Editor’s note: This is the second of two stories about local authors and books on local places. Part one ran last Monday.

    When Linda Matthews was a child, she remembers traveling from the East Coast to Washington for family reunions and her father, who was reared in Salkum, would take her to Centralia and Chehalis to visit elderly family members.

    “It wasn’t until many decades later that I got interested in my family,” Benson said. “What did they do? How did they get here? How did it go for them?”

    Today, those living pieces of history are gone but Matthews is revisiting their lives in her new book, “Middling Folk.”

    Benson is among the second handful of authors featured in a look at recently published books with local ties. Today we look at Benson’s work as well as a familiar local author with a new young adult fiction book out and a newly published children’s author writing from his Chehalis home.

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Linda Matthews

Book: “Middling Folk: Three Seas, Three Centuries, One Scots-Irish Family”

Genre: Historical non-fiction

    When Linda Matthews set about writing a book about her family’s history four years ago, the now 64-year-old said she didn’t have a lot of live resources to go to. Now, after publishing “Middling Folk,” she said she has a great deal more connections to her family, including some of the people who helped create the community of Salkum more than a century ago.

    “Now that this book is out and I have a Web site, people are e-mailing me who are relatives I didn’t even know I had,” Matthews said.

    Matthews, of Evanston, Ill., has owned the publishing company Chicago Review Press with her husband for the last 40 years. She was publisher for many years, and said she decided in 2005 to start researching the book she had had in her head for many years: the story of her family’s immigration to America and their adventures in the New World.

    “I spent decades of my life fine tuning other people’s writings … I decided it was my turn,” Matthews said. “It was a great adventure. I learned so much.”

    The Hammill family chronicled in “Middling Folk” is traced to Scotland and Northern Ireland, then to Virginia and Maryland, a fact Matthews had not known at all about her family. They came to Washington in the 1880s and 1890s, settling in Salkum, where they started a sawmill. Matthews said she focused on not only the family’s individual experiences but also their reactions and experiences during such better known slices of history as the 1919 flu epidemic, civil wars in Ireland and the American Revolutionary war.

    “All these things take on a whole new meaning when you see them through the eyes of one family,” Matthews said. “It’s history to us. But to them it was reality. It was their lives.”

    Matthews visited the Twin Cities several times during her research and visited the Lewis County Historical Museum and also used old issues of The Chronicle to look up happenings among the Hammills. She was also able to find one elderly family member, Hal Hammill, Jr. of Kent, who died in October, but who provided Matthews with a great deal of valuable information before he died.

    “He had a lot of stories to tell and he had a pair of old mill stones in his yard he showed me,” Matthews said.

    The title “Middling Folk” comes from another important theme in the book that Matthews didn’t even know would exist. She said she found that throughout their history, the Hammill family remained a middle class family despite the ups and downs of their fortunes.

    “I felt like telling their story was telling the story of the tens of thousands of middle class people who feel like their stories are not important,” Matthews said. “I feel there’s a lot of people in the middle class whose stories have never been told.”

    “Middling Folk” can be purchased at all major book retailers. For more information, go to www.middlingfolk.com.

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Linda Benson

Book: “The Horse Jar”

Genre: Young adult fiction

    Linda Benson was once a horse-crazy girl who wanted nothing else in life than to own a horse. That’s why Benson, 60, feels such a connection to her newest publication “The Horse Jar.”

    “I can actually see myself in many of the characters in this book,” Benson said. “A lot of people who have read it have told me the same thing.”

    “The Horse Jar” is the Onalaska-area writer’s second book published, though it was the first book she ever wrote. Her first published piece was “Finding Chance” which was published about two years ago.

    “The Horse Jar,” written in about 2001, is about a young girl named Annie who wants a horse more than anything in the world. She saves every cent she earns in a tiny tin, with the hope that once she earns enough money she will be able to convince her parents buying a horse is a reasonable thing to do. But just when she has earned enough money, things change.

“She ends up having to make the biggest decision of her life which could ruin her chances of getting the horse and lose her best friend at the same time,” Benson said.

    Though Benson said her books are aimed at young adult readers, she said stories like “The Horse Jar” really defy categorization because they can appeal to many age groups. She said this story was very near to her heart because she could relate to many of the characters in the book.

    “I’m really drawn to the age where kids are really starting to read but actually a lot of adults have connected with my books as well,” Benson said.

    Benson was accepted by a literary agent this last year and said she continues to work on more books. She is currently working on a story she will call “The Girl Who Remembered Horses,” a departure for her because it will be set far into the future in a world where there are no longer horses and people do not recall the creatures having existed.

    “Except one girl who dreams about them,” Benson said. “She actually dreams about creatures she’s never seen.”

    Benson is also working on a novel set in Western Washington that stars a 14-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl.

    “The Horse Jar” is available for purchase at Book ‘n’ Brush in downtown Chehalis and Benson also donated a copy to the Timberland Regional Library System. For more information, go to www.LindaBenson.net or www.lindabenson.blogspot.com.

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Ron S. Irvine

Book: “The Three Wise Cats”

Genre: Children’s picture book

    Ron Irvine has been writing for more than 20 years but he only recently realized his calling might be with the children with whom he volunteers his time at church.

    While writing children’s books has been described by some as a very challenging genre, Irvine said writing his book “The Three Wise Cats” came easily.

    “For me, it’s easier working for children than adults because adults are more critical and children tend to be more creative,” Irvine said of what draws him to this genre.

    Both Irvine and his wife, Desiree, are writers. Desiree writes Christian romance books. Together, the former adult family home owners wrote an informational book about navigating the elderly care system called “The Golden Years Become The Twilight Zone.”

    Irvine, who holds a B.A. in Biblical studies and an M.A. in Biblical counseling,  wrote “The Three Wise Cats” about 12 years ago as a play for children in his church. At their current church in Chehalis, Irvine has volunteered to work with kids for three or four years and said his old play came to mind while going through literature in Christian subjects available to children.

    “I was reading other children’s books and I thought, ‘Gosh, I could do this,’” Irvine said.

    “The Three Wise Cats” tells of the birth of Christ and the beginning of Christmas but in a unique way. The story is told through the eyes of Speedy, Squeaky and Smarty, three cats who have been chosen to find a very special name for a special day before the star guiding them burns out and the name is lost forever.

    A typical picture book has between 10-15 words per page while Irvine’s story has about 40-60 words per page, so it is really aimed at the early reader set.

    “It’s really about the true meaning of Christmas,” Irvine said. “They go out searching for the name and they put the Christ back into Christmas.”

    Irvine has already had two more picture books accepted for publication. His next picture books, “The Colored Eggs of Easter” and “My Body ABCs”, will be available for purchase sometime next year.

    “The Three Wise Cats” is available at all major book retailers.

    Carrina Stanton is a freelance writer who lives in Centralia. She can be reached at carrinastanton@yahoo.com.