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Once or twice, perhaps, in a long writing career, a character lifts off the page and takes on extraordinary life. It
happened to me many years and books ago in a character named Blossom Culp. Now it's happened again.
Her name's Grandma Dowdel. She has no first name; who would dare use it? And she's so much larger than life that it's taken two
books to contain her: A Long Way from Chicago (Dial, 1998) and A Year Down Yonder (Dial, 2000).
While Blossom is young and almost invisible in her community, Grandma Dowdel is the chief landmark in town and old as dirt, or so
she seems to her grandchildren, Joey and Mary Alice. She's popularly thought to be capable of mayhem and known to be trigger-happy . . . my retort to all those cloying little old ladies nodding by
the fire in traditional children's picture books.
Grandma Dowdel walks a fine line with the law, too, when she isn't making her own rules.
"Grandma," I said, "is trapping fish legal in this state?"
"If it was," she said, "we wouldn't have to be so quiet."
"What's the fine?"
"Nothin' if you don't get caught."
It takes Joey more than a few summers to see that Grandma Dowdel's moral code transcends mere laws, and men. It takes him longer than that to learn that she's capable of anything, including irony. He's almost a man before he knows how much she loves him.
Now I'm plagued by people who ask me if she's my grandmother. Writers aren't given much credit for creativity. A novel isn't real life with the names changed. It's an alternative to real life. She's the grandmother I wish I'd had.
And she marches in a long tradition. She's the American tall tale in a Lane Bryant dress. There's more than a bit of Paul Bunyan
about her. Even a hint of the Native American trickster tradition.
She marches, too, in a tradition of my own making. And old person appears in each of my novels for the young. They're for suburban
readers living in age-segregated subdivisions. They're for the readers in cement cities where the old fear the streets. These survivors are there to embody the truth upon which all fiction turns:
that in the long run you really will be held responsible for the consequences of your actions—that real life isn't an elective course you can drop if it threatens to challenge you.
And by the way, now it can be told. Grandma Dowdel's first name is Blossom. •
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Richard Peck at his High School Graduation
About the Author:
Richard Peck is a native Illinoisan who has lived half his life in New York. He
has written thirty-one novels. His A Year Down Yonder is the Newbery gold medal winner for 2001, and his newest novel, Fair Weather, was published in September 2001.
Richard Peck Today
Recent Books by Richard Peck:
Fair Weather (Dial, 2001)
A Year Down Yonder (Dial, 2000)
Don't Look and It Won't Hurt (Henry Holt, 1999)
A Long Way from Chicago: A Novel in Stories (Dial, 1998)
Strays Like Us (Dial, 1998)
To contact this author or illustrator, please use the information for his or her publisher provided on our list of CBC member publishers.
Meet the Author/Illustrator Archives
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