Almost here! OFF SHORE is scheduled for publication soon!
Coming Soon!
Issue #7; October 2024
OFF SHORE Update
If you'd like to subscribe, send an e-mail request to the E-Blast Subscription Desk and add the E-Blast address to your "Safe Mail" list.
The E-Blast is an occasional publication of news and notes for Ruth’s fans. Previous issues are still available HERE.
<
Welcome!
OFF SHORE will join the other titles in The Snowy Series and is scheduled for publication withi the next few weeks. The E-Blast's subscription list will receive notice of the pre-order, and soon after, publication date for OFF SHORE; If you're not receiving thisfre newsletter subscriber details are HERE.
There will be updates here on the website and on the Frigate Bookshop too, as soon as those dates are available.
Ruth usually updates her Facebook page on Sunday mornings. Join the conversation!
Temporarily, the Facebook Archives are not available here on this website. As we prepare this website for the OFF SHORE update many new features will be added; the full Facebook Archives file will be available again then too. The current entry is reprinted below.
The Snowy Series
Click an image to read more.OFF SHORE will join this carousel of books in The Snowy Series soon!
Ruth Doan MacDougall's "The Snowy Series"
THE CHEERLEADER
The book that started it all—fifty years ago!
Meet Snowy and her wide circle of friends, growing up in the post-World War II era of rigidly-defined roles for women. While Snowy yearns for the social success that a small-town high school can offer, her ambitions extend past that, toward the personal success that only a good college education can bring. In THE CHEERLEADER, you'll begin an adventure with the engaging,
enduring characters whose stories continue, over subsequent titles in Ruth Doan MacDougall’s Snowy Series, into contemporary times.
Searchingly honest, achingly real, THE CHEERLEADER recalls all the joy, excitement, and pain of crossing the bridge from childhood to young womanhood in the Fabulous Fifties, when sex was still a mystery and goals were clearly defined—perhaps for the last time.
SNOWY
What happened next?
Ruth Doan MacDougall received countless letters from devoted fans of THE CHEERLEADER asking this question. She answered it by writing SNOWY, which chronicles how the cute blond cheerleader spends her next thirty years.
Though Snowy and her friends came of age in the 1950s, when roles were clearly defined, each follows a unique path over the next few decades, coping with the challenges of college, marriage, parenthood, emotional health, aging parents, and finding a fulfilling career during a time of rapid changes in American society.
Says the Library Journal, “Readers should prepare to laugh out loud and cry in earnest as former high school cheerleader Henrietta Snow grows up in this delightful sequel to The Cheerleader."
HENRIETTA SNOW
Our Silent Generation has dropped out of sight between our parents’ generation and the baby boomers. Nobody knows about us."
But you will know!
Fans of Snowy and Bev and Puddles, Tom, Dudley, the twins, and all the Gang from Gunthwaite High School will thoroughly enjoy this next stage of our beloved characters' lives, as they turn fifty and—eek!—sixty as the millennium approaches. How do they adjust to their limitations, deal with grief, and face the realization that this may be their last chance at love, success, and happiness?
Said one reader, "This is a CHEERLEADER fan's dream book, answering almost every 'What if...?' and 'What ever happened to...?' question we could have had. But more than just an extended reunion with characters I adore, the story itself is fabulous—a great and wonderful treat for people like me, who've loved Snowy for decades now."
THE HUSBAND BENCH
or Bev's Book
It's Bev's turn!
Bev was tall, with short thick auburn hair. She looked older, more finished, than the other girls in their class. And she was green-eyed and beautiful, but she loved to make faces.
That was Beverly Colby at age fifteen, Snowy’s best friend in THE CHEERLEADER. Now, at sixty, her hair is white but she has remained a beauty and she still loves to make faces. And in THE HUSBAND BENCH, she is starring in a book of her own.
The co-captain of the basketball team, Roger was tall and coolly jaunty, a senior and so suave.
That was Roger Lambert, Bev’s boyfriend, whom eventually Bev married. After decades together, their marriage has evolved into an unconventional one, with the two living in different states, but Bev finds that it suits her. While she cherishes the success she has found in her chosen profession, Bev must deal with changing family circumstances while adjusting to a surprise that will have a tremendous impact on her life.
Bev’s complex love life becomes even more intricate as THE HUSBAND BENCH explores love in various forms, from pure to complicated—selfless, selfish, serious, comic.
What is a husband bench?
From the foreword by Ann Norton Holbrook: “‘The husband bench’ refers to the ubiquitous seats all over malls and grocery stores where ostensibly patient husbands, with little else to take up their time, wait for their wives to finish shopping. Typically, MacDougall invests this with telling irony.”
A BORN MANIAC
or Puddles's Progress
I’m a Maine native, a born Maniac.”—Jean Pond Cram, aka Puddles
Puddles may have been born in Maine, but where are her real roots? She spent her teens in New Hampshire and her married life in South Carolina. Did she establish roots in these states to which she was transplanted? Or has she truly been a displaced person all these years?
The most uninhibited of THE CHEERLEADER’s three friends, intrepid Puddles was leading a settled life when a trip to visit Maine relatives becomes her route to adventure involving an island, a castle, hard decisions, and rebirth.
From the foreword by Ann Norton Holbrook: Puddles is “just as hilarious as when she chased Snowy around a 1950s Woolworth’s with giant underwear.”
Frigate Books offers autographed copies, no sales tax, and free shipping.
To read an e-version select the e-book version compatible with your app.
A GUNTHWAITE GIRL
The cabin fever of winter had become spring fever.
When shy Henrietta Snow is asked to lead a tour of the hometown places that have inspired her poems, she panics. She can’t do it! But her best friend Bev bracingly tells her she can, and their skeptical friend, Puddles, agrees to drive down from Maine to join them in a trial run.
The Gunthwaite triumvirate thus reunites, setting forth together into the past on a day trip that will affect the way they look forward into their futures.
If you have not read the earlier titles in Ruth Doan MacDougall's Snowy Series, A GUNTHWAITE GIRL will serve as an introduction to the main characters so that you can more fully enjoy the next title, SITE FIDELITY
SITE FIDELITY
"Site fidelity" is an ornithological term for birds' instinctive migration back to their place of origin. But what Snowy wants is another site, a fresh start. Woodcombe, the New Hampshire town in which she has lived for twenty years, and Gunthwaite, her nearby hometown, now seem to her like prisons. She is confined by her surroundings and memories, by family and financial worries, by her work at her general store, and she hankers for what she calls a Maine-style Bali Ha’i, an island she has visited with her friend Puddles, where the scenery is “the ever-changing ocean, not the motionless mountains.” How can she escape?
Is this longing for change a part of aging? How can she leave the responsibilities that tie her down? A medical challenge provides an unexpected opportunity, and Snowy finds new profoundness in those ancient words “for better or worse, in sickness and in health.”
LAZY BEDS
LAZY BEDS, the latest title in Ruth Doan MacDougall’s Snowy Series, continues the stories of Snowy and Bev as they weather this century's Great Recession. Snowy is worried about the financial health of her three small stores, while Bev, owner of a well-known real-estate agency, is finding that real-estate sales have essentially ceased.
Snowy and Bev share their adventures and challenges in equal measure, but Puddles, and many of the friends that readers have come to enjoy, have not been neglected. In LAZY BEDS, readers will catch up with the Gang they first met in THE CHEERLEADER—still going strong after all these years!
What's a "lazy bed"?
A home gardener, planting potatoes, might use the "lazy bed" method that avoids the more intensive forms of garden labor but still produces impressive results.
Reader Features
Since 2018 Ruth has continued her "Ruth's Neighborhood" entries on her Facebook page. Ruth updates this column each week, usually on Sunday mornings, and fans are welcome to join the ongoing conversation. Below is this week's entry.
This entry and the directory of all previous entries, are archived HERE.
Fall Food
October 7 2024
In THE HUSBAND BENCH I wrote,
Snowy said, “You make a great meat loaf, Bev.”
Which was true, Bev knew . . .
Trulianne said, “It’s terrific.”
Carving more slices, Bev explained, “My secret ingredient is pork sausage, half a pound of pork sausage to a pound of ground beef. The rest is some chopped onion, a can of tomato soup, a cup or so of bread crumbs, an egg, and some milk if you like it really moist—”
Trulianne jumped up and grabbed the memo pad and pencil off the counter under the wall phone. She sat back down and scribbled.
Tickled, Bev served Clem a slice, then Trulianne. “Cook it at three hundred and fifty degrees for an hour and a half. If necessary, pour off the fat after an hour, but if the sausage is lean you don’t have to.”
Snowy added, “The cold leftovers taste like pate. Delicious.”
When I wrote the first draft of this scene I left the recipe blank while I tried to decide what Bev’s secret ingredient could be. Then during a visit with the Motherwells from Michigan Winifred’s daughters (Molly and Lisa) happened to mention how good Winifred’s meat loaf is. Aha! I asked and dear Winifred gave me her recipe.
As I’ve written about here, Winifred’s fondness for autumn is helping my “autumn anxiety.” Recently she listed fall food to look forward to, “chowders with brown bread, minestrone with garden vegetables, beef stew with dumplings, and pot roast with vegetables. And then there are the pies, meat pies and cottage and chicken and apple and pumpkin. And apples themselves, fried and stewed and in applesauce. I won’t even begin on Thanksgiving dinner.”
This inspired me to browse through my recipe file boxes for favorite fall food. I asked Winifred if she could browse through hers for a favorite to post here with one of mine.
And here they are.
From Winifred:
Hamburg Rice One Pan Meal; a magazine recipe, “How I Feed My Family”
½ lb. ground beef
1 c. uncooked rice
1 medium onion chopped
1T. oil
2 cups water
One can (8 oz.) tomato sauce
Salt and pepper to taste
2 oz. processed cheese sliced thin
Brown beef, rice, and onion in oil, drain fat, add water, tomato sauce, and seasonings. Mix well.
Bring mixture to a boil and simmer 15 minutes, stir and top with cheese.
Broil until cheese melts.
Winifred noted, “This one I have extravagantly adapted to a whole pound of meat and real cheese and I found 15 minutes wasn’t long enough to simmer, at least on an electric stove. The main thing is that the rice be done so be sure to check it before adding the cheese and sticking it under the broiler because after that it can’t be adjusted. I use shredded cheese, not sliced.”
From Ruth:
(Jane Wingate, a friend from our 1970s Farmington, NH, years, found this recipe in A WORLD OF BREADS by Dolores Casella.)
Apple Muffins ¼ cup soft butter
1/3 cup sugar
1 beaten egg
2 ½ cups sifted flour
½ tsp. salt
4 ] tsp. baking powder
1 cup milk
1 cup peeled and diced apples (1/4” cubes) [I like Granny Smiths for cooking.]
Sugar and cinnamon for topping
Cream butter and sugar. When mixture is light and fluffy, add the beaten egg.
Sift dry ingredients.
Add dry mixture to the butter-sugar-egg mixture alternately with the milk.
Fold in the apple bits and fill greased muffin tins 2/3 full.
Combine the sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle on top.
Bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes.
Cool five minutes in the muffin tins and then transfer muffins to a cooling rack.
Makes 1 dozen.
I’m not baking nowdays so the muffins are a happy memory. But of course apples themselves are still very real. Last Monday when Wanda and I went to the Center Harbor supermarket its outdoor farm stand had an autumn array of local apples. Rapt, I tried to decide amongst the varieties. Don and I had settled on Macouns as our favorite; none here yet. So I began bagging some of our second favorite, Honeycrisp. When I got home I washed one and bit in, savoring the season.
©2024 by Ruth Doan MacDougall; all rights reserved
Coming Soon!
E-Blast #7
OFF SHORE Publication Update
by Jen, E-Blast Editor
The E-Blast is your connection to news updates!
Photo: E-Blast editor Jennifer Davis-Kay, surrounded by some of her favorite books.
The E-Blast is an occasional publication of news and notes for Ruth’s fans. Here you’ll get background on your beloved characters, stories from Ruth on different inspirations for particular scenes, recipes from the books, a deeper look into Ruth’s writing beyond The Snowy Series, and so much more!
SUBSCRIBE to the E-Blast!
Are you subscribed to the Ruth Doan MacDougall E-Blast? If not, e-mail the E-Blast editor and ask to be added to the mailing list.
E-Blast Issues Available:
If you missed any of the issues published thus far, you can find them here:
Issue #1: Fall 2020
Issue #2: December 2020
Issue #3: April 2021
Issue #4: February 2022
Issue $5: May 2022
Issue #6: August 26, 2023
If you have a question for Ruth or an idea for a future story, don’t hesitate to e-mail Jen.
Other Books by Ruth Doan MacDougall
A WOMAN WHO LOVED LINDBERGH
This story, set in the 1950s, shifts backward and forward through generations and years, focusing on a daughter who in one summer grows to understand her mother—and, through her mother, herself. During the summer of 1952, thirteen-year-old Lydia Dearborn must navigate into the unknown toward the horizon of maturity, discovering the terrors and responsibilities of adventure and independence, always aware of her mother’s hero, Charles Lindbergh, who had made a historic first flight across an unexplored sky.
This is a PDF e-book that can be read using the (free) Adobe Reader or other PDF reader that is familiar to you. If you download and read other PDF files on your electronic device, you will be able to read this one.
PURCHASE from Frigate Books
Delivery via e-mail within 48 hours of your purchase.
MUTUAL AID
As its heroine, Mercy Blodgett, says of herself, she seems to be related to almost everybody in the small town of Chiswick, New Hampshire—and to those she isn’t, her husband, Bob, is likely to be.
Just when a mill closing in 1986 costs the Blodgetts their jobs, the town is suddenly terrorized by an arsonist, and heart attacks may cost Bob his life.
The title refers to the emergency system in which fire departments from neighboring towns assist each other, but it also emphasizes the interdependence of all people, whether they are family, friends, or—as with Mercy and the young man who has become her pen pal—strangers at the outset. The word “aid” also summons up the word “AIDS,” and this too is part of the story.
PURCHASE from Frigate Books
ONE MINUS ONE
It’s 1969, and after a devastating divorce, 30-year-old Emily Bean leaves her home to work as a teacher in New Hampshire’s coastal region. Emily struggles to adjust to single life in the freewheeling sixties, a time of turmoil for the United States—an era that comes vividly alive through frequent references to the food, drink, and dress of the times. Noted one Goodreads reader, “I wanted Emily to find love and to find herself, all the while worrying that the two goals might not be compatible for her quite yet.”
Selected by Nancy Pearl as part of her "Book Lust" series for amazon.com. The book is vailable in print, Kindle, and audiobook versions.
Purchase from amazon.com only
Currently Out of Print
These are not in print at this time but can generally be found on various book-sale websites (e.g., BookFinder.com), in libraries, or at used-book stores.
• THE LILTING HOUSE
• THE COST OF LIVING
• WIFE AND MOTHER
• AUNT PLEASANTINE
• THE FLOWERS OF THE FOREST
• A LOVELY TIME WAS HAD BY ALL
Keep in Touch
News of interest to readers is primarily shared here on the website and through Ruth's Facebook column, usually updated weekly, on Sunday morning. Ruth’s current entry is also posted here; earlier entries (including "Ruth's Neighborhood" from this website’s incarnation) are linked from the menu list on that same page.
The occasional E-Blast newsletter is emailed to everyone on Ruth’s mailing list. Subscribe to the newsletter here.
Privacy Policy
This website does not collect any personal information. We do collect numerical data as to traffic to the site, but this data is not attached in any way to our visitors' personal or computer identities. Those clicking through to other websites linked from this page are subject to those sites' privacy policies. Our publisher, Frigate Books, maintains the same policy as this site; financial information submitted there is not shared with either Frigate Books or ruthdoanmacdougall.com.