Auld Country Books
P.O. Box 12
Spring Hill, KS 66083
Auldcountrybooks@sbcglobal.net
After years of writing, including dozens of unpublished manuscripts, Olathe author Marsha Lytle finally saw her dreams come to fruition this month with the publication of her first novel, Haggerty’s Curse, recently released by Author House Publishers of Bloomington, Indiana.
Lytle, who currently divides her time between librarian duties at Spring Hill High School, and part-time sales at Foozles Book Store, was the founder and former director of Dinosaur Den Preschools in Olathe.
“I was one of those kids who didn’t mind it when our second grade teacher would punish us, when the class got too rowdy, by making us write stories based on a calendar picture.” Her first published work came in 6th grade, a short story in the Eglin Air Force Base Officer’s Wife newsletter about how her cat ended up with a short tail.
“It was my sophomore year in high school at Niceville High School in Florida when I first decided I wanted to be a novelist,” Lytle said. “We had to write a short story for Ms. Peak’s English class. Right then and there, I decided the characters in the story could be a basis for a novel.”
Actually getting too attached to a character seems to have stuck. “Many of my novels become trilogies. My characters become so real to me that I can’t seem to let go of them. Sometimes killing them off is the only way to end the series.”
Haggerty’s Curse is different from most of her books in that it is partially based on fact. “Most all my books have an Irish theme, whether it be my adult or young adult novels.” Not surprising for someone who was the editor of an Irish American newspaper, Heart of America Irish Life, and has been a member of just about every Irish group in Kansas City over the years, at least those that allow women.
Lytle developed an interest in genealogy a few years ago after attending a family reunion in Pratt, Kansas. “Since then I have tried to keep it up in what spare time I have. Although I can trace my heritage to Charlemagne and beyond, including knights, kings, and America’s founding fathers, the one poor Irish Catholic line seems to have grabbed my attention and held it.”
Postings on the Hagerty-L Rootsweb listserv are what prompted the story. “I read so many stories of ‘Haggerty Disease’ or ‘Haggerty’s Curse’,” she said. “People had sad tales of ancestors who were plagued by alcoholism, depression, suicide, early onset dementia, and other ailments. No one had a name for the disease that might be causing it.”
Falling back on her years as a medical librarian at Bowman Gray Medical School in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and a three year tenure at the Wm. S. Hall Psychiatric Institute in Columbia, South Carolina, Lytle got on MEDLINE, an internet version of the resource health professionals use. Using the symptoms most often described, she narrowed down the diagnosis to amyloidosis, which also is well documented in the literature as having a strain originating in County Donegal Ireland.
The idea for the novel also came from references to her great grandmother, who was described by relatives as a little odd, and died in a sanatorium. Her name – Rose Ella Haggerty. “It started me to thinking of what it would be like to have an inherited disease in your family and not want to risk passing it on.”
Consequently the novel begins with her great-great grandfather James Haggerty leaving Ireland in the 1850’s to come to America, after the recent horrors of the potato famine in his native land. He makes a blood vow with his brother that neither one of them will marry until late in life, and only then if they don’t develop symptoms of the disease that drove their father to suicide at an early age. However, James meets Catherine Brennan on the road to Derry to catch their ship. Though Cat is only a child, they form an instant bond that will lead to years of heartbreak for both parties.
Historical research has never been a problem for Lytle, who holds a history degree from Wichita State University and advanced library degrees from both the University of South Carolina and Emporia State University. She spends her spring and summer breaks traveling the country doing research. Haggerty’s Curse has prompted two visits to Brazil, Indiana, where the novel ends, and Lytle hopes to be returning to the area for a book signing in nearby Greencastle, where her great-great grandparents married.
Earlier in July, she visited many Civil War battlefields in Virginia while attending the National Education Association annual meeting in Washington D.C. On the way home, she stopped in Maryland to visit the Antietam National Battlefield as well, which figures prominently in the story. While traveling home from a weeklong history seminar in New Hampshire later in the month, Lytle also visited the Pennsylvania coal mining towns where much of the novel takes place. “It helps to visualize the area, get a feel for where the people lived and worked,” she said.
On her visit through the area this summer she spotted the Molly Maguire driving tour sign in nearby Tamaqua, and then, upon turning a corner, saw an business advertisement for Hegarty Contracting, not only underscoring the great variety of spellings of the name, but enforcing her belief that despite knowing next to nothing about her great-great grandfather, he could have very possibly started his early life in America in the coal mines.
Lytle’s love of writing was compromised a few years ago when her literary agent connected her with a less than scrupulous publisher for another one of her novels. “The agent promoted Commonwealth Publishers as the up and coming mass market publisher in the business,” Lytle said. “I recently came across a book written by an ex-FBI agent which details how many people were taken in by less than honest agents and publishers. My name is listed in the Sources and Acknowledgements since I provided the author with documentation from my own experience with my novel, The Auld Country, which is still listed on Amazon.com, though it was never published.
The experience with Commonwealth was a blow to her hopes for a writing career. For several years, she didn’t write or send any of her work in to be reviewed by publishers, even though she’d gotten many favorable letters from New York publishing houses on her book, The Auld Country, including some interest from Hollywood for a possible movie.
An article in a library journal sparked her interest in the publishing on demand phenomena. After extensive research, she decided to try out Author House, which at the time was named 1st Books. “My publisher is very detail oriented,” Lytle said. “They walked me through the publishing project step by step, through several rounds of galley proofs and cover changes, and were always just an email or phone call away.”
She also felt blessed to have picked up an amateur editor along the way, James Hagerty from Virginia Beach, a fellow subscriber to Hagerty-L-Rootsweb. Because the book is told alternatively from James’s and Catherine’s points of view, it was helpful to have a male to offer advice on how James might have acted when faced with certain situations that arose in his life.
Though she doesn’t expect the book to be a best seller by any means, it does fulfill a life long dream of walking into a bookstore and seeing her book on display. Review copies are available at no charge from Chris Rennie at CRennie@authorhouse.com
Haggerty’s Curse is available online through Author House’s book store, (www.authorhouse.com), www.Amazon.com, and www.BarnesandNoble.com