POTOMAC NEWS
A Christmas tale
Grandmother’s story inspired “Golden Ring”
By Kelly Campbell
Staff Writer
“The Golden Ring,” a new Christmas book by John Snyder, was inspired by the author’s desire to keep his family history alive.
”I have such an interest in our family history and what older people have to say,” Snyder said. “As generations go on, we lose these stories. So I sat down with my 87-year-old grandmother, Anna, a few years ago with a tape recorder with the intent to pass it on to my children.”
When he asked her about memorable Christmases, she told him a particularly intriguing and touching tale.
Snyder was so moved that upon leaving his grandmother’s western Maryland home after that visit, he piled his wife and two children into the car and drove to Anna’s childhood home in the western Pennsylvania town of Meyersdale. “Meyersdale was the complete opposite direction of our home in Anne Arundel County, but I left her house and wanted to go up there.”
Although the town remained much as Snyder remembered it from childhood visits, there was a vacant lot where the house once stood.
According to Snyder, as he stood there in the snow, he tried to visualize his grandmother’s house as he replayed her story in his head. On the drive home, he couldn’t stop thinking about all Anna had told him.
It took him a few years and several rewrites but that story is now a 168-page book just released by Mountain Breeze Publishing. “It’s based on the story she told me but I did change it a lot,” he said. “There is a thread of truth all through it but it’s different from the way it really happened. She planted the seed and I kind of fertilized and cultivated it.”
The story is set just a few days before Christmas in 1918 Meyersdale, which Snyder describes as “a picturesque township nestled in the dense snow-covered mountains of western Pennsylvania’s coal country.”
Anna, an idealistic 9-year-old, has an especially close relationship with her father, Joseph, a hardworking engineer on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.
A series of puzzling dreams shared by Joseph and Anna mystifies them both. Their search for the meaning of these dreams leads them to share an emotional and bonding Christmas experience. The experience, born form a common vision in the night, will forever change their feelings toward the holiday and each other.
“The Golden Ring is a touching story about giving, faith, love and loss. It is a good clean story that has family appeal.” Snyder said. “People of all ages have told me they have enjoyed the book tremendously. It makes the perfect holiday gift.”
Snyder hopes the book will inspire others to learn about their family histories.
“There are so many fascinating stories that can be told by older generations about what life as like back then,” he said. “All we have to do is to ask them to tell us and then listen. These stories of the early lives of our parents and grandparents are being lost. Every time an older person dies, they take a piece of history with them. We need to get these stories out so we can pass them along to our children. That was one of the reasons I wrote the book.”
Luckily, Snyder took his own advice and didn’t wait. His grandmother Anna just passed away on Nov. 22, not long after the book’s publication. “She did get to see the book. A local paper did a story on it and we were interviewed a few days before she passed away,” Snyder said.
“The Golden Ring.” Which sell for $15.95, is available at Borders Books and Music Stores as well as Christian and independent book stores in the area. It is also available at Amazon.com. or by visiting the book’s Web site at www.thegoldenring.com. This site allows readers to see the cover and read the prologue and the first three chapters.
*Snyder will be reading and signing copies of “The Golden Ring” on Sunday from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Manassas Border’s Book and Music and on Sunday, Dec. 12 from 3 to5 p.m. at the Springfield Borders Books and Music.