Kirkland woman's homespun tale finds a national following

By Cara Solomon
Seattle Times Eastside bureau

	ELLEN M. BANNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES LaVonne Snowden, 86, a resident of Madison House in Kirkland, sits at the desk at which she wrote, in longhand, "A Little Child Shall Lead Them," a 500-page, self-published novel.
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But another idea came along to distract her: What about a novel, loosely based on her life during the Depression?

"I fell to writing, and all my schoolwork flew out the window," said LaVonne Snowden, 86, from her room at Madison House, a Kirkland retirement home. "It's the most wonderful thing, my book is."

At 77, with little more than a sixth-grade education, Snowden began writing about the fictional residents of "Paw Paw," working from the memories of her own life in the mountains of Missouri. She rose every morning to write from 4 until lunch, thumbing through dictionaries and thesauruses now held together by Scotch tape at the spine. When she was done, years later, her son had the book typed up from longhand and paid to publish it.

Because it is a self-published novel, most major newspapers would not review "A Little Child Shall Lead Them." But through word of mouth, the 500-page book has made its way around the community and beyond. She has gotten phone calls from readers in Texas, Arkansas, Wyoming and Missouri.

"I thought it gave a pretty meaningful picture of that time," said Dave Gauch, a retired accountant who met the author in a Northshore Senior Center writing class a few years ago. "It really sounded like she'd lived there and done that."

Snowden is working on her memoirs, telling the story of her childhood crisscrossing the country in the back seat of the family car. Her mother was on a mission to find Snowden's father. He had left years earlier: just packed his suitcase and walked out of the house.

The family spent years driving across the country, camping by the side of the road and bathing in rivers. Snowden's mother would send the children into town to beg for food and clothes.

"I remember one day going to school in an evening gown," said Snowden, the mother of four children. "A long-tailed, red-satin affair of some kind."

School was not often an option for Snowden, so she made the public library her classroom. On rainy days, while her siblings slept in the car, Snowden would find a nearby library and stay there. Sometimes the librarians would let her check out books, even though she had no permanent address.

"What I done, I educated myself through the library," Snowden said. "Those librarians, they seemed like angels to me."
 
At 15, Snowden moved out of her mother's tent and into her new husband's house outside of Branson, Mo.

As a farmer's wife during the Depression, Snowden learned to "hunt greens" with the best of them, singling out the 11 different wild greens that could make a family dinner. She made dainty dresses out of feed sacks, sending her girls to church in the prettiest clothes in town.

These were the days Snowden sat down to describe several years ago, as her husband was dying of cancer. She had been writing for years, long before she got any praise for the way she put the words down. Dozens of her poems lie photocopied and laminated on the dresser top in her room. Some were published in community newspapers.

Through the years, she also wrote biographies of her four children and eight grandchildren. Each book is written in rhyme.

"When I do something, I do it big," Snowden said. "It was a challenge and it took me to the dictionaries."

Those dictionaries are tired now from so much use, their cover colors faded and their pages smudged with ink. Snowden used them for 6½ years, looking for the words to describe "mighty Miss Idy," the spinster who scandalizes the town by running for deaconess of the church, and the "men on the porch," who spend their days solving the mysteries of human behavior, one piece of gossip at a time.

"As Henry had to use the wobbly banister to come up the steps," Snowden wrote, "the men later on would have a rousing conversation about whether his health had diminished or whether he had eaten too many biscuits and gravy."

These days, Snowden lives in an apartment complex with framed art on its walls and china in its dining room, far from that small town in Missouri. On a recent day, she wore a V-neck top, a long, flowing skirt and pink pumps with black nylons. Her hair was pinned up in combs and curled tightly at the top. In the basket of her walker, the novel sat snug.

Next to it was a library-loaned copy of "The Writers Market 2004." The hope, Snowden said, is to get a commercial publisher interested in the novel. But there have been concerns about the unedited book from some readers and publishers.

Snowden, a Bible teacher for the past 40 years, said some readers have been dismayed to find talk of "lovemaking" in a book that is also laced with excerpts from the Good Book.

But why shouldn't the Rev. Peabody skinny-dip with his young wife, Lizzy, at night? And isn't it natural for Clara and Jacob to do some snuggling in the comfort of their home, as long as they pull down the shade?

Snowden makes one thing clear on the back of the book: "The sexual overtures and acts of passion are portrayed as the sweetest of pleasures as God intended them."

There was another suggestion that Snowden treated with equal distaste. In her earlier search for a publisher, she found one who said he would happily print her book — on one condition. The publisher wanted mighty Miss Idy to appear softer, just a tad more motherly.

Couldn't she show that heart of hers more often, play with the children a little more, stop being so bossy all the time?

"I told him, 'No,' " said Snowden, who used some of her own personality to shape Miss Idy. "That's just not the type of woman she was."

Cara Solomon: 206-464-2024 or csolomon@seattletimes.com

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