#also the inn aspect of the story was inspired by shearer cottage

[medievalcat]

American Girl Historical OCs: Estelle Woodward, 1918

Estelle Woodward loves life in her hometown of Oaks Bluff, Martha’s Vineyard, where she can hear and smell the ocean from her family’s cottage. She can spend hours on the beach with her best friend Pearl Powell, the daughter of the reverend at the church she goes to, or even by herself, where she enjoys collecting shells, reading her favorite fairy tale books, drawing and painting her surroundings, and even swimming if it isn’t too cold. Estelle is shy and reserved, having never left the Vineyard, but loves to hear about the world outside the island from the many summer tourists who come to stay at her family’s inn, a place renowned among the local and broader African-American community. Secretly, she hopes that one day she can paint something beautiful and special, something that will make other people see what she sees, that will be displayed in one of the great museums on the mainland she’s heard about. But in 1918, things are different from what Estelle is used to. Even on Sundays, the church sermons that Estelle once found to be uplifting feel sad when she prays every week for her eighteen year old brother Eugene’s safe return from the Western Front of the Great War, only to hear frightening news in the papers every day that Estelle can’t tear herself away from even when she wants to. Pearl tells Estelle that she believes women’s suffrage is imminent, which means that someday they can have more of a say in what goes on in the world, but Estelle feels that even if that’s true, it’s too far ahead in the future to make her feel better. When the war ends and Eugene returns home in physical health but mental turmoil, unable to sleep at night and haunted by the horrors he witnessed, Estelle is confused and upset, losing interest in many of her favorite pastimes, even when her parents and Pearl try to help lift her spirits. But when Eugene, not having lost faith in Estelle’s gifts, encourages her to start painting again and Estelle agrees only if he does it with her, she realizes that in bonding through art, she and her family can begin to heal together.