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Archive | Books and Posts from Denis Ledoux

In this category (Books and Posts from Denis Ledoux), I share excerpts from books—published and unpublished—I have written over the many years I have immersed myself in memoir writing.

There continues, after all these years, to be something about the genre that I find creative and satisfying—whether I am writing my own books or ghostwriting for others. (I have several dozens of these co-authored tomes on my shelves by now! It goes to show that, if you show up every day for 30 years to write, before you know it, you have a long list of titles!)

The books and posts from Denis Ledoux

The many stories in this category fall into several subsections and are drawn from the following books:

  • Here to Stay [an unpublished history of my seventeenth-century Canadian ancestors],
  • We Were Not Spoiled [co-written with my mother whose story it is]. The book covers the early life (to age 30) of a representative Franco-Mainer in the middle of the last century. People have said, “You have written the story of my mother!”
  • In Another Century [my as-yet unpublished account of seminary high-school experience]. My education and life during these years in the seminary resemble the nineteenth century more than they did the twentieth century in which I was living,
  • Marie Bilodeau [these are family stories that are composed from my memory of my grandmother and from some research], and
  • My Eye Fell Into the Soup [drawn from both a journal of Martha Blowen, my dear companion in life and in work, before she succumbed to cancer and from my concurrent journals].

In conclusion

I hope you enjoy these stories under the title of Books and Posts from Denis Ledoux. They are dear to me, and I hope they will prove interesting to you also.

Lewiston, Maine, 1960

Preparing to Leave Home

In the summer of 1960 when I was thirteen, my mother drove me into Lewiston to Vincent & Leblanc’s on Lisbon Street at Ash Street. There, in a shopping spree that was unprecedented, she bought me more new clothes than I’d ever had at any one time.

Memoir telling stories

A “Fille du Roi” Enters into a Marriage Contract

It is unlikely that either Barthélémy Verreault or Marthe Quittel, my maternal ancestors, came to their marriage with an expectation of romance. Marriage was a state of life, a way of surviving, of producing children who could take care of you in your old age. So much the better if the proposed partner was attractive […]

Life During The War

Life during the war went on as usual, in some ways. I enjoyed working at Benoit’s Clothing Store. I liked dressing up to go to work. We were always meeting …

Starting Out On My Life

I was too young to marry, and my parents could not afford to have me stay at home. My mother took care of most of the housework, and my parents needed my salary more than they needed me to help her full-time at housekeeping. My mother had never worked outside the home except for a […]

Perreault Girls

Visiting My Parents’ Home Town, Thetford

It was my first time visiting Thetford since I was three. I did not remember anything from the first trip except being so pleased to sleep at my Lessard grandparents’ house. In my growing up, I had not had the luxury of staying over at a grandparents’ place as many other kids in Lewiston had.

point of view in a memoir

Life In The Good Years

The following is an excerpt from We Were not Spoiled by Lucille Ledoux as told to Denis Ledoux. Our house at 428 Webster Street that we moved to in the fall of 1949 was a cozy little house, and it fit our family well.