To Tradition or not to Tradition by Paige Shelton

Jenn McKinlay: It's always a great day when we get to chat with our friend Paige who has a new Alaska Wild mystery coming out on Dec 6th! 

This is the fourth in the Mary Higgins Clark Award nominated series and it sounds thrilling! 

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The fourth installment in the gripping, atmospheric Alaska Wild series, Paige Shelton's Winter's End.

It’s springtime in Benedict, Alaska, and with the warmer weather comes an unseasonably somber local tradition...the annual Death Walk. At the end of each brutal winter, citizens gather downtown and then break into groups to search the community for those who might have somehow gotten stuck at home. Beth Rivers sets off with her friend Orin and dog Gus, toward the cabin of an elderly resident, intending to check on him.

When they reach the cabin, the old man is alive, but not in the best shape. Beth stays with him while Orin hurries to town for help, but it’s not Orin who returns. Gril comes back with shocking news, and it soon becomes clear that Orin has also vanished. When they discover that their friend has been doing some top-secret research, they start to worry he’s been exposed, or worse.

Meanwhile, Beth continues on her own search, for her father, who allegedly is alive in Mexico, but won't return her calls. Still, she's making progress in healing from her own trauma, though can't quite shake the feeling she's being followed...

Paige: Happy Holidays to everyone! Thanks to Jenn and all the Jungle Reds for letting me stop by today. 

About ten years ago I was talking to a friend about the holiday traditions of my childhood. All those (long ago) events centered around my grandparents; my family, aunts, uncles, and cousins meeting at my grandparents’ small Missouri home, where my grandmother would make sure we all ate delicious food, even if it meant we had to eat in shifts because the kitchen was so small. I loved those days. After my grandparents passed, we all floundered for what to do and where to go for holiday celebrations. No one’s house or cooking, or anything really, was close to the same type of down home hospitality my grandparents offered. Mostly, the rest of us ended up not doing much of anything for a lot of years. My friend, the one I was talking to about ten years ago, said, “That’s the problem with traditions. They can’t go on forever, because nothing goes on forever. You should work to make different memories with each new trip around the sun or you’ll just be stuck in that melancholy mode of missing what used to be.” 

Well. I was quiet for a long moment as I worked through her words. I had to get past a few moments of “what’s wrong with her?” and “how dare she?” I realized quickly, of course, that she meant no disrespect to my memories. And much to my dismay, I finally concluded that she might be on to something. At least partly. 

I am grateful for those childhood traditions, but after my grandparents were gone, they would have wanted the rest of us to find new ways to enjoy ourselves without them, not just be sad they weren’t there. Even if it was something as simple as going to a movie one year, going for a hike the next. Mix it up. Make new memories that would only complement the old traditional activities. 

Since that conversation, I’ve tried to do exactly that – make sure new things, even small things, are a part of any of my family get togethers. It’s given me a sense of purpose, and I think everyone has had a good time. It has given us all a chance to partition the years as well – they don’t all mix into one similar picture. There was that year we all visited the observatory, then the one with the zoo. That year we watched a parade, or the one where we had Italian food instead of turkey. 

This year for Thanksgiving, my son, daughter-in-law, and brand-new grandbaby boy visited us in Arizona. I am so fortunate to have these wonderful people in my life. I’ll never be as amazing as my grandmother, but I can cook okay enough. We ate good food and, activities being dictated by the almost brand new human, spent lots of time inside cuddling the baby. Next year, we’ll do some of the same things, but I’ll work to come up with something different for new memories. Grandbaby’s age will probably dictate things for a while, and I love that, feel fortunate for it. 

Before they arrived, I’d cleaned and rearranged some pictures. I found a tiny photobooth picture of my grandparents and my mother when she was a brand new baby. I set the small picture on a shelf, leaning against another framed picture. As I was cleaning up after son, DIL, and baby left to go back to Omaha, I closed a sliding door near the shelf. That sepia-toned picture fluttered up and landed on the floor at my feet, face up. Of course, it was probably just the wind from the closing door, but I’ve decided that I’m going to think of it as a lovely hug and an approving fist bump from the people I still miss and love to this day. Tradition or not, we all need a little magic during the holidays, right? 

What about you, Readers, do you have traditions that you've kept or ones that you've had to let go of?

Speaking of new traditions – this coming Saturday, December 3, at 2:00 PM, Arizona time (currently the same as Pacific Time) Jenn McKinlay, Kate Carlisle, and I will be at the Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale to kick off my new book, the fourth in the Alaska Wild Series: Winter’s End. We’ll be in ugly Christmas sweaters, and we encourage others to join in, either live, or via the links below. We’ll be awarding a prize to our favorites.

Links to the event:

http://www.facebook.com/thepoisonedpenbookstore/live

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTbRuLNmD8EhT4WrGGMVW-w

Paige Shelton is the New York Times Bestselling author of the Farmers' Market, Country Cooking School, Dangerous Type, and Scottish Bookshop mysteries. She's lived lots of places but currently resides in Arizona. Find out more at www.paigeshelton.com