Flo on a car trip in the 1920′s.
Last night, I re-read my installments of Flo in the City, my novel in progress based on the letters of www.tighsolas.ca, because I have decided that the 39th installment will end the first part of the Flo in the City series.
I have figured out what I want to do with this project. Well, my ideas are coalelescing, is that the right word, I mean coming together.
Were I to pitch this story to a publishing house (which I hope not to need to do as that would be redundant) I would say Flo in the City is a series of books aimed at middle-schoolers or high schoolers, about a girl coming of age in the tumultuous 1910 era. The story is based on the real life experiences of the Nicholson family, of Richmond, Quebec, and shows, in authentic fashion, what it was like to live in the era of Model T’s and suffragettes.
Between 1908 and 1913, the Nicholson family, a very respectable middle class family, made up of Margaret and Norman, the parents, and their children, Edith, Herbert, Marion and Flora, is struggling financially and dealing with life in an era of exponential change.
Father Norman is away working on the railroad. Flora, the youngest, is the only child permanently residing at home. She herself is struggling to complete her studies at a prestigious academy and contemplating her future prospects, career and marriage.
It was widely reported in the literature of the age that any and all careers were open to young women of the era, that no job was out of bounds. Flo in the City will debunk this collective ‘myth’ as Flo explores her work opportunities.
In the first Flo in the City, which covers 1908 and 9, as she struggles with her latin and algebra at school, she will wonder about going into the glamourous and high paying millinery or hat-making profession, for she is artistically inclined.
In the second book of the series, as she attends normal school (teaching school) she will acquire a social conscience and wonder whether to become a social worker to the poor or a suffragette; in the third book, as she graduates and begins her teaching jobs in one of the poorest communities in the entire Western World, she will wonder if she made the ‘right choice’ or whether she should chuck it all and become a race-car driver or aeroplane pilot, or motion picture actress.
And she will do all this while her family is fighting for its survival and wondering whether they should move out West, like so many of their friends and relatives.
