Book Title: A TINY PIECE OF BLUE
Character Name: Silstice (Silly) Trayson
Describe Yourself
I’m a thirteen-year-old girl living with my family in the farmlands of southern Michigan during the early 1930s, which became known as the Great Depression. We’re dirt poor, often not having enough food and I’m skin and bones. I’m starting high school soon and I hate my tattered clothes, but we have no money for new clothes. I want to fit in, but my family is known as the “Trashy Traysons” and no one wants to befriend me.
Why Do You Have Such a Weird Name?
I was born on December 21 and the midwife told my mother it was a special day, the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. Unfortunately, my mother misunderstood and thought the word was “silstice” and named me that. “Silly” became my nickname which I’ve grown to hate because all the kids snicker when the teacher does roll call. Our family is called The Trashy Traysons because my father has never held down a real job and we have lots of old barrels, wood, metal, and junk in our yard.
What Are Your Biggest Problems?
My house burns down to the ground while I’m at a 4-H sewing lesson. My family escapes the fire but heads off in all directions. My father secretly takes the car and heads west to Wyoming or Montana and never bothers to communicate with the rest of us. My Aunt Rose in Detroit takes in my twin sisters but has room for no one else. My mother takes my two little brothers to her parents in Cleveland, Ohio. That leaves my older sister Alberta who moves in with her best friend in town. I have nowhere to go. No one will take me in, particularly since I’m a Trashy Trayson and I forgot to mention that I got caught stealing from the one-room country school I used to attend. I’m considered bad blood. My 4-H leader wants to help me out, but her grouchy husband is a tightwad and won’t allow me to stay with them.
Describe the Two Other Main Characters
Edna Goetz, my 4-H sewing leader is a wonderful, loving grandmotherly type. She believes people should help out each other and she listens carefully to the preacher’s sermons every Sunday. Vernon Goetz, her husband, is the countywide 4-H beef steer leader and he’s a penny pincher and worries Edna will take me on as one of her “projects,” as if I’m a stray kitten. He tells me in no uncertain terms that I’m not welcome at their house. However, he’s motivated by money, so if I can come up with a dollar a week I can live there. My dilemma: how can a thirteen-year-old girl make a dollar a week during the Depression?
What Happens at the Public Library?
My older sister Alberta and I meet weekly at the Public Library and we both devise schemes to get rich. She decides she will go to New York City and find a rich husband. I consider stealing a valuable stamp from Mr. Goetz’s stamp album. However, a sinister librarian overhears our plans and decides to blackmail us. The library, which started out as a refuge, becomes a living nightmare.
What Happens at the County Fair?
The Fair Week is filled with unexpected twists and turns. I want nothing more than have a “normal” week at the fair and go on carnival rides with my friend Carrie. However, instead, I find myself stuck at the top of a midway ride, the Octopus. Later, my two brothers are kidnapped and tractors at the farm implement demonstration area go berserk. I need to win the Showmanship Competition, but a sinister person is attempting to rattle me into making mistakes. It’s a week that I’ll never forget.
Describe Some of Your Happy Moments
Mr. G surprised my sister Alberta and me and takes us to a barn dance. If you’ve never been to a barn dance, well it’s held in the hay loft of the barn right before hay season when the loft is empty. You put bales of hay around the outside of the dance floor for people to sit on when they’re not dancing. The band plays both slow dances and square dances. When I wasn’t dancing, I held Gwen’s new baby girl so she could dance with her husband. What could be better than live music, dancing, and cuddling a newborn?
What is Your Opinion of the Author Who Created You?
Charlotte Whitney gave me a really rough life. Even though she herself grew up on a Michigan farm she never experienced hunger or homelessness. I would have loved to have been a rich girl with no worries. However, she’s explained to me that such a situation wouldn’t have made for an interesting story. I also appreciate the characteristics that she gave me will serve me well for the rest of my life—I’m curious, creative, a good problem solver, and I love farming. Also, I’m resilient— I have the ability to survive tough times. Overall, I’m happy with who I am.
A Novel
For fans of Kristin Hannah’s The Four Winds and Lisa Wingate’s Shelterwood comes a heartwarming historical novel following a homeless young girl as she struggles to survive during the Great Depression.
Rural Michigan, 1934. During the throes of the Great Depression, thirteen-year-old Silstice Trayson finds herself homeless, abandoned by her parents after a devastating house fire. Nearby, aging midwestern farmers Edna and Vernon Goetz are pillars of the community, but when do-gooder Edna takes up Silstice’s cause, Vernon digs in his heels, displaying his true nature as an ornery curmudgeon.
Theirs is a quiet-seeming community, but danger lurks beneath the bucolic façade. With so many youngsters leaving home to make it on their own, child trafficking has grown rampant, and Silstice and her two spirited young brothers soon find themselves in the sights of a ring of kidnappers that’s exploiting local children into forced labor—and worse. Meanwhile Vernon finds himself at risk of losing everything.
Narrated by Silstice, Vernon, and Edna, A Tiny Piece of Blue sets the customs and traditions of rural Michigan against a backdrop of thievery, bribery, and child-trafficking—weaving a suspenseful yet tender tale that ultimately winds its way to a heartwarming conclusion.
Women's Fiction Family Life [She Writes Press, On Sale: February 18, 2025, Paperback / e-Book , ISBN: 9781647428365 / eISBN: 9781647428372]
Charlotte Whitney grew up on a Michigan farm and often heard stories about the difficult years during the Great Depression. Her debut historical novel Threads: A Depression Era Talehas attracted over 400 reviews on Amazon.Charlotte’s previous work includes two nonfiction books and a romance novel,
I Dream of White.
Charlotte lives in Tucson with her husband and two Labrador retrievers.
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