A/N Okay, so I had this story posted awhile back, but gave up on it because I lost interest, partly because hardly anyone was reading it. Recently a reviewer asked me if I was going to continue. I've still occasionally thought about this story, so I decided to keep going. But before I could do that, I needed to go back and fix the chapters. I started this over a year ago and my writing has improved greatly since then. This is a re-write of The Next Generation. The plot is the same, but I've changed a few names and have been adding more description.
This first chapters contains information about what the Blythe family is like after the Great War, as well as all of the marriages that occurred and grandchildren who were born. The next nine chapters are mostly written, as they are what I had finished earlier, but I'm going to be editing them and I would like to get a few chapters ahead before I start posting. Hopefully I'll have the next chapter up within a week as I'm nearly done editing it.
I hope you enjoy.
It had been over twenty years since the Great War ended by August of 1939 and the Treaty of Versailles had been signed a few weeks previously. After their children married, the Blythe and Meredith families were happily related in several ways, which resulted in many sets of double cousins.
After the war and finishing medical school, Jem Blythe married Faith Meredith. They had fraternal twin sons, Gilbert and John. Gilbert had his father's ruddy curls and John had sleek, black hair. Their youngest was their daughter, Meradith, who also had red hair, which she kept rather short. She looked almost exactly like her Grandmother Blythe, except for the fact that her eyes were brown. The boys were nearly sixteen and quite tall for their age. Currently, the twins were about to start their first year at Queens. Meredith, on the other hand was petite. Meradith was fourteen, but was constantly mistaken for twelve and sometimes even ten. She didn't like that, and always loved to correct people about her age. Jem had begun to take over his father's practice in Glen St. Mary after graduating and the two often helped each other. In recent years it had been fully Jem as his father was retired. Faith too was involved in the medical field, though she had never gotten a degree. She used her experience as a Red Cross Nurse to her advantage and could often help with various emergencies when Jem couldn't get there right away.
Jerry Meredith and Nan Blythe had also gotten married and the two of them lived in Lowbridge, where Jerry was the Presbyterian minister. They had triplets, Walter, Joy Anne, and Cecilia. Walter looked exactly like his namesake, complete with the sleek hair. Joy Anne had inherited her maternal grandmother's grey-green eyes, while having her mother's brown hair. Cecilia on the other hand had vivid blue eyes with brown hair as well. The girls both had torso length hair for they both loved it long. As the two girls looked almost exactly alike apart from their eye color, they could easily be mistaken for each other, until someone figured out who's eyes were who's. The triplets had recently celebrated their seventeenth birthday and were already counting down the days until they turned eighteen. The triplets had all graduated from Queens, and though Walter wanted to go to Redmond after taking a years break, neither of the girls were interested in continuing their education. Jerry had mostly recovered from his injury, though on occasion, it would bother him and he couldn't go for long periods without some type of back support. Despite being involved in the Red Cross as well, Nan had no plans on using it as Faith had. She had always wanted to be a stay-at-home mother and she had gotten her wish. Now that her children were grown, Nan had taken to spending her time sewing and working on various other projects with her quilting club. There was some talk of eventually moving back to Glen St. Mary when John Meredith retired from being Minister, but most likely that wouldn't happen for a few more years.
Di Blythe had married Jack Wright. They had one son, Fredrick, and they usually called him Freddie as there already were two Freds in the Wright family, and that was confusing enough. Freddie was getting very close to his eighteenth birthday, and was very excited. He couldn't wait until he became an adult. Fred was just about to begin his first year at Redmond. There were two little girls as well. Rachael was eight and Anna was five. There had been another boy between Freddie and the girls, but he had been born too early and had not been able to survive. Freddie had black hair and dark brown eyes and was quite tall for his age, while his sisters both had their mother's hair red. Rachael had her grandmother's eyes as well. Her grandfather said she looked like her grandmother as a child. Anna's hair was more of a strawberry-blond color and her eyes were grey-green. Jack had survived the war, but he had a few problems. Namely, his lungs were on the weak side because of a close brush with German gas. So far the only issue had been shortness of breath, but he just had to be careful. Di was very busy being a mother as she had the youngest children in the Blythe family and they took a lot of time. When she was free, she enjoyed spending time with the other members of her family or simply taking a walk.
Shirley Blythe had ended marring Una Meredith. Una still loved Walter, but knew that he wasn't coming back. She had learned to love Shirley, not in the same way, but still enough to accept his proposal. The two of them had three children. Bertha was the oldest and she was fifteen. She had straight, dark brown hair and piercing blue eyes. James was next at thirteen and Matthew was the youngest. He was twelve. James had reddish hair and Matthew's hair was brown. Both of them had hazel eyes. Shirley had come back from the war with more seriousness about him. He understood how precious life was and knew that one should live every day as if it were the last. Una was even quieter than what she had been like before the war. She had taken her course in Household Science and was very practical in how she had raised her three children.
Rilla Blythe had married her Kenneth Ford and they had one son, Kenneth who in order to avoid confusion went by Kenny. Kenny was seventeen and had curly brown hair with brown eyes. They also had adopted a home child, Marjorie, who was ten. They had adopted her when she was five, and people who didn't know them often thought that Marjorie was Rilla's daughter. She suspected this was because both of them had red hair, though Marjorie's eyes were black. Rilla never had gone off to college, rather, she and Ken had gotten married a year after the war had ended. During the war she had learned how to keep house and she kept those skills. Ken had gotten a job at the newspaper office and thoroughly enjoyed it.
Carl Meredith had married Persis Ford and they had one son, Owen age sixteen, and one daughter Rose age twelve. Owen had blond hair and blue eyes and was on the taller side. His younger sister, Rose, had brown hair with a bit of a wave, but her eyes too were blue. Carl had handled his injury quite well and was immensely thankful that he had only lost his sight in one eye. It brought a few issues, such as not being able to tell depth very well, which meant he couldn't get a license, but that was the only main issue. Persis had a very charming personality and loved a laugh. She was an adventures sort and never was bothered about the bugs that Carl was always studying. Bugs didn't bother Owen, but he didn't have a passion for them either. Rose on the other hand refused to enter a room if a bug was in it.
Mary Vance and Miller Douglas had one son Luke and twin daughters, Cornelia and Leslie. Luke was nineteen with straight black hair and dark brown eyes, and very proud of being the oldest of the next generation of Rainbow Valley and the twins had just had their fifteenth birthday. The twins were identical, which was surprising for the Blythe family as all of the other sets of twins they knew were fraternal. They had straight, dark, brown hair and dark blue eyes. The war had made Mary grow up. She was a very motherly person and was sad that her two daughters were headed off to Queens in just a few days. Miller had to learn how to be an indoor person, which had been difficult for him. He still managed to take a walk most days, but he wasn't able to walk as quickly or for as long as he was able to prior to his injury. He eventually learned that and now enjoyed working in the store. Though he would never admit it, he loved the gossip that circled around and almost always found its way to the store. He had learned many interesting things about others in his town, some of them he wasn't certain if he wanted to know, but others were quite helpful.
Gilbert and Anne were very proud of their seven grandsons and seven granddaughters. They also considered Carl's children and Mary's children to be among their grandchildren, so they technically had nineteen grandchildren. Life was always a bit noisy at Ingleside, but it also was great fun. Anne was thankful that all of the children lived close by. The furthest was Nan, she just lived in Lowbridge, so they often got together for Sunday dinner. The children though were constantly trekking the six miles between the two towns, so the cousins saw each other practically every other day or at least the older ones did. On occasion Marjorie and Rachael would go to Lowbridge with some of the older cousins.
Gilbert had slowly retired over the past few years. He was in his mid-seventies and wanted to spend his time with family. Anne too knew that she was getting older, though you would never hear her admit it from her mouth. The couple were still residing at Ingleside, though Shirley and Una with their family had recently moved in with them to help care for them and for the house. Not that they needed much help yet, but it would be nice when that time came.
The family enjoyed being with each other and various other families in the Glen. None of them had fully recovered from the hardships of the Great War, but they all had found a new normal. No one was quite the same, but all of them had changed for the better in the four years of hardship. Thankfully, the past twenty years had been fairly peaceful and no one ever thought that something as terrible as the Great War would happen again.