I am lucky to come from a family of packrats. 

My great-great-grandfather's Civil War diary, my great-grandparents' love letters--what rich material for a writer! And there's much more. Sometimes it seems as if my ancestors saved their treasures just to hand down to me.

These artifacts resurfaced when I began to study West African spiritual practices with an initiated elder of the Dagara tribe. Through group rituals, I forged alliances with my ancestors, which proved to be both healing and charged with inspiration.

When I started writing mystery novels, the ancestors pushed their way into the plot. The crime-solving adventures of Viv Moon, a New Jersey realtor, proved to be the perfect vehicle for a fantasy of the Other World, where ancestors with unresolved pain reach out to the living for mutual assistance in the struggle to move to a more peaceful realm.

I also decided to research and write my family's stories. I went to Mississippi to find where diarist William Davies lay on the Vicksburg battlefield, to Georgia to figure out how he survived three months as a prisoner of war at Andersonville. I visited the village where my grandfather was born in the Italian Alps and found my great-great-great-grandparents' graves in western Maryland. 

Many of these stories, which are in the process of becoming a book, can be found on my blog, NewsOfMyAncestors.

Even my short stories tend to touch on the legacy of the dead, including “The Embalmer,” about a young woman's choice of occupation, and “Tex,” the tale of a suicide through time travel. "The Halfway Café," published online in The Otter, is a story of the afterlife, about characters from the first Viv Moon book, Stone's House.

We all have ancestors. The West African rituals for relating to the dead are powerful, but they are difficult to transplant to the American lifestyle. I have devised a simple process called “Ancestor Interviews,” enabling us to connect to our ancestors without a need for psychic mediums or elaborate ritual. I am happy to demonstrate this procedure to a person or group, along with a reading of my work or as a separate activity. 
 
My mutt family history

The first of my Puritan ancestors to emigrate were Thomas and Ellen Dickerman, arriving in Massachusetts 13 years after the Mayflower. My maternal grandparents united two lines of Welsh forebears (Davies, Hughes) and two of Germans (Wingebach, Hergenrother). I also have Swiss German Mennonite ancestors, including Peter and Katharina Newcomer, who came to the U.S. in the late 1700s, eventually settling around Hagerstown, Maryland. My paternal grandfather, Attilio Ciliotta, grew up in Valle di Cadore, a village in the Italian Alps, and his wife, Rose DeMarco, came from Fanna, near the then Yugoslav border.

It amazes me that all these different threads came together to create the fabric of my life, bringing gifts and traumas that energize and challenge me. The more I learn about my forebears, the more I understand about myself. If you'd like to share insights from your own ancestors, feel free to write to me at VioletSnow77@gmail.com. I may eventually write a book collecting the stories of people I meet--with your permission, of course!

CONTACT

Email me at VioletSnow77@gmail.com

PUBLICATIONS

Pilgrimage magazine published Violet's short memoir, "First Arrest" in Volume 40, Issue 1 & 2, in 2016.

The Strange Recital is a podcast series featuring 
Violet reading aloud her short story "The Halfway Cafe," based on characters from her mystery novel STONE'S HOUSE. Scroll down to October 9, 2016:
http://thestrangerecital.com/index.php/episodes/
Or read the text, published by Otter Magazine:
http://ottermagazine.com/article/1180/

ONLINE WRITINGS ABOUT ANCESTORS BY VIOLET

The Battles of Vicksburg, seen through my ancestor's eyes, from the New York Times "Disunion" blog:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/20/the-battles-of-vicksburg/

Seeking William Davies' place on the Vicksburg battlefield, from Civil War Times: 
http://www.historynet.com/in-his-footsteps-pvt-william-davis-at-vicksburg.htm

On reading my great-grandparents' love letters, from PurpleClover.com:
http://www.purpleclover.com/relationships/3285-ps-love-you/

I interviewed my father-in-law about his Russian immigrant parents, in Jewish Currents:
http://jewishcurrents.org/jewish-journeys-23576

MY BLOG:
NewsOfMyAncestors 

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