Love Letter to Jalna

My fellow Harry Potter fans will completely understand this simile, and even those who aren't so wild about Harry will probably get the message. Imagine that you discovered the Potter series many years after its completion. You finished Harry Potter and the Philosopher's [or Sorcerer's] Stone -- loved it! -- and hurried back to the library. To your unbounded joy, the works of J. K. Rowling owned a four-foot section of library shelf, and they were all about the Potterverse! At the center, of course, stood the seven books that chronicle Harry's years at Hogwarts; but there was so much more! Sequels abounding, full of tales of the Trio's life after Hogwarts, work and marriage and children; and of their children's adventures as well. But that's not all! Prequels too -- the Marauders at Hogwarts and after, James and Lily in hiding with baby Harry; Tom Riddle's school days; Dumbledore battling Grindelwald; even a book about the founding of Hogwarts itself! If you can place yourself in that moment, feel your emotions as your eyes drink in that four-foot shelf, that wealth, that embarrassment of riches -- then you know how I felt one summer afternoon in the late 1960s, when I discovered Jalna.

The Jalna books! Have you read them? There are sixteen in all, and they chronicle one hundred years of the Whiteoak family, beginning with the building of their great house, Jalna, on the shores of Canada's Lake Ontario. Their author, Mazo de la Roche, wrote them over a period of thirty-three years. As an amateur writer myself I suspect she fell in love with the Whiteoaks and their world, and didn't want to leave it -- and fortunately for her (and us) she didn't have to. The first book, Jalna, came out in 1927 and won Ms. de la Roche a prize of $10,000 from the magazine Atlantic Monthly. Forty years later I took it from the shelf, started reading, and was immediately drawn in! In fact, if I could read myself into books in the manner of Thursday Next, Jalna would still be one of the first I'd visit. Let's take a look...

Adeline Whiteoak, the onetime Irish beauty who with her husband Philip came out from England to found Jalna many years ago, is now a widow in her late 90s. Her grandson Renny is the master of Jalna, and his responsibilities include his four half-brothers, ranging in age from pre-teen to early twenties; his older sister Meg, never married and still bitter over a nasty breakup with their next-door neighbor almost 20 years ago; his two aged uncles, once world travelers and men-about-town; and his headstrong, opinionated, irrepressible grandmother. The eldest of the four younger Whiteoak brothers is a poet, and when his first book of poems is published he falls in love with his editor and brings her from New York to Jalna as his bride. Meanwhile another of the brothers has also fallen in love; he elopes with the neighbor girl whose out-of-wedlock birth and subsequent appearance on the doorstep were the indirect cause of that nasty breakup that Meg is still so torqued about. The plot continues to thicken from there; in fact, the whole book is a delicious dish of thicken plot pie.

Of course, Potterphile that I am, I've also considered the opposite scenario to the one I described in the first paragraph. To wit, what if the Internet had existed when Mazo de la Roche was still writing? Just imagine the fan sites, the Yahoo! groups, the rumors and conjecture! The fanfic! (Whiteoak slash; ay, carumba!) The role-play sites -- I'd want to play Gran (Adeline), she's always been my favorite character. "Compose yourself?! I'll compose this family, with my stick!" (A favorite Gran line.) Now there's a role I could sink my teeth into. "Somebody get my teeth!" (Another favorite Gran line.)

The Jalna books are among the oldest and most favorite of my old favorites. Back when I thought I might grow up to be a novelist, I dreamed of being authorized by Ms. de la Roche's heirs to continue the series into the 1960s and beyond. I had my own very definite ideas of what should happen next! (For one thing, the poet Whiteoak's works would come into vogue a la Rod McKuen, inspiring his daughter to heights of venality in making a buck off her late father. I was writing fanfic before I knew such a thing existed.) These books have continued to resonate with me through all the ages and stages of my life. When I first read them, I identified with Pheasant, the young doostep-baby-cum-bride -- she was drifty, flighty, kind of a fuckup but with a good heart, and that's how I saw myself. Back then I viewed Grandmother Adeline as everything I wanted to be in old age, and I still think I could do a lot worse. Hard to say what I'll be like as a centenarian, if I make it; but I only hope I can still read -- and that I've got large-print editions of the Jalna books.