Passages

The chance meeting in London of John Evans, a Welshman from the backcountry of Southwest Wales, and young vivacious Mabel Harvey from a congenial land-owning farming family in Southeast Essex, England, sparked a romance that overcame their very different backgrounds and inspired them to immigrate to the United States to begin a new life together. On the eve of the Great War, John and Mabel set down roots in upstate, New York, began a family, became swept up in the flamboyant consumerism of the 1920s then were ravaged by many losses during the 1930s Great Depression. Experiencing personal and financial setbacks and another world war, the Evans sons in America struggled to redefine their paths forward into the second half of the twentieth century.
Drawing on abundant family letters, photos, and interviews, Passages tells the gripping story of an immigrant family whose lives were dramatically altered by tumultuous events in world history. Moving ahead required reinventing their goals and pursuing them with relentless resolve and resilience. In the twenty-first century, the author of Passages and other descendants of the Harvey and Evans families maintain meaningful contact across the Atlantic-a connection that began one hundred years ago.

Gail E. Evans is a historian, author, and former athlete. Influenced by her father's stories of traveling and living in Liverpool as a young man and throughout Europe as a naval architect, Gail became enamored with traveling to new places around the world. As a young woman, she lived in Japan, traveled across the former Soviet Union, visited relatives in England and Wales, and later led tours to the United Kingdom. Gail has worked professionally in the field of heritage conservation (historic preservation) and researched and written histories on places in the U.S. and Canada for the US Park Service and Parks Canada. Gail received a B.S. in historical geography from the University of Oregon and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Oregon, Santa Barbara.