Rebecca Brown's Interview with
Beverly Van Horn
Producer of Covered Wagon Women
Rebecca :
Listening to women read from the letters & diaries of Lucia Williams, Esther Lockhart & Jean Rio Baker, Pioneer Mothers, traversing both the wide Atlantic Ocean & then the endless grasslands of the American heartland in their Prairie Schooners, was deeply exciting. Where did you get the idea to tape these dairies?
Beverly :
My husband & I were on vacation in Wyoming & Montana & I saw several volumes of the diaries in a book store & bought Volume 2 because Volume 1 wasn't available. When I read the diaries I thought “What a great story for people to hear as they are driving across America.” When we returned to Colorado where we spent our summers, I asked Susan Baxter, an actress in the Creede Theatre if she would like to narrate a diary & she was thrilled. We worked out an agreement & she used their equipment while we went back to Tucson for the winter. Later I bought Volume 1 & wouldn't have thought of recording it because the diaries were poorly written.
Rebecca :
What challenges are there in committing the written word to speech?
Beverly :
Although the diaries are interesting, many of the writers don't use punctuation which makes them difficult to read. I am a writer & it is suggested that we read our stories out loud to make certain they are easily read. I'm sure the diarists didn't think of that so as I said about Volume 1, they were difficult to read. Also with the next three diaries I produced, I stayed in the engineer's room with the narrator so that I could catch mistakes as they would easily get their tongues twisted after talking for so long.
Abridging the books was more difficult. It's easy to talk about a character that wasn't introduced earlier. There are different ways to abridge & when I did, I did not change any sentence structure. I left out whole parts rather than breaking up lots of paragraphs & sentences.
Rebecca :
How did you gather Jane Merrifield-Beecher & Georgia Goodwin, the actors who read the diaries & letters?
Beverly :
Jane narrated Vanished Arizona & Desert Wife. She was in my volunteer group, Tucson Interfaith HIV/AIDS Network. I learned she had been going to Creede, Colorado for summers with her parents in earlier times. She also was choreographer for The Gaslight Theater in Tucson as well as an actress & she had worked summers in Melodrama in Colorado.
Georgia Goodwin we met while having dinners at The Last Territory in Tucson as she was the singer for their western dance revue at the Sheraton El Conquistador Resort. She knew Jane as they worked together in the Colorado. It's a small world.
Rebecca :
Have you always been involved with the audio & publishing world?
Beverly :
Publishing, yes. I majored in journalism in the midwest & worked for newspapers before co-founding the Mineral County Miner and South Fork Tines newspapers in Creede & South Fork, Colorado.
I am now a free lance writer. I published a history book from articles written for our newspaper by historians which take place from 1880 to 1980. I am about to publish another book about my friend who recently died from AIDS. She contracted the disease as a health care worker.
Rebecca :
What else do you have for our Listening Readers & where may they buy your wares?
Beverly :
I have the book Vanished Arizona which is a story by Martha Summerhayes from Nantucket Island who married a soldier who was stationed in forts across the country, many of them in Arizona, in the 1870's.
Desert Wife is by Hilda Faunce from the West coast who married a Navajo trader & had to learn to live in the desert of Arizona & communicate with the Navajos in the late 1880's. The first book of Covered Wagon Women, the Martha Frink diary, takes place from Indiana to Sacramento. You hear about how they packed the covered wagons, they had the first modular home, they had water beds on which to sleep or air mattresses. It is fascinating to listen to the latest volume which is about a Mormon widow with six children who came to America from England on a Windjammer before taking a covered wagon to Utah. The other diary is by a woman who travels from Ohio to Oregon.
Rebecca :
Where did you get the idea to tape these diaries?
Beverly :
I buy the rights to record these books. They are three hours long & have been recommended for middle & high school students, however I find elementary school students like them as well & so do men as well as women. In this day and age, we wonder how we will cope but we have our ancestors genes & they displayed courage & fortitude & humor. Their biological warfare was cholera & their terrorists were Indians. They faced these up close & personal. Anyone interested in genealogy, history, biographies, etc. will love to hear these.
Rebecca :
Thanks Beverly for some nice insights into the making of an audio book
Do catch my review of Covered Wagon Women -- I hope it makes you go out & buy yourself a copy!
RebeccasiReads.com
