Beyond the Moorland The Bittersweet Remembrance of Life in a Czechoslovakian Village before the First World War One by one leaves fall to the earth. "leaves from the tree of my life! Pick them up! Turn them over! They can tell you a story of bygone days" Thus begins Ilse Read in these beautifully written memoirs. The most vivid memories derive from the village of Habstein in northern Bohemia. The family moved to this little Czechoslovakian town in 1913 when the author was eight years old. It was in Habstein that her father, a Protestant minister, established the Sonnenhof, the "Home for the Homeless" the social outcast. The family, too, knew what it meant to be an outsider, for as Protestants, as city-bred, they were not wholly embraced by the villagers, but instead made to observe from a distance the ceremonial goings-on of village life. Interlaced with the author's memories is the turbulent history of Czechoslovakia, the crossroads of the continent, with its varied culture comprised of Bohemian, Moravian, Czech and German strains. With each invasion leaving its stamp, Czechoslovakia is rich in blending pagan and Christian tradition. The days of the year are ticked off according to the Catholic calendar, with feast days and holy days heavily larded with vestiges of pagan custom. The family was poor and life was hard, but the leaves of those youthful days are happy and carefree. "Our world" writes Ilse, "was small, but, oh, so satisfying. We had freedom in wholesome surroundings, freedom from money problems, and of current affairs we knew nothing........It seemed that every day now was sunny." The sunny days, however, were destined to darken with the clouds of war, for it was the time when shots rang out at Sarajevo, setting the world aflame in World War One. Sonnenhof, "child of her father's idealism," was maintained almost to the end of the conflict - even with her father gone off to war. Its closing marked "the end of a season - the end of an empire - the end of an era - the end of life as we had known it." Ilse Read is a native of Zwittau, Czechoslovakia. At the age of 22 she emigrated to Canada where she married a Canadian farmer and raised a family during the Great Depression and Second World War. Widowed in 1966 she turned to her gift for writing and poetry to compose this fascinating memoir. Ilse Read is a gifted poet with a poet's knack of expressing relationships through metaphor and symbol, making Beyond the Moorland a prose poem that springs to life in these pages. Included in this second edition is Deep Thoughts and Random Lore, a collection of poems and thoughtful reflection by Ilse Read. This is heady stuff, rich in thought, often brimming with intense emotion and always thought provoking.
About the Author: Born in Zwittau, Czechoslovakia, in 1905, Ilse Read spent the first twenty-two years of her life in Europe before setting off alone to emigrate to Canada in 1927. Starting out on a prairie farm, she met Bernie Read, the man who was to be her husband. Together they went on to start and raise a family during the Great Depression and Second World War. The early years of marriage were hard, beset with crop failures and family illness. During this time Ilse was persistently seeking out knowledge and understanding by completing her secondary school education and pursuing a range of esoteric and philosophical subjects. Widowed by her husband's untimely death in 1966, she went on to complete her certification in Practical Nursing and a late-life career in that field. Ilse spent many hours in later life pursuing writing and photography. She undertook to write Beyond the Moorland, a true labour of love, in 1973-74. While Ilse dedicated the book to her father's memory, she wrote it for her children and grandchildren and all who follow. Ilse was a gifted poet with the poet's knack of expression, making Beyond the Moorland a prose poem that springs to life in these pages. Meanwhile she pursued lifelong interests in philosophy and theosophy and produced a significant quantity of writing, in both poetry and prose, which provides illuminating insights into her values and world view. These poems and bits of philosophical reflection are included in the second part this volume under the title Deep Thoughts and Random Lore. Ilse Read passed away peacefully in 1984 in Vernon BC. For more detail on the life of Ilse Read and her husband Bernie, see Seasons of the Heart, A Life History of Bernie and Ilse Read, by Dave Read, 2007.