About Annalece

An Idyllic Childhood

I was raised in Northeastern Utah—not far from Skinwalker Ranch, if you’re familiar with the History Channel Series The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch.

It’s a place well-known for its mythology and mysteries and paranormal activity, perhaps explaining my obsession with all things curious.

However, my most vivid memory is the amount of free time I enjoyed, since I grew up pre iPhones and internet.

I loved the never-ending time available for entertaining my thoughts and imagination.

And as a result, I always had something going on.

Constantly creating games of make-believe I recruited my younger brothers, as well as the other neighborhood children, to take part.

A PAssion for ANCESTRY

I feel very fortunate my family history is well-documented. I know my ancestor’s names, their stories, and often their faces for many generations, several lines stretching back quite far.

And although a sixth-generation resident of the Western United States, like many Americans, and in particular those of us from the West, my roots originate elsewhere.

Overall my family hails from the British Isles, primarily England. There is some Welsh, Scottish, and Scots-Irish in there too, as well as some Indigenous American, my Navajo third great-grandmother.

The bulk of my ancestors lived in New England before migrating West in the mid nineteenth-century.

In fact, today the little town they settled in southern Utah has the sixth highest percentage of people in American cities with English ancestry.

Still, in the late nineteenth-century many of my ancestors arrived in the West directly from the Old Country.

Hence, when my ancestors crossed the Atlantic en route to the New World I like to imagine their steamer trunks filled with not only their earthly possessions, but also stowaways-English Faeries, Scottish Selkies, or even Y Ddraig Goch-The Red Dragon of Wales.

A Return to MY roots

A few years back we exchanged our family cabin in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains for a New England farmhouse in the woods of New Hampshire.

Why, you ask? My daughter received scholarships and my son a fellowship for their respective bachelor’s and master’s programs and needed a place to live.

Rentals were scarce. So out of necessity we bought a rambling structure, which had been added to over the years. It was perfect.

Truth be told it was an excuse to own an antique home…one of my favorite things.

Little did I know I was about to come into direct contact with the past, and in such an intimate way.

THE OLDE ROCKINGHAM MEETING HOUSE, CIRCA 1787

I’ll never forget my first visit to the Rockingham Meeting House. It was mid-May, and the trees lining the drive were shrouded with pale spring blossoms that mirrored the bone-white of the ancient structure.

My son, a GIS specialist, had been hired to map the Meeting House’s burial grounds as part of his fellowship duties.

Unbeknownst to both him and I at the time our ancestor, David Pulsipher, my sixth-great grandfather, had donated a portion of his five-hundred acres for “a meeting house and burying ground.”

One of the first settlers in Rockingham, Vermont, David Pulsipher arrived from Connecticut. He “came to a new state called Vermont, went up the Connecticut River…went five miles back to a place afterwards called Rockingham, an entire wilderness country.”

In this remote territory he cleared the land and built the first tavern, a lofty edifice with a massive center chimney. Today a private residence, David’s tavern rests a short meander down the wooded hill from the Meeting House.

And although David predicted a great meeting house, or prophesied as per written in my ancestor’s journal, he unfortunately never saw its completion.

My ancestor writes that one day while David’s son was away from home he “heard that the British Army had destroyed some Military stores at Concord, New Hampshire, and being fired with indignation he sought for a recruiting officer and enlisted for one campaign. When he returned home and informed his father of the circumstances, the old gentleman told him that he was too young and that he would enlist and go with him.”

Father and son fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Father and son died at the Battle of Bunker Hill. And David’s other son and grandson assisted with the Meeting House’s construction.

One night my son called and asked “Hey mom, are we related to any Pulsiphers?” after he learned one line of the Pulsipher family had migrated to Utah.

The name was familiar. I’d seen it plenty of times…Pulsipher…in the family history book gifted by my grandmother many birthdays ago…Pulsipher…scribbled on the lines of family trees and sketched in ancestry documents.

And so I made another pilgrimage to the Meeting House, this time the trees leafed out in the dark green of summer, the building open for touring.

I brushed off the dust and settled into the box pew owned by the Pulsipher family.

Under the window and veiled with ghostly threads was a plaque with a portrait, and I met the somber eyes of the gentleman in the painting.

It was the same portrait that hung on the wall in my grandparents home, the same unyielding gaze, the same thin pressed lips.

It was the portrait of David Pulsipher’s great-grandson Zerah; the one who had migrated West.

Zerah Pulsipher

As I turned from the portrait I thought about the quiet currents directing our lives, those silent streams that ultimately guide us to where we need to be. I thought about the way buildings are often a conduit for such happenings. And while sitting there, I felt the whisper of the centuries flowing through me.

Not long after my visit I began studying in-depth the lives and stories of my New England ancestors. And since I was staying with my children for the summer thanks to my very patient husband I visited all the historical sites related to what I found.

Soon enough the fiery foliage of a famed New England autumn smothered the countryside, and I retreated to the parched New Mexico desert, a return to my quiet, empty nest home.

And I commenced working on a story…

I FELL IN LOVE

I loved the entire process of writing a novel, the taking thousands of fragmented ideas and piecing these ideas together, working with my imagination while simultaneously drawing upon my education.

I loved plotting, where anything felt possible, as I immersed myself in research.

I loved the moment my characters and settings began breathing.

I loved the countless edits.

And quickly I discovered that when I was not writing I no longer knew what to do with myself.

I yearned for the moment I could return to my desk and escape into the world of my story.

I FOUND MY PATH

Another of my circuses. This time, I’ve included the neighborhood children. It looks like a nail-biting game of button, button, who’s got the button, with all eyes on my late brother, Bryson, wondering if he is the lucky receiver. But, knowing me, I probably spun a variation on the classic. On the house, you’ll notice the faint shadow of our backyard weeping willow. So many hours I spent reading away a lazy summer afternoon under the shade of that tree, watching the long, slender branches swaying in the warm, desert breeze. In the background, I love the relics present from another era: the silver trash cans, the yellow tractor sprinkler, and the red plastic tub, our recycling bin before curbside service was available.

I’ve included the neighborhood children here. It looks like a nail-biting game of “Button, Button, Who’s Got The Button” with all eyes on my brother, Bryson, wondering if he is the lucky receiver.

But knowing me, I probably spun a variation on the classic.

On the house you’ll notice the faint shadow of our backyard weeping willow.

So many hours I spent reading away a lazy summer afternoon under the shade of that tree, watching the long, slender branches swaying in the warm, desert breeze.

In the background I love the relics present from another era: the silver trash cans, the yellow tractor sprinkler, and the red plastic tub, our recycling bin before curbside service was available.