Rooted and Remembered
A story of love, faith, and remembrance
Why this story
In 2020, facing the uncertainty of pandemic restrictions and lockdowns at home, I began exploring a story about a WWI soldier and his connection to a magnificent buttonwood tree that grows near my childhood home in southwestern Ontario.
The idea sprouted from a tiny seed into my first novel, a work of historical fiction based on a true story retold to me by storykeepers who chose to share the tale.
The best bedtime story was true
Betsy Jane Carruthers masterfully crafted bedtime stories for her grandchildren. Their favourite one just happened to be true.
In 1906, eleven-year-old Ellwyne Dacosta is uprooted from his home along the Hooghly River in Calcutta at the whim of his stepfather, a con artist searching for his next fortune. Neither had heard of Carruthers Corners in Ekfrid Township, Ontario until it was on their horizon.
The Carruthers clan praises God when Ellwyne joins their farm, first as an untried farmhand, then as a dutiful son. Fascinated by the curious buttonwood tree growing in a farm field far away from the riverbank, Ellwyne wonders if he, too, may thrive in rural Canada, so far from where his life began.
From lost to forever found
The Great War erupts. The boy, barely a man, volunteers to fight overseas. When he's mortally wounded by a shell blast, Ellwyne thinks of home one last time. Will he be remembered?
In Ekfrid Township a buttonwood tree grows: Ellwyne’s Tree. In Rooted and Remembered, we gather with the Carruthers family in memory of a lost boy who is forever found.
Meet some of the characters
