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 On a crisp morning in September, Thea Marshall sits on her screened porch overlooking Taylor’s Creek. The view is simple, but luminous: rays of sunlight making diamonds in the water, a tiny white sailboat bobbing in the distance. There are no other houses for miles. "What could be more delicious than this?" Marshall laughs, and I’m not sure I know a good answer. After all, it is this very view—so characteristic of the wild seclusion and beauty of the river country—that inspired Marshall, a long-time local NPR commentator, to publish her recent book, Neck Tales: Stories from Virginia's Northern Neck
The book, a collection of commentaries about everything from sixth-generation farmers to the little-known adventures of early American heroes, captures the unique culture of the Northern Neck in a way nothing else in print has yet attempted to do. Around here, Marshall is best known as a commentator for WCVE, broadcast in Richmond and Heathsville, and her original radio commentaries about the Northern Neck served as the basis for the material that eventually became Neck Tales. But like the blue waterways that snake across the Northern Neck, Marshall’s vignettes have a long, winding history.
"The reason I loved radio was because I could be anything I wanted to be: short, fat, tall, thin, ugly, beautiful," says Marshall, who began her career doing voiceover commercials in New York City and St. Louis. "I could change my voice and sound like everything from a child to a computer. It was—it still is—great fun." But despite her big-city background and her tremendous theatrical talents, Marshall assures me that her love affair with the Northern Neck was quite a classic one, if a little unexpected.
"My husband and I were living in Northern Virginia, and we had always wanted to live on the water. So we started searching for places nearby. We made a circle on the map of the Northern Neck." Marshall had never heard of the place, but after exploring a bit of the river country in a rigorous search for their dream home—first Colonial Beach, then Lancaster County—Marshall found herself falling in love with the region’s unassuming beauty and surprising diversity. She learned all she could about the Northern Neck, occasionally writing stories about her findings. "The more I live here, the more I discover something new—either someone tells me about something, or I’ll stumble across something in my research. And the people are endlessly interesting. I don’t just mean the people who made history or created this country; everyone who comes here is so interesting, and for really disparate reasons. It’s a place to reinvent yourself!"
Reinvent oneself, indeed. When WCVE, a Community Ideas Station serving Richmond, began building a radio tower in Heathsville, Marshall was thrilled. She saw an opportunity to put her talents to work and bring a hidden Virginian gem to the attention of the wider world. "I thought, Wow. It would be really great to tell my stories about the Northern Neck and see if they want them. And they did!" One proposal and a couple of samples on audio cassette later, she had begun broadcasting for the radio station—even before the tower was completed in the spring of 2006.
It wasn’t until a few years later, however, that Marshall realized an acute desire to "capture" in book form the stories she had worked so hard to research and compose. "It was like they were going out into the ether. WCVE and their affiliate stations have archived all my stories, so you can go on the Internet and hear them. But the idea of being archived is kind of spooky," she laughs. "I thought I’d much rather have my stories in print." Marshall partnered with Brandylane Publishers in Richmond to produce Neck Tales, the result of years of fine work as a writer, broadcaster, and "come-here" Northern Necker. The book is available for purchase on Brandylane’s web site, as well as through regional booksellers.
In spite of her success, Marshall remains charmingly self-deprecating. "It doesn’t make any sense for me to be as proud as I am," she says. "I feel very privileged." Yet I am reminded of a chapter in Neck Tales entitled "Bloom Where You’re Planted." In this vignette, Marshall talks about the first time she heard someone say the phrase. "He didn’t say it as advice, or as an imperative, but just as a simple matter of fact. It was what he had done in his lifetime, throughout all the ages and stages of his life thus far." Whether voicing commercials in huge metropolises, writing books in the Northern Neck, or simply sitting in her favorite spot on her screened porch overlooking Taylor’s Creek, Thea Marshall has always devoted herself to becoming her best in the moment, right where she is. What better way, after all, to bloom?
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