Woman’s story a tribute to mother’s courage

 

By ELIZABETH HARMON
The Independent

 

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Although her mother passed away in 1965, Erane Elizabeth Scully has a Mother’s Day gift that’s been a lifetime in the making.
Scully, an 83-year-old Woodstock resident, recently published “The Carrion Vine,” a book that tells the true story of the two years she and her mother, Vita, spent in a World War II Siberian prison camp.
She wrote the book using diaries kept by her mother during their incarceration.
“My mother always told me this (story) couldn’t be swept under the carpet. She wrote down everything and kept the diaries in the lining of her suitcase,” said Scully.
She begins “The Carrion Vine” with a dedication to Vita that reads, “So Mother, as promised, here it is.”
Scully opted to publish the book herself in 2007 at the encouragement of friends in a McHenry County College writers’ group, after a publisher who had accepted the manuscript insisted she rewrite it as a first-person memoir.
“I told them I couldn’t do that. It was too hard, too personal,” Scully told a Woodstock book group, the Happy Bookers. “Then they said I could leave it in the third-person, but call it fiction! After that, I decided to do it myself.”
She printed 500 copies of the book and has already sold 217 at $15 each. She is promoting the book through friends by speaking to groups such as the Happy Bookers, which chose “The Carrion Vine” as a monthly selection.
“It’s such a compelling story,” said Happy Bookers member Ginger Johnson.
The story begins in the spring of 1939 when Erane, then known as “Ellie,” was a tomboyish 14-year-old who was begging permission from her mother and father, Paul Kew, a Swiss diplomat, to spend the summer in Poland at a relative’s horse farm. Although Hitler had already taken over Austria and Czechoslovakia, the Kews, like many in diplomatic circles, did not see him as a major threat and decided to allow Ellie to make the trip. Nevertheless, Vita went along as a precaution.
After an idyllic summer, the pair decided to return home to Switzerland as rumors of a German invasion began to circulate near the end of August. On Aug. 31, Vita and Ellie caught a train to Warsaw to make a connection to Bern, Switzerland, the following morning.
At 4:15 a.m. Sept. 1, Germany invaded Poland and the war began.
Trapped in Poland with no way to contact Paul in Switzerland, Vita and Ellie dodged air raids and joined thousands of refugees fleeing the cities. After several weeks on the road, they were arrested by Soviet forces battling the Germans for control of Poland and were sent by train to a prison camp in Siberia, where they spent the next two years.
Scully explained that the book’s title, “The Carrion Vine,” is a metaphor for communism.
“It’s a destructive plant that grows and creeps over everything. The flowers are beautiful but putrid-smelling and the berries are poisonous. It’s like communism, which looked good at first sight but corrupted everything that got near it,” she said.
Writing the book took an emotional toll on Scully, and she set aside the project several times over the years. She wrestled with guilt over her insistence on going to Poland as a child.
For information or to purchase a copy of “The Carrion Vine,” write to Green Acres Publishers, P.O. Box 1052, Woodstock, IL 60098 or call (815) 338-0211.

 

This article was published in the May 7, 2008 edition of The Woodstock Independent.