Barbara Newhall Follett's home on the web
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I invite visitors to Farksolia to share your thoughts about Barbara Follett here.
This is a great website. I had not known about Barbara Follett. I am glad that you have created this website to preserve what is known of her work and her life. It is very sad that such a promising writer was lost at so young an age. She had a tremendous gift with words.
I am not quite sure how I got here, but I am so grateful I did. Thank you for your work on this site and for keeping Barbara Follett accessible to those that want to find out about her.
Looks like an E-book of The House Without Windows is (finally) on the web! It’s available here:
http://sites.google.com/site/thehousewithoutwindows
And thank you Stefan for continuing to publish more of Barbara’s work.
I have to confess to you, family of Ms. Follett: I’ve acquired the taste, and cannot get over her writing! She steals your heart! I can’t do without some piece of her work… –And, she was so young… And, I think she disappeared with all our hearts!
I admit that I’m new to this whole story, but I want to say how thankful I am that someone’s carrying on the torch. From what I’ve read thus far Follett was an exceptional individual, and the fact that her work has not been reprinted in volumes seems an abomination.
I thank you for the work you do, and I hope you’ll continue to do it.
Yeah, one of the publishing companies should do that! I just tried to open my download of, “The House Without Windows,” and couldn’t; but it was open when I downloaded it, so I shouldn’t have to ask for a redo!
Thanks for the kind words, Grant. I will certainly try to keep Barbara’s flame alive here on Farksolia.
Thanks for keeping your aunt’s memory alive. My sister “disappeared” at the age of 25, abandoning two children. She resurfaced nearly 30 years later, with four additional children, living five hundred miles away from where she’d grown up. In all those years we suspected she must have died, not believing she’d never contact anybody in the family. By the time one of her grown children in the new family contacted my brother, our parents both were long dead. I can understand the frustration of Barbara’s mother in trying to l0cate her daughter all those years later. I’m wondering if anybody else in the family suspected foul play, and what Nickerson Rogers had to say for himself. I’m also wondering if anybody thought Barbara might have reunited with E. Anderson and took up another life in another country. Or if they wondered if she’d wandered into the woods and gotten lost forever. So many tragic possibilities…it’s tortuer not to know what happened to your own child. I saw my mother go through this for decades, always worrying, always wondering.
Hi Terri,
Many thanks for writing, and I’m sorry to hear your story. As for Barbara’s disappearance, all we can do is guess about what happened, unless some new piece of information miraculously surfaces. I’m sure all the possibilities crossed her mother’s mind many times over, as they have mine. My mother found it easiest to imagine that her sister headed off to the mountains to die alone, but I don’t share that way of thinking. Barbara was too full of life to want to end it all, unless she had a really terrible breakdown in December, 1939. On the other hand, I have a hard time believing that she would never have contacted any member of her family if she had decided to start a new life. I also have a hard time thinking that Nick had anything to do with her death… but I could be wrong. Which leaves, possibly, an accidental death that Nick might have wanted to cover up. Or she left Brookline only to be killed by a stranger. Possibly. The possibilities never end.
I agree. I don’t believe Barbara at 25 would wander into the mountains to die alone. When my sister’s daughter finally contacted our family we learned that Patti claimed the man she had run off with prevented her from contacting any of us. Yet after she had three daughters with him, he went to prison for harboring stolen goods in his pawnshop, and she took up with yet another man and had another child, a boy. We heard nothing from her from around 1962 to around 1990. I’ve seen her only once, in 1992, though we speak on the phone and exchange greeting cards. I write for anthologies and have published several true stories about growing up together, but her disappearance left a huge gap in my life. And her continual refusal to allow my brother and I to visit her still is a problem. As a clinical social worker, I realize my sister had a borderline personality disorder, causing chaos throughout our adolescence. Nonetheless, to have an older sister suddenly disappear is a lifelong jolt. I watched the video of Sabra at Princeton in 1989, and wondered how often she, too, wondered whatever had happened to Barbara. Patti wasn’t the first person to disappear, though. Our birth mother did, too. My story about the last day I saw her has appeared in a number of anthologies and also here: http://www.fivemoreminuteswith.com/2011/03/dreaming-as-the-summers-die/
I got an introduction to Barbara Follett’s life from an article I read for an SAT prep class. After the article, there was a follow-up that described this website. She sounds like she was an amazing writer, and I have been meaning to read some of her works. Thank you for putting together this site!
Stefan, thank you for showing us this site. What you have done is magical. I can see in the eyes of your aunt she was a fascinating woman with a unique gift. The work she left behind reminds me of Emily’s “snow” left in her trunk. I will read through it and will be honored to feature her on the Emily page.
Thanks very much for stopping by, Lenore, and for your kind words. I hope your readers enjoy learning about Barbara.
I think they should do a search for Barbara. Like the TV show “Cold Case”. Maybe have private investigators search around the house where she lived to see if there are any bones or something. No disrespect intended but it is sad that such a wonderful, talented young woman would disappear like that. I guess it was a long time ago but with new technology and Barbara’s spirit, the truth may come out! They should look for Jane Doe’s that were found in the area or other during that time period…I look forward to reading all her books. Bonnie
Thank you for taking the time to develop this website together. I downloaded “The House Without Windows” from Chippy’s site and found it thoroughly engaging. Glad I was able to learn more about its author here! Cheers.
Thank you for this website, and for keeping Barbara’s amazing story alive. Can I ask who owns the rights to her books? Have they been lobbied to either reissue the material or grant a license to an independent publisher? Best Wishes, -Carl