“History Reveals Itself Through Everyday Artifacts and Relics, Many Found In The Public Domain.”

“In my debut novel, I have uncovered a wealth of information about daily life of everyday citizens in 1920s Santa Barbara County, California.

Historical transparency and truth are accessible as never before, preserved in the public domain.”

Cathy Berry is a writer who has always carried a torch for Southern California, its variety and history, and especially the many characters so at home there. A lifelong resident of Santa Barbara County, Cathy’s imagination was fired from an early age by the stories told by family, friends, and often, strangers just met. Over a lifetime, like a whirlwind picking up speed and bits of lives along with it, each new revelation inspired and spurred her forward to the next.

As an inveterate researcher, one who is very focused on a specific decade in a specific location, Cathy takes a fresh look at history through items found in everyday life in Santa Barbara County, California, in the 1920s.

Naturally, as with any life, there are connections with the larger world as well as hidden worlds. Historical connections reveal themselves in hindsight, from a distance, in looking back.

Until recently, history has been interpreted and presented through formal academic channels. But now, thanks to technology, historical resources are available to anyone with an internet connection, offering a fresh view, a lens to daily life in the past. History becomes more personal and meaningful. The past echoes and reverberates and teaches us in the present.

The Debut Novel

Reckoned by the Light of Stars

Reckoned by the Light of Stars is a historical tale with themes that echo in our own time, as well. Then, as now, escalating financial disparity plagued much of our nation and the world; environmental damage depleted resources; drug abuse and alcoholism ravaged; traditions were trashed; sex enjoyed a licentious revolution.

Reckoned by the Light of Stars is Cathy Berry’s debut novel. As a native Californian and lifelong resident of Santa Barbara County, she met a fair share of local characters whose lives rival any fiction.

On learning more about the extraordinary true history of the area, readers are introduced to the multi-cultural communities of families who fished and farmed, built homes, highways, railroads, faced racism, lack of opportunity, and yet, despite natural and societal constraints, their spirits were and are luminous. They glow even now, in the modern day, through their stories, their artifacts—talisman—and their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren who live here still.

This website is a repository that includes historical information, links to online resources, news about her novel, Reckoned by the Light of Stars, and original photographs. Cathy continues to uncover the past and is working on the second novel in the series.

Resources

Freely available online historical resources and artifacts, such as newspaper articles, photos, cookbooks, trade journals and other items culled from daily life, mostly focused on the 1920s. Some of these are transcendent and beautiful, humorous, instructive, revealing. Others are vitriolic, violent, devastating.

By entering that not-so-long-ago time, one can find a dazzling, complex humanity reflective of the current day.

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Blog info

In 2008, Cathy began taking photographs and created her blog, Cartas…Letters from Home. She wrote posts that mostly focused on Santa Barbara County, past and present. Eventually, passions converged and Cathy began writing a historical mystery set in Santa Barbara County, California.

These posts each features a bit of historical information, usually a photo, and always a link to the freely-available online source material.

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Contact Cathy

Visit the Contact page with your comments or questions.

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“In life, as in writing, I do my best to measure my own self and life according to truth. Not truth that changes with the telling, or that can be influenced, or omits the hardest parts.

The people whose stories I cherish most have helped me find a place within, where even darkness will be transformed into a tool so fine, so rare, able to hone with such exquisite precision, that I am transformed into an altogether new creation.”

Cathy Berry