Writing Strong Women, Writing Her Grandmother’s Legacy: Finding a Life in Maggie by Elaine Cougler

Award-winning Canadian author Elaine Cougler is no stranger to my website and my writing world. For over a decade now, there’s been posts on this site about her historical fiction books, memoirs by or written with others, and about her family. Hailing from the Ontario province, she’s had unique perspectives and viewpoints in her books but almost always strong women and resilient people.

A retired English teacher, she’s now living her dream writing books, and she’s written many, and she truly proves you’re never too old to grab ahold and capture your bucket goals if you’re willing to put in the work. Elaine is inspiring, and as well, so very kind and supportive.

She writes about strong fictional women in history, but she’s also writing true stories of families and women from the past and present, too. Recently she found files of her late mother’s work in progress, a book about Elaine’s grandmother. She edited, filled in gaps, and co-authored Maggie with her mother. What a lovely legacy and memorial to leave for her grandmother and mother, as well as herself. Elaine is a strong, independent, motivated woman. In this book, and the essay below, she proves to herself, and readers, the bravery of all the women in her family. Enjoy!

Finding a Life in Maggie
by Elaine Cougler, Author

A few months ago, when chatting with my daughter on the phone, I remembered that I had an envelope from my mother in my files. Mom had started to write a novel before she died. I had seen the first two pages and edited them for her (she had lost her center vision and typed only by touch) but didn’t realize who Maggie was. When I began reading Mom’s fifty full pages, I soon knew that Maggie was my grandmother and these pages were a charming bit of family history. I was ecstatic. And so was my daughter when I told her.

You see, my daughter and my mother both had November birthdays and had been planning a joint party that fall when Mom would have been seventy-five and Beth would have been twenty-five. Alas, it never happened as Mom passed away that summer.

I’ve given some thought as to why I needed twenty-five years to pull out Mom’s story and deal with it. Was it too painful? Did I think because it wasn’t finished that the story didn’t matter? Maybe I just wasn’t ready to deal with the story earlier? Or, more likely, was I just too wrapped up in my own busy life?

Whatever the reason I finally put my hands on my mother’s words and the rest, as ‘they’ say, is my history. Or part of it, anyway. Starting this, my eighth writing project, I had new problems to solve but the best part was learning things about my grandmother’s early life that I had never known.

I knew about her large family, her sisters and brothers, a couple of whom I’d never met as they died young, and I knew about her divorce from my grandfather. That was something that didn’t happen so much in the 1920s and 30s. It seemed a little shameful to my childhood self.

This book in the making showed me how important growing up in a loving and nurturing family was to my grandmother. I realized why she had been the grandmother she was to all of her grandchildren and, from my lofty age these days, I could see how her childhood had affected my own in a positive way.

Mom wrote about her father’s infidelity and her own traumatic experiences associated with that. Now I knew why my own mother became the person she was. But the most revealing thing was seeing how my grandmother, being the strong woman she became, made her own decisions on how to deal with the wreck of her family.

Over my lifetime, this phenomenon of broken marriages has become very common but in Maggie’s day it was not. Maggie was given advice on how to deal with her husband’s peccadilloes and the story plays out with what Maggie’s reactions were. How I wish today I could wrap my arms around my grandmother—Maggie—and tell her I love her.  

Maggie’s story makes me think of women today who have had to fight for parity in almost every field. My hope is to encourage women to stand up for themselves just as Maggie had to in my book.

An excerpt from Maggie –

The happy, busy days flew by and, at the end of summer, Maggie’s big adventure began. On the day she started school the whole world seemed to begin changing. In the morning Cindy brushed her hair with care and tied it back with ribbons. No more bare feet. Maggie’s father was determined that his children would wear shoes to school. She didn’t wear her best dress to school but one of the nice ones that used to be Ida’s until she got too big for it.

Cindy finished helping her to get ready and then gave her a big hug. Cindy was not going to school this year. She was old enough now to go out to work and today she was going to a family in the country to help the mother with a new baby. Pa would be taking her right after breakfast and she would not be home for several days. When Maggie came home from school there would be no Cindy there to make sure her feet were clean and scold her for being late for supper. Maggie knew she was going to miss her and the hug meant that Cindy would miss Maggie, too. Maggie thought it must be terrible to be going to a strange home and to work for someone you don’t even know, so she hugged her back as tightly as she could.

              “Run along, Maggie, and don’t be late on your first day at school,” said Cindy as she brushed her hand across her eyes. “I’ll see you Sunday at church.”

              Maggie ran to get her lunch and then raced out the door to catch up to Ida. Almina and Rosie were just ahead of them. They got to the school in plenty of time to talk to some of the other children. Soon the teacher came out and rang the bell to call them in to take their places at their desks.

Maggie, Synopsis –

From the opening scene with four-year-old Maggie down by the river watching the fish and the frogs, through the warm-hearted glimpses of growing up in the early nineteen hundreds in a large ‘Pennsylvania Dutch’ family, to the shocking fact that her husband was not the man she thought he was, this story is riveting. A true account found by author Elaine Cougler over twenty-five years after the death of her mother, Alice Garner, its layers of discovery kept unfolding as Elaine finished her mother’s tale.

The story is written about places near Stratford, Ontario during the times surrounding WWI. Elaine chose to keep her mother’s words and style as she had written them. Elaine did, however, have to find ways to bridge the gaps left in her mother’s unfinished manuscript. The result is a family story with two voices that could easily be the tale of countless others. Readers will no doubt identify with and thoroughly enjoy this glimpse into history.

Maggie is at heart the coming-of-age story of Elaine’s maternal grandmother who is born into a large family of Pennsylvania Dutch background in the late 1800s. In the early 1900s, having overcome some family prejudice, when Maggie is grown and married, she thinks she has a good marriage – until she doesn’t. What kind of strength will Maggie show as she is forced to solve her own problems?

Available now for purchase –

Amazon
GoodReads

Alice Garner’s (Elaine’s Mother), Biography –

Alice Garner was born Lillian Virginia Alice Doxey in November 1923, the youngest of four children. She grew up in a musical family and at age eleven walked into the radio station in Stratford, Ontario and got a job. She had her own show for which she had to learn new songs every week. She went on to marry and have thirteen children of her own with whom she carried on her musical talents, teaching all of them to thoroughly enjoy music. She was active in her farming community rising to become the president of many of the community-oriented groups she joined. She even ran for provincial parliament at one point. In her later years, she was working on this story when she passed away.

Elaine Cougler’s Biography –

She also wrote Amazon #1 bestseller The Man Behind the Marathons about the incredible life of the man behind Terry Fox’s Marathon of Hope, as well as her personal memoir, My Story, My Song, about growing up in rural Ontario with nine brothers and three sisters during the 50s and 60s. Her anthology, Canada: Brave New World, launched in 2023.

Elaine is a sought-after speaker and she talks about many topics related to her writing. Find out more about Elaine and her books on her website or join her on Facebook. Elaine is also on Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube.

Elaine’s Book Purchase Links –

Elaine’s books can be viewed on her website and are available for purchase on Amazon, in print and for Kindle, and on Kobo. Many are in audio format as well through Audible.

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Image in title graphic by Yannik Pulver, Unsplash
Flower painting section break, Evie S., Unsplash