It wasn't until her two children had grown up that Margaret Morrison Roeth found enough spare time to craft the kind of beautifully illustrated tale that once would have fully captured Charles and Helen Betsy's young imaginations.
Taking her paintbrush and pen to paper in 1948, the lifelong artist spun up endearingly quaint stories and illustrations for her original children's book, Mister Deedle's Tree House. The 50-page tome's central characters, Peter and Peggy, and their imaginative playtime escapades were inspired by Charles and Helen Betsy's own youth in 1930s Southern California.
Morrison Roeth never got to see her book reach readers' hands, however, as it was rejected multiple times for publication when she pitched it in the early 1950s. Her beautifully hand-drawn illustrations — full-page scenes in an opaque watercolor palette of tomato red, orange, peach, black and shades of gray, plus scroll-like designs to frame and accent each page — were tucked away and largely forgotten for the next 75 years.
That all changed last year, as Morrison Roeth's 93-year-old son, Charles "Chuck" Roeth, and his family who live in North Idaho, managed to get the book into the hands of Texas publisher Carrie Pierce, co-director of Morgan Pierce Media & Publishing.
"I couldn't believe what I was looking at," Pierce says of Margaret's artwork. "There's so much heart in them, and the stories are so precious. It's like a little time capsule to a kinder, gentler time, I think."
Mister Deedle's Tree House is available to order online and through local independent bookstores like Auntie's Bookstore in Spokane, the Well-Read Moose in Coeur d'Alene and others.
