Destination

I was thinking about that old adage: ‘it’s not the destination but the journey’ last week, when I set out in the early morning for a trip from my hometown 160km (100 miles) north to the city of Christchurch. It was freezing and the sun was just rising. I wasn’t looking forward to the four-hour round trip.

Those of us who live at the southern end of the Canterbury Plains often complain about the boring, two-hour journey of relatively straight roads interspersed with sections of passing lanes. The milk tankers and trucks don’t seem to take notice that they are supposed to travel at 90kph if towing a trailer, and can whizz past you and leave you in their dust. We sometimes forget to look at the breathtaking snow-clad southern alps gleaming to the west as we mutter in the slip-stream of yet another truck.

Yet this was an important milestone in my journey: for I was collecting my book To Live a Long & Prosperous Life from the printer, and this day would become publication day; 13 July 2016.

The whole thing about the journey versus destination hit home to me when I was reading about Out of Eden, an epic project currently underway somewhere in asia, near Xanadu. The personal quest of adventurer Paul Salopek, I was boggled to see he was taking seven years of his life to walk the route of human DNA migration from Africa to South America. Seven years! What an undertaking! And then I realised that my own journey (sat mostly behind my keyboard and via the global digital network of the world wide web) had actually taken close on that amount of time: seven years.  I particularly like that he is doing what I was tracing within my book: seeking the quieter, hidden stories of people who rarely make the news while at the same time engaging with the major stories of our time. My journey is not quite so epic, but I can empathise with the reasons and the motivation behind it.

Exactly a year ago I had ‘completed’ the writing of my book  (in reality it got tweaked all the way to printing), and I posted this on my facebook status:

16 July 2015

update on the BOOK. Just about got to the I’ve-finished-the-damn-thing stage. But now comes the bibliography, the illustrations and then the printing/publishing. Whose idea was this any way?

I set out on this mission to write and publish not knowing how long it would take – in fact I think if I had known I might never have started. But along the way I was learning, which is so much part of the journey towards the unknown. Learning many things about my family and the heritage my ancestors had left for us, but also a great deal about the process of researching and writing a book, then about formatting, indexing, layout for printing, publishing and all the other bits along the way that you scarcely think about when you pick up a book.

Discussing family history writing in Family Tree Magazine (May, 2016), Cherry Gilchrist has this to say:

Start by embracing three truths, and triumph over the word ‘never’ in each of them:

• It will never be the right time to write it, so just do it anyway.
• Your research will never be complete; but what’s wrong with leaving something for future generations to follow up?
• What you produce will never be perfect. Does it really matter, if it’s full of interest for others?

By this time I had cut out huge chunks of interesting (to me) but irrelevant information, and given the draft to an editor for their advice and direction. I tried to follow admonishments from various sources: eliminate exclamation marks, don’t use two words where one will suffice, try not to be ‘clever’ with fancy-pants words and various other self criticisms that made me super-vigilant on my own writing to the point where I scarcely knew if what I had written was actually any good any more. I checked and rechecked all my facts, sources and references not once but many times. My perfectionist tendencies almost prevented me from ever getting to a ‘finished’ point as I constantly discovered errors, typos and glitches in my ‘final’ drafts. Despite constant proofreading the nature of having such a large number of words (over 230,000) makes it almost certain that there will be still errors in the final book. Some days Gilchrist’s ‘never’ seemed to be winning.

There are many helpful websites and books that can steer the newbie author and indie publisher in the right direction, although many are geared up for the fiction writers. One piece of advice I had found I printed out and stuck above my lap-top as a sort of check list. I must say when I first looked at it in September 2015 I could only tick off the first Write Book which up until then was the goal of my journey. Here I was, newly arrived with a finished book and I still had all this to do!

Publishing Resources

So my trip to Christchurch was an ending in a way – the finished product was finally done. The final few weeks were not without drama, including a huge mistake on the part of the printers who had initially quoted me the wrong price: the ‘new’ quote came in at over $2000 more than the original, which was a shock to put it mildly. With just a couple of weeks before production and having pre-sold and marketed based on their original quote I was not happy. But then I channelled Dinah’s spirit and negotiated a solution. Once this print run has been exhausted any further copies are going to be considerably more expensive to produce. In the meanwhile there are still some copies available at the original price of NZ $49.99.

Finally I had the brand new shiny books in my possession, and was able to deliver some to Christchurch recipients.  I also called into my favourite bookstore Smith’s Bookshop at the Tannery and dropped of some copies that they have kindly agreed to stock. The highlight of my trip was to see that they almost immediately put a copy in the shop window. Now that was exciting!

Smith’s Bookshop

After a long drive home, the next day was spent packaging and boxing up the orders, then delivering them to the post office and courier to make their way to their new homes and into libraries: New Zealand, Australia, UK and USA. Farewell books!

By this time exhaustion has more or less overtaken me and a huge cold threatens to overwhelm my sinuses. All I want to do is sleep. People say to me I must be excited. But I am just glad I have got to the end of this part of the journey and survived. One task before the weekend was to create and distribute press releases including posing for a cheesy author-with-book photo.

Finally, I took four copies of the book and opened each one. I carefully took up my favourite pen with purple ink (Dinah wrote with purple ink, too!). On the first page I  wrote a personal dedication to each of my four children, for it was for them that I wrote and officially dedicated this book:

For my children, with love:
Rachael, Emily, Philip and Alexander
May you, too, live long and prosperous lives.

Dinah, the youngest Nathan

When I set off to record and write my family story it was easy at first: find some facts – write them down in an interesting fashion. But soon I found that having a large, complex family makes a linear narrative difficult. At some point, you have to stop, back track in time, and take up another person’s tale, sometimes crossing again the same dates in history, sometimes even the same places. I am sure, despite my best efforts, that I have had to repeat some information in order to orientate the reader.

After my first early draft was completed I decided that I would take the family matriarch, Dinah as a central unifying character, around whom the rest of the stories revolve. She became the pivotal force within the book, just as she had been in her family and community on the West Coast of New Zealand.

Dinah Hansen c1915.

This ‘little old lady’ had once been a little girl and young woman; something I had to conjour for my readers. Here are some excerpts from page 56 of To Live a Long & Prosperous Life:

Dinah means ‘to be judged; vindicated’. The biblical Dinah was the eleventh child of Jacob and Leah. Dinah (Dina bat Isaachar) was the eleventh and youngest surviving child of Barnett and Julia Nathan: the baby of the extended family. 

drawn from an image in Punch magazine

Born on 2 February 1835, Dinah was 26 years younger than her oldest sister Fanny, who had already been married for two years and had her first child. Dinah’s brother Solomon Lyon Nathan had started his family too, so by the time Dinah arrived she had two nieces and a nephew who were older than her. Her father Barnett was 53 and her mother Julia was 49. Even more remarkable was both Barnett’s elderly parents Mordecai aged 89 and Frances aged 98 were living with the family at 20 Snargate Street, making a three generation household.

When Dinah was six, the family, including Dinah’s grandmother Frances Nathan, (Independent means) Dinah’s parents Barnett (China dealer) and Julia Nathan and some of her siblings (and a family servant), were recorded at 20 Snargate Street, Dover on the evening of the 1841 census:

Nathan Family, Dover, Kent 1841 UK census

As we don’t have any photographs or even much direct information about Dinah as a child, we have to make do with building a picture of what was happening around her at the time:

Dinah was like any other little Victorian girl, perhaps the favoured ‘baby’ of the family, cosseted and petted, but also privileged to have a stable and secure upbringing. We can imagine her watching the comings and goings on the street below from the high windows, playing with her dolls and discouraged from boisterous games with her brother. Taking walks out along the beach front or to the parks on the Sabbath or visiting other shops with her mother during the week. Learning to count by naming how many oranges, lemons or figs her father was putting in the customer’s basket, and learning to reckon with a pencil on the corner of the wrapping paper. Applying herself to her lessons and learning about running a home at her mother’s side, knowing with certainty her future role as a wife and mother was likely already mapped out.

Navigating the life of Dinah, her children and her family has been an incredible adventure: discovering new places and faces along the way – pictures, stories and tales of events great and small. Creating a lasting document that brings all these to life has been another ‘adventure’ full of challenge and small triumphs too.

The countdown begins

With almost seven years behind me I am setting my sights on finally seeing my book roll of the press in the next few weeks and getting it out to all those people who have patiently been waiting to get their hands on a copy.

Here is some of what the book includes:

• A4, perfect bound black and white with full colour glossy cover.
• 16 Chapters, 400 pages (That’s over 230,000 words – and yes, I did edit it down considerably!)
• Includes over 500 images (24 of which are maps), diagrams, news-clippings, illustrations and photographs
• Family trees
• Timeline 1735 – 1958
• Jewish Glossary
• Appendices (including brief notes on Jewish life and customs)
• Fully indexed including individuals
• Bibliography of references and sources.

As I have written before in A new beginning, the book uses my 3 x great grandmother Dinah Nathan and her life story as the central, pivotal individual upon which the rest of the family stories are arranged. So the people who she knew and was related to (family and through marriage), the places she lived and was familiar with all feature, but there are also stories that she may have just been told – like her grandfather’s life in Poland, or stories she may have only heard about through letters – her brother in Africa, or the extended Lawn family. And of course, towards the end of the book, the lives of her children and grandchildren after her death are also touched on.  Have a look here for a more detailed Chapter Summary which indicates some of the depth and breadth of the book, and some of the individuals covered.

‘He died not long after they arrived in New Zealand’

Who was Nathaniel Hart? How did he die? Where was he buried? A search for an elusive great, great, great grandfather led instead to the discovery of the long and remarkable life of the wife he left behind. This is the true story of Dinah, a young Jewish wife and mother who was to become the matriarch of a large family.

Abandoned in New Zealand with three of her children and a new baby while her husband went to the Goldfields, Dinah’s life could have easily slipped into oblivion. Casting far and wide to find the ever elusive Nathaniel this story uncovers the lives of brothers, sisters and cousins as they all sought to make successful lives in England, Australia, Africa, America and New Zealand.

Stories of triumph and disaster, or closely held secrets darkly hinted at, all back dropped by the greater moments in history: glimpses of Queens and presidents, marvels of the Victorian age, victorious campaigns for suffrage, and the enormous personal losses of the Great War.

You can print out the rest of the Promotional Information here.

Order your copy now

As I am self-publishing the run will be relatively small, so please make sure you order now to secure your copy. As an added incentive, for those of you who pre-order (before 22 June 2016) there is a discount.

I have added options the sidebar to pre-order your copy of  To Live a Long & Prosperous Life by credit card via PayPal. Make sure you select the correct button for your shipping destination. [Update: 2019 – Credit card buttons are no longer supported, please contact the author (main menu at top right if this site) to be sent an order form or to set up an invoice in PayPal].

Indebted

My research and writing have been based upon work of other family members who have been researching for far longer than I have. Not long after I became interested in Lawn family history I attended a workshop at Ferrymead Heritage Park in my then role as a Museum Educator at South Canterbury Museum. Looking across the room I saw another attendee who looked vaguely familiar, a man with a friendly smile, who, when I sidled around the room to glance at his name tag I saw he was a LAWN – Peter Lawn of Blacks Point Museum. Peter and I got talking and quickly established our family connections; he was the son of Bob and Betty Lawn of Reefton, descendants of John Lawn (1840-1905), brother to my James Lawn (1837-1928), making us third cousins once removed.

Peter alerted me to the fact that there was a book and family tree, compiled by Helen and the late Ross Lawn (descendant of Thomas Lawn and Sarah Hart) for a family reunion in the 1980s – a reunion that somehow my immediate family missed. Peter kindly sent me a copy of the tree and the booklet that explained a little of the history of the Lawn family. The tree I received had been revised in 1989 after the reunion (when more information had come forward). It was remarkable: beautiful calligraphy on seven A1 pages, it covered the many Lawns who were descended from the original Cornish family beginning with William Lawn (b Gwennap 1777). The six sheets of the tree covered:

Proof!

Today I recieved the first proof copy of my book. (I am resisting the urge to splurge on at least a couple of exclamation marks here. Oh what the heck:!!) Last week, after I finally finished formatting and checking through my draft, made the PDF and pressed ‘send’ to email to the printer I was left feeling decidedly flat – what an anti-climax after over six years of work!

However, a courier arrived a short time ago with the first, pristine copy of the REAL book, and suddenly I felt overwhelmed: I have finally got there!  It is printed, bound, shiny and new. A quick flick through and it looks pretty good, even if I do say so myself. Amazing that this part of the process is so quick, when the design, layout and graphics took over six months of hard graft on Indesign, Illustrator, Photoshop (and my friend Google when I couldn’t fathom how to get the blessed thing to do what I wanted).

So much frustration and mutterings such as  ‘why on earth did I ever think I could do this?’ ‘whose idea was this anyway’  and plaintive wails of ‘when will it ever be finished?’ not to mention late nights hunched over the keyboard, promising the ever patient spouse that I would ‘just finish off this page . . .’ , copious amounts of coffee and chocolate, and many many hours later, and here we are.

Now I will sit down and carefully proof-read it all, make adjustments and corrections ready for the actual print run. Once everything is in place and the final quote from the printer is in, I will be taking for orders, so watch this space. Exciting times!

Proof:

noun: evidence sufficient to establish a thing as true, or to produce belief in its truth;

 the act of testing or making trial of anything; test; trial.

 

adjective:  able to withstand; successful in not being overcome.