Songs from Fern’s Pond
Reviewed By Janet Mawdesley April 22, 2025
Author Sheryl Pothier Harmer
Distributor: Amazon
ISBN: 9781959411154
Publisher: Girl Friday Publications
Release Date: April 2025
FaceBook:
YouTube:
Instagram:
X formally Twitter:
Composing a Life with Courage, Gratitude, and Joy
In the Prologue to Songs from Fern’s Pond, Sheryl Pothier Harmer opens a sensitive and celebratory tribute with the beautiful sentence, ‘Her name was Fern and she was my mother.’ She was a remarkable woman.
Fern was born in 1913 to a family who were like many at the time, just scraping by, she putting herself through nursing school, married and raised four children.
After thirty-three years of happy married life, her husband Oscar passed away, leaving her bereft, but also realising she now had time to begin again for the final chapters of her life.
She sold the family home and bought a piece land where she established the home of her dreams and began a new life in a new community, one where she grew her own vegetables, raised chickens, developed her passion for art and weaving, wrote avidly to family and friends of her life and the many fascinating and challenging things of her daily existence.
Songs from Ferns Pond is a collection of poetry written by Sheryl often in reply to a letter from her mother or simply as a means of expressing the deep love she had for a remarkable and forthright woman; her mother.
As the many stories unfold telling a story of renewal and rebirth, the simple joy in spending time at the edge of the pond with the ducks, the challenge of creating the stained glasswork for a new door and the love of community that developed over the 14 years she lived on the banks of the Snake River
The final chapter of her rich and well lived life is played out in a somewhat prosaic manner in the final letters written to family, followed by the tragedy of a devastating fire, with December finally seeing new life retuning to Fern’s Pond; ducks returning, and the hope that the seeds falling into the almost frozen earth will once again blossom in the Spring weather.
Songs from Fern’s Pond is a most eloquent tribute from a daughter to her beloved mother and is an absolute joy to read.