My Childhood in Books

Anyone who has had a childhood blessed with books will always remember a few with nostalgia. They will become touchstones with the past, in which when we conjure up the story, we will remember our surroundings at the time we read it, though we won't remember most likely how old we were or what year it was. We will remember every detail about the book, even where there were stains, or a blurb from the jacket if it had one. But the frustration will be in the titles. There are a few I remember from childhood, but I don't remember any of the titles except for one or two.

I remember there was one about a Nebraska girl who lives on the Oregon Trail with her aunt and uncle. Her parents have left her there with them for some reason before continuing the Trail. They promised her they would send for her at a future date. The girl is desperate and tries to join a wagon train once or twice as a stowaway. She is caught and returned. The last time she runs away she is found, but accepted and taken, I think, because one of the families knows her parents. What I remember most are the descriptions of life on the Trail and on the Nebraska prairie, including a scene where the girl helps the aunt make soap. I was surprised that they would use ashes when it seemed to me that would be something that would only get everything dirty. I remember the book originally had a jacket with a blurb about the book My Antonia by Willa Cather as another book that might interest the reader. I also remember it was published in the fifties or sixties, but nothing else.

Another book was about a group of children, I think siblings, who move to a house their parents have inherited. The house includes a second hand store. There is a mystery about a treasure hidden in plain sight that a thief tries once or twice to steal. The treasure turns out to be a hideous painting hanging in the store that is really an overpainting done to hide a valuable portrait that is worth thousands of dollars. The children have a feeling of eyes watching them in the store that turn out to be the eyes of the portrait in the underpainting.

One of those of which I remember the title is Mystery of Hurricane Castle. The problem is I'm not sure of the author, though I think her name began with Joan. It's about three siblings, I believe, who live or are visiting in Galveston when a hurricane approaches. The neighbors are evacuated but the youngest child has left behind something, so they go to get it and they are forgotten and left behind. With the wind already rising, they go to a stone house sturdy enough to survive the wind, but reputed to be haunted. They spend the night there and discover that the ghost is an actual woman who wants to be left alone to paint after her husband's death. 

There are others that I can't remember now, but sometimes I'll be doing something and it'll trigger a memory related to one of those books and I'll remember things about it. I wish I had brought those books with me when we moved. But at the time we left Boston, most of those were books I had read so many times that they had lost the element of surprise. So I brought with me some of the books I was interested in at that time. The problem is that when middle age appears, we begin to remember our childhood. And those books were a part of it. And now they're lost. 

I would love to reread them now, and remember images that were created in my child's mind when I read them years ago. But I think that even if I remembered the titles they have been out of print for so many years I would be able to find them only with a small miracle. Miracles happen only in books.