Labour of a Lifetime
Helen Hooven Santmyer is now 88 years old, crippled and half-blind. She also suffers from emphysema. Because of her infirmity, she resides permanently in a nursing-home in Xenia, Ohio, U.S.A.
Over fifty years ago, when Helen Hooven Santyer was working as a reference librarian, she started to write a book. At first, she worked on it in her spare time. Then, when ill-health forced her to retire, she continued her work in the nursing-home where she now lives.
She wrote the whole book out herself, in longhand, on a ledger. In 1982, her work complete, she presented it to the Ohio State University Press for publication. The final manuscript filled 11 boxes. A handful of copies were printed, but the book met with no initial success. It seemed as if Helen Hooven Santmyer’s name would vanish without trace from the American literary scene.
But at least one person who bought the book read it and liked it. He was praising it in an Ohio library one day when the librarian overheard his conversation. The word was passed on to a producer, then an agent, then the American Book-Club. Each party found the book entrancing and worthy of a greater audience.
Finally, Helen Hooven Santmyer’s book, entitled “... And Ladies of the Club,” was nominated for the Book Club Award in January 1984. It won the Award, and with it a sum of over 1 million dollars.
Helen Hooven Santmyer did not seek fame or wealth from her novel. Its topic—the story of two Ohio families in the period between the American Civil War and the great depression of the early 1930’s is obviously not aimed at the commercial market. The author believed that Sinclair Lewis had painted a false portrait of the American dream in his novel of the 1920’s, “Main Street”. She wanted to correct that picture. As Haynes Johnson writes in the Washington Post:
The author was clearly not in the market for big bucks. She obviously was motivated by saying something in which she believed. The bare account of how she produced the work over the years, in her spare time, in sickness and in health, in itself provides an astonishing testament of her perseverance. (Guardian Weekly, January 29, 1984)
Strong belief in something makes one rise above one’s worldly situation. It makes one concentrate on one’s end in life. No matter what hindrances and obstacles lie in one’s path, one soldiers on until one reaches one’s final destination.
The conviction that spurs a true believer on is faith in the life to come. He bears all forms of hardships, suffering and adversity in this world. He realizes that this ephemeral world is for the trial of man; in the next eternal world of God, he will be rewarded for his efforts. As Helen Hooven Santmyer laboured for over half a century in the compilation of her book bearing all forms of adversity in her determination to attain her goal in life, so the believer labours all his life for the attainment of reward in the hereafter. And, as Helen Hooven Santmyer’s sustained effort bore her due reward in this world, so the believer’s sustained effort will bear him due reward in the next world: he will be made to enter a paradise of eternal repose and bliss.
