This is a true story of Helga Estby's walk (with her daughter, Clara) from Spokane, WA, to New York City. This would be a remarkable feat at any time. But this was in 1896!!! Helga was a remarkable woman under any circumstances, but this walk was amazing. Her story is a wonderful tale of courage and resourcefulness on her journey, with disappointment at the end.
Helga's adventure was almost lost, until a hint of it surfaced in a school report by her great-grandson. Linda Hunt heard about it and undertook a journey of her own, gathering the threads to bring this story to light.
The underlying theme of this story and book is the importance of Story Keeping. These are Hunt's words to encourage all of us to do a better job of keeping these stories.
The gathering and sharing of the rag-rug of remnants of our family's lives gives a gift to the next generation, a community of memory in a highly mobile world. Through developing written and oral histories, creating scrapbooks, telling stories around a dining table or campfire, displaying photographs and making videos, every family can weave an enduring rug of memories. Capturing the hopes, challenges, actions, disappointments, successes, pains, and joys inherent in every family gives children roots and wings. Other cultures practice the art of storytelling. In the Masai tripe in Kenya, for example, when a person dies, the greatest gift one can give a grieving person is to come and tell a story from the loved one's life. A collage of memories grows, giving the heart solace and healing, and the stories go on for generations. Remembering the past, telling the children the stories of parents' and grandparents' lives, can prove to be a pivotal resource in a young person's life...
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