their families. Others spread their wings and move east as do two of the Morgan sons, Sam, an architect to Maryland and Kyle, a veterinarian, to Horseshoe Crab Cove, a New England town that is home to the Morgan’s Fire community (see below!).

In this spin-off series to Morgan’s Run, readers come to the village of Horseshoe Crab Cove, home to Ben Morgan’s younger brother. Formerly a world traveler and longtime Maine resident, Richard purchases a five hundred acre property, where he builds an enormous farmhouse, barns, stables and eventually a winery. Richard is also an investor in Field and Field, a farm-to-table restaurant on the property, created and run by his son-in-law.

The community encompasses several small seaside towns, Horseshoe Crab Cove at its center. On tiny Main Street, with its shops and restaurants, is a garden space, Laura’s Community Garden, started by Richard’s daughter, Pam in memory of her mother. There in the four acre plot, residents come to plant, grow, and share the fruits of their collective labors. Horseshoe Crab Cove is also home to the Darn Yarners, a group of eight women in their sixties, friends for over four decades, who support each other, each other’s families, and the village proper. Over the years the Yarners have raised money for parks and other civic projects, their fellowship intricately woven into the fabric of village life. Like Saguaro Valley, no one in Horseshoe Crab Cove is alone and the close community provides a safe, loving place for longtime residents and newcomers like Kyle Morgan, who follows his wife Harriet, daughter on a Darn Yarner, to town. When, at age fifty, Joe O’Leary leaves the priesthood, he, too, comes to the village to learn how to live outside the confines of the church. 

Village of Old Harbor, a coastal village with a Quaker school at its center, seems like just another sleepy town, where murders happen a little too regularly! Born and raised in the area, Detective Roger Demaris, and his team, along with his former schoolmate and high school girlfriend, art teacher Bess Dore, explore the worlds beneath the town and school’s placid surfaces uncovering unimaginable evil. Despite its aura of tranquility, this is a sometimes fractured community, infiltrated by outsiders bent on dredging up the past, wreaking havoc on the present, and changing the course of the future for the residents of Old Harbor. There is, however, a core of community resilience that prevails and triumphs over the darkness—thank goodness!

Finally—there are the communities traversed by private investigator, Ricky Steele. When not chasing criminals at a snobby boarding school or helping a friend find her husband’s killer in the exclusive, coastal town of Windy Harbor, Ricky prowls the mean streets of Spindle City, trailing errant spouses, and mingling with sex workers and drug lords. All of these communities have an identity that shape Ricky’s often bumbling, but heartfelt investigating style. Her office is in one of the old granite mills that populate the landscape of Spindle City. These behemoths, left over from the city’s heyday as a thriving textile manufacturing hub, reflect the gritty strength of the community and its denizens.

The above notwithstanding, the community readers love more than those mentioned, is where Ricky lives—the Grove. There in her ticky-tacky beach cottage, she is surrounded by friends and neighbors like Maddie and Fulton, the deaf octogenarians to the east, who keep the canapes and cocktails coming, and Vinnie to the west, a dear friend who helps with carpentry, security, underworld information, and cat sitting. The Grove also draws to its community, Dr. Charlie Bowen, who renovates a waterfront property around the corner, while wooing the independent Ricky. Will love win out? Time will tell.

So… is “community” synonymous with setting? Are they the same? I would answer no, but I could be persuaded either way. As author, community unfolds in my stories as the living, breathing manifestation of setting. Community allows characters to take risks to dare to be themselves, to grow, to develop, to thrive. Is this the same as setting? Hmm… You be the judge!

Great blogging with you! I love to hear from readers and writers so please be in touch anytime.

Warm wishes,

Mary Lee

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