Winter is the Season with the strongest ties to Home and Hearth. Spring and Autumn may pull us to work in our yards and Summer is for Adventure and Travel but Winter, with its long nights and bleak weather, is the time when people sub-consciously pull closer to the places that comfort and protect them and settle in for the Season. While the winds blast across the open ground and temperatures plummet, we can feel safe as long as we have dry, warm rooms, comfortable seats and a selection of Winter Books to re-read. If there are Summer Authors (and I think there are) that invite the heart toward roaming, there are also the writers that celebrate hearth and home and these are a joy to re-read. While the Winter stories are rarely in high demand (Winter tales have pages you want to mull over, not rip through) their appeal is eternal and simple. Winter Stories insist on a mindful awareness of the joys and trials of everyday life. They celebrate what is real. New England is one of those places that seems to have a copyright on Winter and Gladys Taber is still one of New England’s best-loved “home-and…
There’s a reason some people love this time of year; the same reason other folks hate it: family. Tradition dictates we spend part of our winter holidays with individuals tied to us by DNA or marriage and who you are determines whether you like or loathe the custom. My husband says, there’s a reason family push our buttons faster than anyone else; they installed most of them. Still, they are the people who define our earliest selves and even when they’re gone, their voices come back in our memories like the song of The Grass Harp, Truman Capote’s novella about his Alabama childhood. While it’s not the obvious choice for December, the Grass Harp is a tender remembrance of how love and family shape us all. Collin Fenwick is the narrator of The Grass Harp, a boy (like the author) cast into the care of maiden aunts. Aunt Verena is the financial provider, the richest soul in town and, as Truman says, the earning of her wealth had not made her an easy woman. The other aunt, Dolly, is nature-focused and terrified of all humans in authority but self-sustaining because of her homemade dropsy cure, an old-fashioned name for swelling….
They say publishers love novels that turn into a series. The characters in these collections of stories develop their own fan base assuring the publisher of a a steady and increasing audience to gobble up each new adventure as soon as it hits the stands. Still, it’s tricky to write that kind of series because each book has to serve two plots. Each book has a primary, short plot: it finds and resolves a conflict that involves the new characters and most (if not all) of the permanent cast. The second plot is harder because it’s part of the overall arc of the series. This plot creates some incremental change in the lives of the permanent cast and lets them create or resolve underlying conflicts (Continuing characters must evolve from book to book or the reading public gets bored and leaves). Interweaving these two plots in each book is a little like jumping rope double-dutch style: it takes skill, balance and concentration. Thriller/Mystery novelist Val McDermid has created three different detective novel serials, the most popular of which are the Tony Hill/Carol Jordan books. Her latest in this series, Splinter the Silence, shows how a good author can make some…
Those next hours were the worst and the longest I’ve known since Ponder died. I kept struggling to move forward with Jerry’s arm around my neck, his bad right foot banging against my left like we were the last pair in a three legged race. We walked through fields a good five yards away from the road and tried not to stumble. The hot still night hugged my right side and Jerry hugged the left. Sweat and blood brought out ever biting bug and they got every inch of us that wasn’t covered by clothes or each other. As we rocked along like some old, drunken couple, I heard myself singing under my breath: “Leaning, leaning, leaning on the ever-lasting arms of God” “Leaning, leaning, leaning on the ever-lasting arms of God” Jerry threw back his head and laughed “Viola, I’d never have picked you as a holy roller!” Well I’m not but I’d gone to church enough to learn the old hymns. Jerry must have too because he joined me on the chorus after we hit the paper mill smell. On and on, over and over, I put one foot out and then the…
The size of that parking lot was the only reason Jerry got back to the drop off before they were in range. I heard their cars coming before I saw Jerry but their headlights didn’t pick him out until he reached the bottom of the drop off. Jerry spotted me and yelled “Viola” before he slung Hazard Pay up the slope toward me. Then he started pulling himself up the drop off wall, grabbing tree roots and rocks for support as those two cars got closer and closer. Their first shot came when they were half way down the parking lot, and I don’t think it came anywhere near Jerry but it woke me up, even more than Jerry’s yell did. I sighted along the barrel of Jerry’s gun and pulled the trigger, aiming for a center spot between the closest pair of head lights. That 357 kicked back hard and the headlights swerved into a curve away from us. I fired over the headlights of the other car but I fired too high. It was pulling around toward the other car when I hear Jerry’s voice. There was Jerry, the moon on his face. …