First novel tells of three generations touched by curse
Artress Cornmesser, a retired nurse living in San Juan Bautista,
can relate well to the trials of Addie Haywood, the main character
in
”
Unto the 3rd and 4th Generation.
”
First novel tells of three generations touched by curse
Artress Cornmesser, a retired nurse living in San Juan Bautista, can relate well to the trials of Addie Haywood, the main character in “Unto the 3rd and 4th Generation.”
Like the character in the book, Cornmesser grew up with a dozen siblings in a strict middle-class African-American family during the 1950s. And like the character, the author drew the disappointment of her parents when she became pregnant as a teenager.
While there are some similarities between the book and Cornmesser’s own life, the more sordid details of the book are all fiction, she said.
Addie’s story tells the tale of the young girl after she has grown up, trying to raise an unruly grandson and burdened with a curse spouted off by her mother during her pregnancy:
“God said to honor thy father and thy mother, that your days will be long upon the land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee. And if you don’t, Addie, your sins will be visited upon your children, even unto the third and fourth generation. This is what God said and God don’t lie because He cannot lie.”
Like her main character, Cornmesser had to deal with her own mother’s anger at her disobedience.
“You have to know my mother,” said the 68-year-old author. “When I went into labor, she did not come. It was a profound thing because she’d been there for everything.”
Cornmesser took a vow when her mother refused to come to the hospital as her son was born.
“I was the only one that messed up,” she said of her straight-laced siblings. “Afterwards, at the time, I felt guilty and thought ‘I’ll show her.'”
Instead of feeling that her life was over as a teenage mother in 1950s Southern California, Cornmesser stayed true to her vow to amount to more.
While raising her son as a single mother, she earned her GED. Cornmesser eventually met and married a military man. The small family moved to Pacific Grove when he was stationed at Fort Ord, just north of Monterey.
“It was a small house by the ocean,” she said of the first home the family owned.
As the family settled in Pacific Grove, Cornmesser enrolled in nursing school at Hartnell Community College in Salinas. The family moved to a house in the San Juan hills in the ’70s, where Cornmesser raised her son and daughter.
While writing had always been a part of her life growing up – she and her siblings spent much of their time reading and writing since their parents said no to a television in the home – nursing remained her first love.
“I have so much sympathy,” Cornmesser said. “I worked in intensive care. The older and sicker, the better I liked them.”
As a nurse for 32 years, she enjoyed her interaction with her patients and being able to help them through their illnesses.
The budding author came back to writing when she suffered through her own illness. Doctors diagnosed her with spinal arthritis, a condition that made the bones in her neck close up, causing problems with breathing and oxygen circulation. She ended her career as a nurse in 1996, when her arthritis made it impossible for her to work.
“I had to have a lot of surgeries,” Cornmesser said. “I was in a harness or a brace and I couldn’t do anything except write.”
She slowly improved. Though doctors gave her only a 50 percent chance of walking after her surgeries, she has been up and moving for years.
As her condition improved, she began writing her novel in spurts, drawing from some of her own life experiences. Like the grandparents in the book, Cornmesser and her husband raised their own grandson for much of his life. As a teen, the boy became hard for his grandparents to handle, Cornmesser said, and he eventually went to live with his father at age 16.
“It was so hard. Maybe because I was old,” Cornmesser said. “Times had changed. When our kids were teenagers, they did what they were told.”
Now the couple gets along well with their oldest grandchild and they spend plenty of time with their daughter’s two children. Cornmesser continues to write and has plans for a book of short stories.
“It’s something that’s in me. I have to do it,” she said. “These are stories I don’t think should die – things my mom passed on. Who else will tell them if I don’t?”
“Unto the 3rd and 4th Generation” by Artress Cornmesser is available for purchase at www.amazon.com and www.bbotw.com.
