Fan’s sketches inspired by book lead to friendship with author

Submitted by JULIE SCHOERKE • October 15, 2008

SUBMITTED BY JULIE SCHOERKE

Cyrilla Duprel, fan of the Cottonwood series, and author Gary Slaughter grew up on the Great Plains with vivid memories of life during a simpler time, the backdrop of Slaughter’s newly released book. They both reside in the Belle Meade area now.

Cloisters resident Cyrilla Duprel missed a meeting at the neighborhood clubhouse three years ago, and meeting a person who would become a big part of her life.

She missed Belle Meade author Gary Slaughter’s lecture but later read an article in The Tennessean about his book Cottonwood Summer.

Duprel bought the book and was inspired to draw sketches based on her reading.

Sticking some of the postcard size sketches in a photo album, she sent them to Slaughter, along with a letter conveying her memories of life on the home front during World War II, the theme of the Cottonwood series.

A self-proclaimed sentimental guy, Slaughter teared up reading the long letter and looking at the sketches.

“This is the way I pictured life in Riverton,” Slaughter said of the artist renderings of his fictional Michigan small town.

Duprel and Slaughter spoke by phone and then met in person. The fan and author now have an ongoing dialogue.

They’ve discussed special memories of years gone by. Slaughter’s wife, Joanne, dubbed them “two peas in a pod.”

Conversation between the two jumps from one memory to another of their experiences of growing up on the plains of the Midwest. Although Duprel was a young wife at the start of World War II and Slaughter just a young boy, they have many of the same recollections of the time period.

Duprel and Slaughter remember the iceman delivering ice to their homes. Duprel had a telephone but no refrigerator, while Slaughter remembers his family getting telephone service when he was 10 years old.

Bums and hobos, begging for food when they jumped off freight trains coming through town. and their mothers feeding hungry men were memories for Duprel and Slaughter. Those memories showed up in his book and were featured in her postcard sketches.