Miss Cornett's Courtship

By Cathy Richard Dodson and Cathlynn Richard Dodson

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0966227905
• ISBN13: 9780966227901
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Hummingbird House
• Length: 74 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

This one should be on Oprah's book list!

This is a love story that is sweet and pure, and is an over-all wonderful story. The characters are real and the letters around which the story is woven are actual letters from a real family. Simply wonderful!

I was immediately transported to another time - happily.

I am not much of a reader, but this book was just right. I thoroughly enjoyed every page, and the story touched my heart.

A love story that is simple and pure

This wonderful story tells a simple and pure love story. The kind that anyone would want to live. What is more amazing is that the letters around which the story is woven are real letters from a real family. You'll be stunned at the beauty of them. Don't miss this opportunity to see the depth and persistence of real love!

The letters are the real prize! ? Dallas Morning News

Compiling great-grandfather's love letters in book is woman's tribute to her ancestors. Cathlynn Richard Dodson knew little of her great-grandmother, possessed the same heart-shaped face as hers, and even less of her great-grandfather, who died before her birth. Her desire to understand their story and where she came from sent her searching for answers a decade ago - from genealogy records in Dallas to the Appalachians. Eventually, the trail led her to the courtship letters that Samuel Patton Caudill penned to his "Darling Dora." These "missives" became the foundation for Ms. Dodson's novella, Miss Cornett's Courtship, set in Kentucky's Appalachian Mountains in 1904. From letters that were too fragile to handle, Ms. Dodson's mother transcribed them for her daughter. The resulting self-published book mixes her great-grandfather's heartfelt, old-fashioned letters with a somewhat fictionalized story line. The plot is no more complicated than a paperback romance novel - boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back - but the letters are the real prize. In a syntax long out of use, Patton's words are romantically overwrought by today's standards. But in the context of the time, they're charming. Such as this plea: "Say dear, how many moons must rise and set ere I can claim you as my own and my arms may entwine that supple waist, my eyes look squarely into yours and a love be exchanged between us that will remain unsevered through all eternity . . ." A 25-year-old Patton wrote this from his home in Whitesburg, Ky., to Dora, six years his junior, in Poor Fork, Ky. After reading the letters, Ms. Dodson knew a story lay in their words. The problem was, she knew so little about her great-grandparents. From her own visits as a youth, Ms. Dodson recalled an independent, gray-haired woman who spoke little and made brown-sugar candy. Her diminutive frame hardly looked strong enough to hold the cast-iron skillet slightly off the heat while she stirred the concoction. Her heart-shaped face was still evident, but her doe eyes were covered with thick-framed glasses. This image of her great-grandmother gave precious little insight into the coming-of-age woman captured in her 1905 wedding photograph, where the bride and groom stand shoulder to shoulder: she in her high-collar blouse and he with his Clark Gable ears poking out. Her great-grandfather was even more of a mystery. Because he died from a heart attack in his 40s, she couldn't find a living family member who remembered him. Patton had no more form than his flat images on the black-and-white stills. Ms. Dodson's journey to piece together her family story had begun long before learning of the letters. Every day, she'd spend her lunch hour in the genealogy department in the downtown Dallas Public Library, where she worked in the late '80s. Here, she'd search census and cemetery records to trace her family tree and to find the Kentucky cousins, whom she

A charming and wonderful love story.

I enjoyed the book very much. The actual love letters from Patton to Dora are charming, and it's a beautiful story of hope and growth for the two main characters. Miss Cornett's Courtship is like a sweeter and better version of the Bridges of Maddison County.