From Fear to Freedom

On a cold Sunday night in late January, I received a call from an unidentified number.  

“Is this Lesa Cline-Ransome?” the voice on the other end asked.  

I was sitting in a parking lot—a very dark parking lot—waiting for a takeout order while calculating on my phone the measurements for wallpaper. Yes, wallpaper. I was three weeks into a kitchen and bathroom renovation, and well… wallpaper calculations can be tricky. So, as I added the wall dimensions again and again to determine how much would be needed for a tiny bathroom, I was also calculating the cost of wallpaper for a tiny bathroom. Why does the cost of wallpaper equal the cost of a monthly mortgage payment? I wondered.  

What I wasn’t doing was expecting a call. 

“This is Lesa,” I replied suspiciously.

“I am calling from the John Newbery Award committee to congratulate you on winning…” 

Math has never been my strong suit, but this definitely did not add up. 

“Is this real?” I asked the caller. The caller assured me that it was indeed real. I heard a group of people cheering in the background. 

“Congratulations!” they shouted.  

My breathing stopped. I began sweating. I felt dizzy. I know all of the things I should have said, was supposed to say, but instead I replied, “I think I might be having a stroke.” 

It was late. I was in a parking lot. This was not how a call telling me I’d won a big award was supposed to happen.  

What made this call so shocking was that earlier in the day I’d received another call. Well, it was actually several calls from the Coretta Scott King committee. Did I know that my phone settings were on Do Not Disturb?  Nope. And so as they repeatedly tried to reach me on my cell that was across the room, silenced, they received my voicemail instead. 

I finally noticed the missed calls and a text message that read “The Coretta Scott King Book Awards Jury has some exciting news to share with you. We will try to reach out again…”  

Instead of answering a call from the committee, I had to make a call to the committee to receive the news that my first novel in verse, One Big Open Sky had won a Coretta Scott King Author Honor. I believed then that the day could not get any better. Until it did. 

I have loved verse novels ever since reading Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse decades ago. The way the novel addressed themes of nature and survival, community and hardship and the enduring power of forgiveness in spare, free verse poetry changed the way I viewed poetry as a narrative form. Years later it was Sharon Creech’s Love that Dog that taught me how poetry can so perfectly capture the vulnerability and tenderness of young characters. And, of course, it was also a book about the love of a DOG. Any title that is centered on the best species on the planet is a win for me. If you don’t agree, go kick rocks.   

Alan Wolf took a slice from a tragic story in history and transformed it into moments of beauty and grace in his free verse novel The Snow Fell Three Graves Deep: Voices from the Donner Party. And in Jeannine Atkins’ Borrowed Names: Poems about Laura Ingalls Wilder, Madam C. J. Walker, Marie Curie and Their Daughters, I discovered the power and complexity of interwoven family stories.

With these verse novels and so many others under my literary belt, I began my journey into writing verse, diving deep into the history of Black Pioneers, Exodusters they were called, and the stories of women traveling overland in the 1870’s. 

Thousands of Black people emigrated West along the Santa Fe, California and Oregon trails with the hope of land ownership on the tribal lands stolen from Native Americans. The Homestead Act of 1862 offered 160 acres of this “free” land for any citizen willing to cultivate, plant and build a structure within five years.  

All black people have ever known was hard work, and this land represented the chance to escape the sharecropping system, build a better life for their families and create a safe community thousands of miles from the Jim Crow South. From fear to freedom they made their way West, battling discrimination, nature, and limited supplies. But it was the stories of the women, powerless in the decision to stay or leave, whose voices came to me in verse. Their stories were ones of remembrance, longing for the past, fear, and perseverance. Many were pregnant along the journey, many lost young children to accidents, husbands, fathers and brothers to shooting accidents and drowning, and so they only had each other to rely upon. Sisterhood is what saw them through.  

…I asked Lettie to take the boys
berry hunting
Wasn’t so much needing berries
as much as I was needing 
time with Dottie and Clara
to make some part of me
whole again
Every day we travel
the hurt of leaving Olivia
and my brothers
felt like leaving pieces of me
along the trail
I worry by the time we reach Nebraska
There won’t be much left
Sylvia, Missouri
June 1879
(Excerpt from One Big Open Sky)

Poetry provides an access point in revealing both the hard truths of this country and how we emerged with our hearts and souls intact.  

In One Big Open Sky, 11-year-old Lettie is the peacekeeper who is straddling the expanse between the sadness of her mother Sylvia and the dreams of her father Thomas.   

Throughout the writing of this novel, I often felt much like the pioneers had, lost and fatigued, unsure if I should keep going or turn back. I questioned nearly every writing decision I made, every line break. I wondered daily, “Can I do this?”    

I imagined those brave women pioneers and my characters Lettie, Sylvia, and Philomena, unsure of the road ahead.

The wonderful calls I received at the end of January felt like a guidepost, telling me to keep going. Keep trying new ways of storytelling.  

Since that cold day in January, I have replayed those awards calls numerous times. Sometimes I still wonder if they happened at all. It is hard to believe that a story, my story, about Black pioneers was recognized in this way. Especially with all of my fears and doubts and all of the incredible books that came into the world in 2024. 

But in June, I will head to the American Library Association conference in Philadelphia, and if this all isn’t a horrible practical joke, I will return back home to a renovated kitchen, a gorgeously wallpapered bathroom, and two very real awards telling the story of two difficult journeys. 

In community,

Lesa