At age 8, Frances Shelfantook said she would forgo playtime after dinner to sit and listen to the adults in her life swap stories and share memories.
More than 90 years later, she turned those stories into a series of published books.
Shelfantook, who last month turned 100 years old, recently released her second book, “Emma’s Story,” a fictional collection of tales inspired by the life of Emma Peterson Beckman, Shelfantook’s grandmother, who lived in a cabin on the shores of Squaw Lake, Minn.
“I never really thought I could write a book and I never really tried,” Shelfantook said of becoming a published author.
Emma’s Story is a sequel to “Sophia’s Journey,” which was published in 2011. The two books are part of a trilogy – the third book is not yet released – about Shelfantook’s ancestors who emigrated from Sweden in the 1860s and settled in Minnesota.
“The books are fictional, but the main characters are all real and almost everything is based on real events,” Shelfantook said.
The author has lived in Fort Frances since she was 4 and became a teacher in the 1930s. She recalled always having a passion for writing, but said she never imagined putting her thoughts together between two covers.
“When computers were first coming on the scene, our school board arranged to have a period of the day for mature students to learn about typing and how to run a computer,” she said. “I remember thinking, ‘My goodness, the characters just appear on the page.’ I thought it was fun, so I started writing more.”
Shortly after her retirement in 1977, Shelfantook got serious about writing her family’s past. With the help of her cousins who lived in America, she discovered Sophia, Shelfantook’s great-grandmother who was born in 1831 to a prosperous Swedish family. What Shelfantook and her cousins came across, she said, were people and events from stories she had absorbed as a youngster.
“I remember how I would sit and listen to stories (adults) were telling when I was really very young,” Shelfantook said. “The people just sounded so fascinating – they just walked right on to the pages of my books.”
Sophia’s Journey was written in the early 1990s and sat unpublished for several years until family members asked to read Shelfantook’s manuscripts.
“And they seemed to enjoy them,” she said of the people she let read her work.
Thinking others may enjoy her ancestor’s stories, too, Shelfantook, with the help of her daughter, Linda LaFrance, set out to self publish the stories near and dear to her heart.
“The best compliment I receive is people can’t put the book down,” the author said.
As soon as Sophia’s Journey was written, Shelfantook said she “could hardly wait” to get started on Emma’s Story.
“She was a very dear person,” she said of Emma. “I was able to know her, she died when I was 16 years old.”
Emma’s Story includes more details of actual accidents occurring during the early 1900s – maternity difficulties, forest fires and many other events Shelfantook either witnessed or heard about.
“I wanted to make sure to write about what life was like back then,” she said. “Not everything had a happy ending.”
Shelfantook is modest about her writing skills.
“I really do believe there is some guiding force that tells you what to do,” she said. “It seemed whenever I came to a part of the story that needed something, a character would just walk onto the page. I don’t know what it is – it’s not magic – but it really seemed to always work out.”
Except when Shelfantook, like any writer, experienced the dreaded writer’s block.
“It was all enjoyable until I would come to a dry spot,” she said. “There were days it was hard to make (the story) really interesting and moving.”
Still, she said she would overcome the block and managed to produce two stories she is very proud of – and a third is on the way.
“The next story will be of my mother, Ann,” she said. “I’m not sure what it’ll be called yet, but I expect it’ll be ready to go by next spring.”
Both Sophia’s Journey and Emma’s Story are available at Ronnings in International Falls and at Betty’s in Fort Frances.
