Good morning! It’s early because that’s when I saddle my horse Jake, and ready myself to deliver the mail across the rugged North Oregon Coast. My name is Mary Gerritse and I’m the first woman to carry mail bags along the beach, wary of the tides and careful on the treacherous trails over the mountain. I didn’t always have this job but that’s another story. I’d like to introduce you to a town on the Crying Sands Beach – known by some as Cannon Beach – but no town existed there when my story begins. So I can’t tell you about the salt water taffy shoppe or the boarding house because they came later. Instead I’ll introduce you to some of the landscape features that affected my life.
An Austrian poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, who lived before me, wrote once that “I describe myself as a landscape, studied at length and in detail.” Every day on my route, I have the privilege of studying this remarkable landscape where tall timber marches down to the sea and the Pacific rolls in to surround the rocks. I’ve learned about myself through the challenges of navigating those rocks and ridges. And through homesteading in 1888 and raising a family and delivering the mail. Cannon Beach is a difficult place to reach from Portland, Oregon (90 miles away) the biggest city in the state then. Part of my story is how I helped work on a road that opened the Crying Sands to real development.
My travelog begins after I’ve met the postal rider coming from the north in a town called Seaside. I’ve ridden up from the south and if you’re with me (as many travelers are) we’ll spend a night at a hotel called Elk Creek where the lone structure speaks of the hope that one day tourists will come to enjoy this seven miles of golden sands. My good friend, a Nehalem native woman, lives with her grandfather up elk Creek above the tide line. People live far apart but are always helpful to each other. She’s the one who told me that her people call the beach Crying Sands because so many native women lost their lives with a massive sleeper wave (we call it a tsunami now). When you walk on the sand, it makes a sound like crying.
This morning, with the mail bags exchanged, we head south. I often have guests who travel along as they’re unaccustomed to the Pacific Ocean’s ways which can be dangerous. The tide is out so Jake and I ride past Haystack Rock a familiar feature on the coast. Then further along, we pass by Hug Point where two days before my wedding in 1888, my fiancé and I and a remittance man all nearly drowned pushed by a sleeper wave leaving me and my horse stranded on that barnacle-covered granite while waves lapped at our feet. Jake and I stayed there, me shivering, until the tide went out, and John came back for me, grateful to be alive.
You can find out about the remittance men in my story but they are mostly second sons from the United Kingdom who, like women, could not inherit and were sent to the new world receiving a small amount of money remitted to them for the promise to stay away.
Then up over Neahkahnie Mountain we go, often with me leading my trusty horse and sometimes a mule string. I deliver more than the mail locked in bags. Potatoes are hard to transport as they waddle around inside burlap bags but I carry saws and physics, and orders from the catalog too. The mountain is rich with meadows and a trail that reaches 800 feet above the ocean, in places so narrow the path is no wider than my young husband’s two palms. We head down along more beach and eventually reach Tillamook Bay where ships come in and out and I deliver my postal bags to the lighthouse.
Across the Crying Sands is based on my actual life, and it’s about more than those massive rocks and the changing tides and my work. It’s a story of a woman – me – trying to find her way as a young wife and mother and learning to live as a family through hard times. I love adventure and poetry too. One of my favorite poems is by an Englishman, Edward Lear, called The Jumblies. In it is a line about adventure and how the fanciful beings, the Jumblies, “went to sea in a sieve” and how they endured. That’s how I see my life, going to sea in a sieve, taking risks, finding purpose and trusting that God goes with me through high tides and low ones. I hope you’ve enjoyed this short travelog and will find yourself on the Crying Sands with me come May 20th when the book is released. Thanks for traveling with me and thanks to the Cannon Beach History Center and Museum for the use of the historical photographs. Mary.
The Women of Cannon Beach , #1
Inspirational Pioneer Historical Women’s Fiction Set in the Pacific Northwest
A Tale of Uncharted Adventure and Discovery Inspired by a True Story
In 1888 Mary Edwards Gerritse is a witty and confident young woman who spends as much time as possible outdoors on the rugged Oregon coast where she and her husband, John, have settled. The two are a formidable pair who are working hard to prove their homesteading claim and build a family. But as Mary faces struggles of young motherhood and questions about her family of origin, she realizes that life is far from the adventure she imagined it would be.
After losing the baby she's carrying, grief threatens Mary, but she finds an unconventional way to bring joy back into her life--by taking over a treacherous postal route. As Mary becomes the first female mail carrier to traverse the cliff-hugging mountain trails and remote Crying Sands Beach, with its changing tides and sudden squalls, she recaptures the spark she lost and discovers that a life without risk is no life at all.
In this inspirational historical Christian novel, a pioneer female mail carrier lives a life of resilience, including grappling with grief and the loss of a child and facing the challenges of frontier life.
Christian Historical [Revell, On Sale: May 20, 2025, Paperback / e-Book , ISBN: 9780800746094 / eISBN: 9781493450657]
A New York Times Bestselling author, Jane Kirkpatrick's works have appeared in more than 50 national publications including The Oregonian, Private Pilot and Daily Guideposts. With more than 1.5 million books in print, her 30 novels and non-fiction titles draw readers from all ages and genders. Most are historical novels based on the lives of actual historical women often about ordinary women who lived extraordinary lives. Her works have won numerous national awards including the WILLA Literary Award, the Carol Award, USABestBooks.com, Will Roger's Medallion Award and in 1996, her first novel, A Sweetness to the Soul, won the prestigious Wrangler Award from the Western Heritage and National Cowboy Museum. Her novels have also been finalists for the Spur Award, the Oregon Book Award, the Christy, Reader's Choice and the WILLA in both fiction and non-fiction. Several titles have been Literary Guild and Book of the Month choices and been on the bestsellers list for independent bookstores across the country, in the Pacific Northwest and the Christian Booksellers Association. Her books have been translated into German, Dutch, Finnish, and Chinese.
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