Brenda Bevan Remmes

The Quaker Café

Quakers only a part of the story.

by

Inside a Quaker Meeting

The Quaker Café isn’t a story just about Quakers, although there are characters in the novel who are Quakers. There are also Baptists and Methodists plus an Episcopalian wedding and an Easter Parade. In addition there’s murder and adultery and guilt and a lot of secrets to go around. The Quakers can’t manage it all by themselves.

In the novel the protagonist, Liz Hoole,  has married into a weighty Quaker family and slipped off the Presbyterian pedestal to raise her children under the guidance of her husband and in-laws. That’s not bad. Quakers are good people.  I should know.  I’ve been one for thirty-seven years.

 Quakers have been around for a long time and they’re not all dead, as I once heard a teacher say in a classroom.  We’re very much alive in a variety of shapes and sizes and religious convictions.  We are not Amish or Mennonite nor are we Shakers, who indeed are almost all dead as they discouraged their members from having sex. The Shakers, however, are remembered for a  great song, Simple Gifts, which Quakers have adopted.

 You may be surprised by some of the people who are Quakers.  Of course everyone knows William Penn was a Quaker and Pennsylvania has a strong Quaker heritage, as do North and South Carolina to many people’s surprise. Few still dress like William Penn, though. We blend in pretty well.  There are quite a number of peace proponents and civil rights activists along with poets and authors. The poet John Greenleaf Whittier was a Quaker as were Presidents Richard Nixon and Herbert Hoover.  Actress Judi Dench is a Quaker, as is actor Ben Kingsley.  There are an unusual number of physicists who are Quakers, including my son, but my very favorite of all are the Cadbury brothers…the chocolatiers. 

 Want to know more?  I’ll be adding some tidbits of information from time to time.  If you’re in a hurry, check out the references   or look for other reading material on my website. 

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Comments

  2. I found this site when looking through some way this computer communicates, that started with your message. Thank you. . La Cantatrice chauve de Eugène Ionesco is what came to mind when I saw your book trailer picture of Maggie with one blue eye and one brown eye, so I wonder if your literary allusion is intended in the manner of the theatre of the absurd? We have ordered your book and look forward to unlocking the mystery.
    Keep up the good work. Blessings, Tad.

    • What does this mean, “Your comment is awaiting moderation.”?
      Sorry, I don’t know how this conversation works any more than your mother would tell us the etiquette of the six hole outhouse at her church. Who is moderating what? I would be most interested in how this works. Thanks, Tad

    • Tad, I am unfamiliar with La Cantatrice chauve de Eugène Ionescoith and the theatre of the absurd, which probably tells you that there was no intended literary allusion with the one blue eye and one brown eye. I have a cousin who has heterocromia, a genetic coloration of the eyes where one iris is a different color from the other. It is so prominent that whenever I’m talking to her I’m simply hypnotized by her eyes. In writing, it often helps if a character has a distinctive trait that the reader can begin to identify with that specific character. For Maggie, I used that as one of her traits. It wasn’t easy making it happen in the book trailer you saw. Another trick was getting The Quaker Cafe written across the front of the cafe in the town scene. I have to defer such talents to Tibby Plants, who developed the trailer.