It Haunts Me Still
Review by Tryst Editor

The worst thing about loaning out a book (in this case, Tryst by Elswyth Thane) is losing the book - forever - to an inconsiderate relative, "M" who probably never bothered to read the book. Whereas, my sister, "K" and I share a fierce, unhealthy territorial love of books. Although, our taste in books is at opposite ends of the spectrum, we once shared a love of the same authors when I was much younger. For instance, it was K who introduced me to Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little Women, Nancy Drew. It was my mother who turned me onto Alfred Noyes, "The Highwayman;" Louis Untermeyer; and, Joyce Kilmer: "I think I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.".

Then, there was Tryst. It was the book that literally made me lovesick; the book that I fell in love with above all others, the one I returned to time and time again and couldn't get enough of. And by the time I turned age thirteen I had read the book at least six or seven times. It was the Ghost Story, the all-consuming love story before its time. The 20-something reviews on Amazon.com will attest to this book's popularity; how it affected so many readers (mostly women, I suspect).

My sister made the mistake of loaning the book out to "M," who made the grievous error of first losing the book and then lying about it for over a year. To this day, I have not forgiven "M" for being so careless with the book that meant everything to me. A time when I lived for books, lived in books, even worked in a library just so I could be near books. There was no other world.

Now the book is next to impossible to find. Even reprints of the book cost some outrageous amount and I'm sure it'll continue to appreciate over the years since it's such a rare book. I haven't had much luck locating Tryst in new/mint condition. Several years ago, I made a concerted effort to find the book, any book so I could re-read it again. I found a used book, 1st edition from the Martha Canfield Library in Arlington, Vermont. It's in rough shape, quite fragile: the pages are yellowed and the binding is precariously loose, oh! but it smells so wonderful. Imagine all those eyes, hands and fingers that traced lovingly over its pages, and lived for a while, in a wholly different dimension - the mind. Someday I hope it will be made into a movie.

Why has it not been shopped and scripted by now is a mystery. Even stranger, I googled Tryst by Elswyth Thane and came up with all kinds of startling data. One bit of information that shocked me, I never knew Elswyth Thane (Beebe) was a woman! Gasp! Here all these years I was under the impression that Elswyth was a man and the fact that I didn't even have the inclination to explore and find out more about the author, or even read the jacket cover. What was I thinking?!

Elswyth Thane Ricker (Beebe) was born May 16, 1900 in Burlington, Iowa. Her father was Maurice Ricker. She began as a freelance writer in 1925 and was a newspaper woman and film writer during the era of the "Talkies."

Fifty-year-old William Beebe married then 24-year-old Elswyth Thane Ricker Sept. 22, 1927. They were married on Harrison Williams' yacht, "Warrior" off Oyster Bay. Guests included Professor and Mrs. Henry Osborn, Col. and Mrs. Anthony R. Kuser and Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr.

Not that this revelation changes anything, certainly not my perspective on the story line, or that the writing still takes my breath away. There is something kinetic about the way the words pull the reader in, the often comical portrayal of the Aunt, and the very frail, but strong-willed Sabrina, and then of course, Hilary. The only way to explain the mystical powers of Tryst is to share one of the reviews I lifted from Amazon.com:

I remembered this book from my teenage years, and it has "haunted" me ever since. It is a love story which explains the inevitability of union when two souls are aligned. Brought to a quiet English country house by her professor father and [maiden] aunt, our shy, bookish heroine is quite content to be tucked away in the hinterlands. She has no suspicion that her life will be forever changed, or rational explaination for why she is so irresistibly drawn to the locked room at the top of the stairs. On the other hand, our hero only knows that he must follow his unreasoning desire to get home, and is all the more determined to do so after the drama and strain in the Asian desert, his most recent completion of what the high commissioner always called the "almost impossible." Death, someone explained, only ends a life; it does not end a relationship. In "Tryst," it begins one.

But what makes me curious now is why Elswyth Thane wrote this novel. What unfulfilled longing propelled the story to a fatal ending? And then there is the unattainable ghost-figure of Hilary, what was his role? Was there an illicit lover that Thane was seeing, or an unrequited love she was pining over? Considering the timing of the story, set in 1939, WWII looming in Europe, death became the all encompassing theme in reality and love afforded Thane an idealistic view of life after death. There is reassurance to believing in life after death, why it is still one of the more popular themes of movies and literature: e.g., "Ghost" (1990), "What Dreams May Come" but do any of us really believe in soul mates? I don't pretend to have a pat answer or even a comforting theory, so I will leave that question struggling, openly on the table.

Of all the books I've ever read, this one has stayed with me interminably. I don't know if that's a good thing or bad thing, or hopeless. I don't consider myself sentimental or remotely romantic. Then again I can't see what one gains by being cynical and jaded either. Maybe as an adult I cut loose from those emotional ties as a convenience; and then again, maybe deep down inside I'm still sentimental, still secretly yearning to meet the "one" who'll make me feel "sick" as this book once did. I encourage you to pick up a copy, read Tryst and allow yourself to be swept away.

On a final note, in an early style of blog entry, October 1998, under the title, "Quiet" Liralen, whoever she is, wrote:

While waiting on getting hungry enough for dinner, I read. My shipment from Amazon had arrived and in it was a copy of Tryst. It's a book I read when I was a teenager.

Of all the books I've ever read, this one has stayed with me for two decades. Though I've forgotten nearly everything from either high school I attended, this one detail stayed with me, the one title, and the one story. I don't really know why. It's a very teen girl kind of story. Romantic, in a very, very, very odd way, it's the epitome of lost loves, as the guy's dead before she even gets there. They've missed, completely, totally, and are doing their best, anyway, him to support her, her to love him.

Anyway, I got it, and I read bits and pieces last night, and it had all the overtones I'd remembered, from before, all the implied background information, all the things that come out, all the lovely tension between the unseen ghost and the sensative [sic] girl with the differences with the entire world. So, now I have the story that haunted me, and it haunts me still.

http://www.flick.com/~liralen/journal/daily/oct98/28.html

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