The ups and downs of this family during the rest of the nineteenth century takes up the rest of the book. Eliza married again in 1867, but the man turned violent and she quickly divorced him. In 1877, still young for her age, beautiful and full of fire at forty-nine, she married her third husband Nathan Stover, aged thirty-three. Their marriage was successful and lasted until her death in 1896. The checkered life of Mentora is also carefully detailed, and the book ends where The Dark Well begins, when at age seventy-four she takes over the care of her orphaned granddaughter “Peggy.”

 ISBN: 0-615-12324-4
©2003
$16.95 US
Softcover 458 Pages

To order this book...

"'Eliza and Mentora: The Story of a Pioneer Family in Northern Maine,' published in 2003 by Oregon’s Silverwater Press, is presented as a 'prequel' to Shaw’s earlier work: 'The Dark Well' and features a touching and very readable history of the family of Artson and Eliza Pratt and Shaw’s grandmother, Mentora Pratt Shaw.

"Shaw chronicles the trials and triumphs of the Pratts as they struggled to survive in their early marriage in the mid-1800s and life in Jay, Canton, Buckfield and Paris Hill, Maine, before uprooting to Caribou (then Lyndon) in 1863. A short time after they arrived, Artson knew he was going to be conscripted into the Civil War and decided to enlist instead, a tragic decision that cost him his life, but one that allowed Eliza and her family to become financially independent in an era when many Civil War widows weren’t so lucky....

"Another fascinating chapter describes the coming of Swedish pioneers to their new community of New Sweden. Here is Shaw at her best, pulling pieces of source materials to create a well-rounded depiction of this important development in Aroostook County history. The reactions of the then Caribou residents and their new neighbors is touching and revealing. Local history enthusiasts are very glad to receive this new work on the Pratt family, as the work adds to what is already known and clears up things that were unknown. Throughout the lively prose are references to the Hardisons (Eliza’s oldest daughter married Ai Hardison), the Adams and others presented in a very positive, insightful and human way. These old pioneers come to life in the story....

"Even if you are not fascinated by the town as it was, the book is well written and the pages turn by quickly. The story of 'Eliza and Mentora' is a story of tragedy, fortitude and family that is highly recommended for all readers."

--William Tasker
Aroostook Republican and News, November 12, 2003

"ELIZA AND MENTORA is author Brenda Shaw’s compelling historical biography of a Maine family’s pioneer saga in northern Maine from 1828 to 1928, a hundred years of joy and sorrow, success and failure, romance and heartbreak . . ..

"Brenda Shaw was born in Maine and raised on a hard-scrabble farm near Augusta. Her first book, THE DARK WELL (Audenreed Press, 1996) is a touching memoir of her childhood and the stunning secrets about her family. ELIZA AND MENTORA, then, is a prequel to THE DARK WELL, and offers a powerful portrayal of courage, determination, loss, sacrifice, and love.

"Written like a novel but based on fact, Shaw tells of Eliza and Artson Pratt’s move north from Buckfield and eventual settlement in Plantation H (later the village was renamed Lyndon, and finally became the town of Caribou) . . .. After Artson dies in the Civil War, Eliza must survive as a widow with six children (Mentora is the second oldest child).

"Amidst all the family’s challenges, Shaw also tells a wonderful regional history of Caribou and Aroostook, the establishment of the Swedish immigrant colony at New Sweden, the introduction of the railroad and the telephone, and the unusual functioning of the laws and the court system . . .."

--Bill Bushnell
Kennebec Journal, Augusta, ME, September 28, 2003
(William D. Bushnell lives and writes in Harpswell.)

"Eliza and Mentora is a creative work of non-fiction true to family memoir, but graced with fictional elements that make it a pleasure to read. Great-grandmother, Eliza, and grandmother, Mentora, are depicted as sympathetic, true-to-life characters. Their daily struggle for survival during and after the Civil War in rugged, undeveloped Maine, is so compelling that the two women and their numerous kin begin to feel like one's own relatives.

"Genealogists will have a field day with this book. The author's painstaking research, by way of historical archives, books, diaries, letters, newspaper accounts, and church and county registries authenticates her ancestors' lives, before and after America was devastated by the Civil War. Page 139: So Eliza had not a boot nor a penny to remember him by--only the vision of a naked, starved prisoner to haunt her sleepless nights.

"Brenda Shaw writes with authority and integrity."

--Doreen Gandy Wiley
Media Weavers, Portland, OR, Autumn, 2003

". . . The [Caribou] area prospered after the war. Eliza remarried but divorced after six months, then gave up farming as she and her daughter made a living sewing for area residents. Prosperity peaked in the 1870s when the third generation males decided dawn to dusk work wasn’t for them and began leaving for the West, especially sons and grandsons of the founding Hardison family who went into the oil business in PA, IN and CA, eventually consolidating their interests into Union Oil of CA. Other Hardisons went to Idaho with Maine seed potatoes and began the potato industry there.

"With the railroad’s extension from Bangor in 1895, the exodus increased: eight of Eliza’s grandchildren left for CA. After Mentora’s marriage and divorce and her mother’s death, she, too, left Caribou, and the story of her later years is told in The Dark Well."

The Maine Event, Vol. 25 No. 3, November 2003

"Anyone interested in real people's lives and history will find Eliza and Mentora compelling. Shaw has taken family records--diaries, letters, journals--and public records of deeds, deaths, births and wills, along with newspaper accounts of the times to weave the story of a pioneer family in the harsh world of the northern Maine forests.

"What is different from the history books we were subjected to in school, at least in my day, is that much of the narrative revolves around the women of the family, namely Eliza and her daughter, Mentora. Shaw's earlier work, The Dark Well, takes place after this book, which she is calling a prequel. The reader receives a revealing picture of how women were able to cope in a time when their rights were severely limited by law. Eliza provides stability for her family, runs a farm and a successful sewing business in spite of the untimely death of her first husband during the Civil War. But a brutal second husband took advantage of laws that said she was, as a female, little more than chattel.

"Eliza's life is dedicated to her family, and although she seems to relish a man's role in her life, it is through her efforts and skill that the family prospers. The offspring of her first marriage are left with considerable assets to continue to build their lives. Shaw follows the family through numerous times of grief, but she recognizes times of joy also. . .. The archive of family members' pictures is dramatic."

--Geneva Miller
The Eugene Weekly, Eugene, OR

Brenda Shaw grew up on a Maine farm and worked her way through Boston University. After receiving her Doctorate in Biological Sciences, she lived for a number of years in Scotland with her British husband and raised two Scottish-born sons. While in Scotland, she worked as a scientist, lecturer and senior lecturer at the Dundee University Medical School. Her scientific writings include two editions of a textbook and thirty-eight research papers.

Shaw’s short stories, non-fiction and poems have appeared in various periodicals and anthologies on both sides of the Atlantic. She edited an anthology of recent Dundee poetry, Seagate II (Taxvs Press, Durham, England, 1984), and her first collection of poems, The Cold Winds of Summer, was published by Blind Serpent Press, Dundee, Scotland, in 1987. Both of these books received publication grants from the Scottish Arts Council.

She returned to the states in 1987 and continued her writing career in Eugene, Oregon. In 1992 she was one of eight Northwest writers selected to participate in an NEA-funded program sponsored by Centrum, the arts and education organization based in Port Townsend, Washington. The program included a month’s residence with time and space for creative work. Several residencies at Centrum followed, and in 1995 she was awarded a six-week Walden Fellowship, during which residency she completed her memoir The Dark Well (Audenreed Press, 1997) Its prequel, Eliza and Mentora, The Story of a Pioneer Family in Northern Maine, was published in July, 2003.