Myra Eells is the head librarian at the Hoosac Public Library in Hoosac, Minnesota and is the best friend of young Anthony Monday. Myra is a spry woman in her 60s who is just as comfortable behind the library counter as she is in participating in the wild and hair-raising adventures she and Anthony find themselves in, hampered in all situations only by being a little on the clumsy side.
Eells is another one of Bellairs’ older adults that befriends a younger character and becomes, in a way, almost a surrogate parent to Anthony: “They met while browsing at the same magazine rack in a drugstore, gotten into a conversation and become friends shortly thereafter. She bought her young friend presents and they went for rides in the car, she taught him to play chess and taught him a code used by spies in the Civil War” [The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn, 7]. Anthony confesses to feeling closer to Miss Eells than his own mother, who often scolds or second guesses what her son is up to.
When the Monday family’s money problems take a strain on Anthony, Miss Eells offers her young friend a part-time job as a page at the library to help him keep his mind off his family. Anthony accepts the position but is soon drawn into the strange story of the town philanthropist, Alpheus Winterborn, who may (or may not) have hidden a great fortune within the library walls. Eells joins in on the hunt, helping Anthony uncover a series of clues that eventually reveals the treasure of Alpheus Winterborn.
On television, Dody Goodman portrayed Miss Eells in the 1980 made-for-television adaptation of The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn.
The name
Coincidence or not, Bellairs’ character shares the name of a nineteenth century American missionary. Myra Fairbanks Eells (1805-1878), along with her newlywed husband, Reverend Cushing Eells, were one of the families recruited by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions as reinforcements to the Oregon Mission. The Eells, along with Elkanah and Mary Richardson Walker, established a mission at Tshimakain in 1838, near the present day town of Ford, Washington, to live and work with the Spokane Indians. On their trip west, Myra Eells and Mary Walker kept diaries of their dangerous journey that were later collected for the book On to Oregon: The Diaries of Mary Walker and Myra Eells. The Eells’s oldest son Edwin was born in 1841.
Closer to home, Anne Ells of Marshall, Michigan served as the Marshall Historical Society president from 1961 to 1967.
Pronunciation
Many fans dispute the proper pronunciation of “Eells” – does it rhyme with “bells” (as in the 1980 television adaptation) or with “seals” (as heard in the audio book versions of The Lamp from the Warlock's Tomb and The Mansion in the Mist)?
For what it’s worth, Myra Fairbanks Eells’ name rhymes with "seals."
