Randy Susan Meyers's Blog, page 51

(Almost) Weekly Launch Wednesday: CLAUDE AND CAMILLE

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Launch Wednesdays provides a taste of a new books, some newly published, some new to paperback. Taste them, hopefully love them, and then get thee to a bookstore.

Today's launch is Claude and Camille: a novel of Monet by Stephanie Cowell. NEW YORK TIMES: "…a diverting fictional representation of the Impressionist maverick Claude Monet and his first wife, who died at the age of 32…an account of his rocky ascent as he endures poverty, disappointment and disapproving parents, flanked by fellow artists Renoir, Pissarro, Cézanne, Manet and Degas."

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Prelude

G i v e r n y

July 1908

Dull late-afternoon light glittered on the hanging copper pots in the kitchen where the old

painter sat with his wine, smoking a cigarette, a letter angrily crumpled on the table in front of him. Through the open window he could hear the sound of a few flies buzzing near one of the flower beds, and the voices of the gardener and his son, who were talking softly as they pushed their wheelbarrow over the paths of the vast garden.

He had meant to paint his water lily pond again, but after the letter had come he could do nothing. Even now, he felt the bitter words rising from the ink. "Why do you write me after all these years, Monet? I still hold you responsible for the death of my sister, Camille. There can be no communication between us."

Outside, the day was ending, smelling of sweet grass and roses. He swallowed the last of his wine and stood suddenly, smoothing the letter and thrusting it in his pocket. "You foolish woman," he said under his breath. "You never understood."

Head lowered, he made his way up the stairs to the top floor, under the sloping attic roof, and down the hall to the locked door. He had worked in this small studio briefly when he first moved here years before and could not remember the last time he had gone inside.

Dust lay on the half-used tubes of paint on the table; palette knives and brushes of every size rested in jars. Rolled canvas and wood for stretchers leaned against a wall. Past the table stood a second door, which opened to a smaller room with another easel and an

old blue-velvet-upholstered armchair. He lowered himself onto the chair, hands on his knees, and looked about him.

The room was filled with pictures of Camille.

There was one of her embroidering in the garden with a child at her feet, and another of her reading on the grass with her back against a tree, the sun coming through the leaves onto her pale dress. She was as elusive as light. You tried to grasp it and it moved; you tried to wrap your arms around it and found it gone.

It had been many years since he had found her in the bookshop. He saw himself then, handsome enough, with a dark beard, dark eyes flickering, swaggering a bit—a young man who did not doubt himself for long and yet who under it all was a little shy. The exact words

they spoke to each other that day were lost to him; when he tried to remember, they faded. He recalled clearly, though, the breathless tone of her voice, the bones of her lovely neck, and her long fingers, and that she stammered slightly.

There she stood in his first portrait of her, when she was just nineteen, wearing the green promenade dress with the long train behind her, looking over her shoulder, beautiful, disdainful, as she had appeared nearly half a century before. He rose and lightly touched the

canvas. Sometimes he dreamt he held her; that he would turn in bed and she would be there. But she was gone, and he was old. Nearly seventy. Only cool paint met his fingers. "Ma très chère . . ."

Darkness started to fall, dimming the paintings. He felt the letter in his pocket. "I loved you so," he said. "I never would have had it turn out as it did. You were with all of us when we began; you gave us courage. These gardens at Giverny are for you, but I'm old and you're forever young and will never see them. I'll write your sister again at her shop in Paris. She must understand; she must know how it was."

Outside, twilight was falling on the gardens, and the water lilies would be closing for the night. He wiped his eyes and sat for a time to calm himself. Looking around once more, he left the studio and slowly descended the stairs.

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STEPHANIE COWELL was born in New York City where she had lived all her life. The daughter of artists, she fell in love with historical fiction quite young.  She began to write stories at the age of eight and by twenty had won prizes twice in a national story contest. In her early twenties, she left writing and trained her voice as a high soprano; she sang over thirty opera roles and appeared extensively as an international balladeer with guitar as well as forming a singing ensemble, a chamber opera company, a performing arts series, and producing several small Renaissance festivals.

She returned to writing with the translation of a Mozart opera.Nicholas Cooke: Actor, Soldier, Physician, Priest was published by W.W. Norton in 1993, followed by The Physician of London in 1995 (American Book Award), The Players: A Novel of the Young Shakespeare in 1997 and Marrying Mozart in 2004. Her latest novel,Claude and Camille: a novel of Monet, was published by Crown in 2010. Stephanie's work has been translated into eight languages, chosen as a selection for the History Book Club, and optioned for a film. Her writing mentor was Madeleine L'Engle.

Her next novel about the great love story of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning, called The Poet in the Tower, will be published in 2012. Stephanie is married to the poet and spiritual director Russell Clay. Between them, they have five grown sons. Her website is www.stephaniecowell.com.

JESSE, A MOTHER'S STORY: A Ferocious and Raging Love

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[image error]I started Jesse, A Mother's Story twice.

The stark beauty of this memoir hit me the moment I began. Marianne Leone's narrative, written with an unrelenting immediacy, yanked me into her world.

Leone's son Jesse owned me from his first moment on the page. By the end of the prologue, Leone had so engaged me that I put it aside. Because I knew how it would end. Because I was a coward. I'd already fallen in love with the family and I needed to build up courage to continue.

Sometime later I began reading again. This time, thank God, I couldn't stop, because Jesse, A Mother's Story gave me one of the greatest gifts of my reading life. I learned that you could go on. You could have utmost love, and then the worst possible pain, and, though you never lose the grief, you could still find that love. That connection between mother and child can continue to envelope you in your dreams and soul. Perhaps that's what keeps you from total madness.

Jesse, A Mother's Story is a written by a mother who loves her son with ferocity—the ferocity parents of disabled children needs more than others parents. Jesse Cooper had severe cerebral palsy, was unable to speak, and was quadriplegic and wracked by severe seizures. He was also stunningly bright, funny, and loving.  His parents, Marianne Leone and Chris Cooper needed both rage and ferocious love if Jesse's light was to come out in full.

Leone writes so close that I felt the cigarette she held as she "paced the floor of our apartment above the store, smoking, crying and feeling helpless . . . Our session with the physical therapist was a disaster. She roughly stripped Jesse of his outside clothes, and he began to howl. "Well, I can't work with him if he's going to cry all the time," she said.

Jesse was failing physical therapy. Or was the therapist failing Jesse? To watch your child handled roughly is to have a piece of your soul crumple into ash."

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Marianne Leone brought together a band of parents and professionals to fight the system—a battle that continues serving children in the region where Jesse went to school—ensuring her son and others could be fully integrated into the school system, get the services they needed, and write essays poems, like this one written by Jesse:

Courage is like one ant trying to cross a roaring stream.

It may seem impossible but you have to try.

Jesse and his parents lived not only with candor and courage, but with edgy humor and street-fighting reality. Jesse, A Mother's Story is not a worshipful account of saints, but of parents who reach into every pocket of strength they can access to help their child live fully in this world. Leone's narrative pulled me like a page-turning novel—I needed to know what would happen, especially when, despite promises made and a law guaranteeing Jesse's inclusion in a regular classroom, the school system fails not just by sins of omission, but by dedicated commission.

Leone's realizations of these sins—after sending Jesse's wonderful home aide, Brandy, to observe Jesse's school aide and teacher in his classroom—radicalizes her. Thinking that Brandy hates her job, as obviously they do, the aide, in front of a non-verbal, but totally cognizant Jesse, says "he don't belong here," and "between you and me, Brandy, we both know where he's gonna end up." Jesse's teacher talks in front of him, as though he were invisible, about the "life-expectancy of a CP kid," speaking with faux-sympathy, though in truth with criticism of Leone, about how Leone needs to "learn to let go."

[image error]Thus is set in motion a battle that ends up including the entire school district and a newly formed group of parents of special needs children, beginning with Leone's thoughts:

In the last few minutes I had joined the berserker tribe of mothers, those who go into battle without any armor but rage. Mad as dogs, fierce as wolves, they fight to the death.

We who are unaffected might turn away from the Leone-Cooper's story, from all stories like Jesse's. We might want to protect our own denial, but oh what a loss. Jesse, A Mother's Story has a plethora of happy endings before the ultimate sorrow.

That is what this book taught me: Sorrow doesn't erase joy. We can hold both.

I, probably like you, am a constant reader. Sometimes I forget titles even as I turn the last page. Some books are appetizers, some momentary candy, some are solid meals. The moment I finished Jesse, A Mother's Story I wanted to read it again. This book is an account of how we manage to rise further than we ever knew we could.

Leone does not sing her own praises in this book, but I can. She showed me a way. Mothers, even through moments of exhaustion, exasperation, even as they doubt they are up for the task, can find the way to lift that truck off their child. This book lives on my 'read again and again' shelf. Jesse, A Mother's Story was not a book of a disabled child, but a story of being able to move on after a tsunami has hit your heart.

Jesse, A Mothers Story releases today. If you are a parent, then you, like me, fear losing your child more than anything in the world. Screw up your courage and buy this book.

JESSE, A MOTHER'S STORY slideshow

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Reading Makes You Smart, Happier and Gets Your Kids in College: Really!

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Guest Post by Kathy Crowley

Full public disclaimer: I am a lightweight in the world of scientific reading.  Science can be fun, though–the Periodic Table and the Krebs Cycle notwithstanding.  And I especially like science when it reinforces what I want to believe anyway (see disclaimer above).

For example — I have a co-worker who posts all the scientific studies showing the health benefits of coffee, just above the coffee maker at work.  While I stand there waiting for my cuppa to brew, I read about how I am keeping Parkinson's disease at bay (here, from JAMA), reducing my chances of developing diabetes (here from The Lancet), and generally waking up (you don't need a medical reference on this).

So as a lifelong fiction lover, it is not surprising that I am also interested in the neuroscience that continues to grow around reading – why it feels good and why it's good for you.  Below are the highlights, based on my science-lite review of the literature.

Reading literature makes you smarter.

Here's one thing those wild and crazy scientists did:  They took a group of unsuspecting people and had them read Kafka's "The Country Doctor" – "a disturbing and surreal tale in which a doctor travels by "unearthly horses" to an ill patient, only to climb into bed naked with him and then escape through the window 'naked, exposed to the frost of this most unhappy of ages.'" They took another similarly innocent group and gave them "The Country Doctor" rewritten in a way such that the plot made more sense.  THEN they made both groups take a test to assess their pattern recognition. Guess who did better?

"People who read the nonsensical story checked off more letter strings – clearly they were motivated to find structure," said Travis Proulx, a postdoctoral researcher at UCSB and co-author of the research. "But what's more important is that they were actually more accurate than those who read the more normal version of the story. They really did learn the pattern better than the other participants did.

Proulx said that the thinking behind the research was that when we are exposed to something which "fundamentally does not make sense", our brains will respond by "looking for some other kind of structure" within our environment."

Reading literature makes you more socially savvy.

Okay, next experiment.  Readers were randomly assigned either a fiction story OR a non-fiction article from The New Yorker.  Both groups were then given an analytical reasoning task in a multiple choice format (derived from a law school entrance exam) and a social reasoning test in the same format, with questions focused on the emotions, beliefs and intentions of characters in social scenarios. The result: The two sets of readers did just as well on the general reasoning questions, but the short-story readers showed a stronger understanding of social situations than the essay readers.

Why?  Here's the opinion of Keith Oatley,  a professor at the University of Toronto who has done a lot of work in this field:

"My colleagues and I think it's a matter of expertise. Fiction is principally about the difficulties of selves navigating the social world. Non-fiction is about, well, whatever it is about: selfish genes, or how to make Mediterranean food, or whether climate changes will harm our planet. So with fiction we tend to become more expert at empathizing and socializing."

Reading gets your kids into college.

I'm not dumping on Stanley Kaplan or Saturday lessons with Dmitri, the Russian math genius, but independent reading seems to be the best way to boost those SAT scores.  Here's what the American Library Association says (not that they have a dog in this fight or anything):  "The amount of free reading done outside of school has consistently been found to relate to growth in vocabulary, reading comprehension, verbal fluency, and general information. Students who read independently become better readers, score higher on achievement tests in all subject areas, and have greater content knowledge than those who do not."

Reading Relaxes.

Maybe you think you need a masseuse and a steam room, or a martini and a sunset, but it turns out that the key to relaxation is RIGHT THERE ON YOUR BEDSTAND! Yet another group of cash-hungry underemployed individuals was recruited.  These unfortunate people were deliberately stressed — forced to fill out 1040s in iambic pentameter or had their iPhones extracted and buried in an undisclosed location or …. something.  (If you're a mouse, they drop you in a pail of water and make you swim, because it turns out mice hate to swim.) THEN, having thoroughly stressed everyone out, the researchers randomized the subjects to some form of relatively relaxing activity.  Like sipping a cup of tea.  Or going for a walk.  Or listening to music.  Or reading a book.

And which activity worked the best and fastest according to those super-smart cognitive neuropsychologists?  Reading.

It works better and faster than other methods to calm frazzled nerves such as listening to music, going for a walk or settling down with a cup of tea…

Psychologists believe this is because the human mind has to concentrate on reading and the distraction of being taken into a literary world eases the tensions in muscles and the heart.

Their stress levels and heart rate were increased through a range of tests and exercises before they were then tested with a variety of traditional methods of relaxation.

Reading worked best, reducing stress levels by 68 per cent, said cognitive neuropsychologist Dr David Lewis.

Subjects only needed to read, silently, for six minutes to slow down the heart rate and ease tension in the muscles, he found. In fact it got subjects to stress levels lower than before they started.

Listening to music reduced the levels by 61 per cent, having a cup of tea or coffee lowered them by 54 per cent and taking a walk by 42 per cent.

Playing video games brought them down by 21 per cent from their highest level but still left the volunteers with heart rates above their starting point.

Dr Lewis, who conducted the test, said: "Losing yourself in a book is the ultimate relaxation."

So, grab yourself a book.  And a cup of coffee. And some chocolate.  (Did we talk about the chocolate literature yet?)

(originally published in Beyond The Margins)

[image error]Kathy Crowley's short stories have appeared in Ontario Review, Fish Stories, The Literary Review, New Millenium Writings and The Marlboro Review. Her stories have been short-listed for Best American Short Stories, nominated for a Pushcart Prize and anthologized. In 2006 she was awarded a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant. She recently finished her first novel, On Locust Street. When she's not busy preparing for her future literary fame and fortune, she provides care and feeding to her three children and works as a physician at Boston Medical Center. She is a graduate of Brown University and Tufts University School of Medicine. Kathy can be found on Twitter at @Kathy_Crowley.

First Pages Friday:The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted

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First Pages Fridays offers a taste of an author's book—from ones long on the shelves to those newly launched, because while you can't judge a book by the cover, you can tell plenty from the first pages.

Today's first pages come from The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted by Bridget Asher, who introduces her piece here thusly (and I love this):

"This novel is dedicated to the reader. For this singular moment, it's just the two of us." That's how the dedication to THE PROVENCE CURE FOR THE BROKENHEARTED reads.

Let me confess this: I love the reader.

In fact, let me address the reader directly here.

Dear reader! I think of you so much more often than you think of me! This is a lopsided romance and probably borderline unhealthy. I imagine you reading my novels on subway cars, in kitchens, on beaches, in bed. I imagine the light over your shoulder. I imagine your cats. I imagine that sometimes you dog-ear a page you love. I imagine you tell your friends about me over drinks. And sometimes I imagine you shut the book, disappointed in me.

Should I – as an artiste – consider you so deeply?  Shouldn't I be above the concerns of how my books are received? Shouldn't I focus completely on my singular creative vision? Should I allow myself to imagine that you, reader, sometimes imagine me – writing away in some nook-ish office, typing feverishly, pacing, gazing out windows onto stretches of vineyards? (My office doesn't look out on vineyards, but you don't know that.)

Maybe I shouldn't.

But I do.

In fact, let me warn you. Beware of me. I want too much. I want to linger in your mind. I want to burrow into your heart. I get jealous when you're laughing aloud reading someone else. "Who's that?" I ask. "What's so funny?" I pout. I suffer. I want you back.

(Dear Critic, I also think of you more often than you think of me, but it's a different kind of thinking …)

So, (Randy speaking here,) let's also add a few words from the critics:

Fans of UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN will adore this impossibly romantic read."

– People magazine

"Readers who enjoy widow lit like Lolly Winston'sGood Grief and Jane Green's The Beach House or travel-induced transformation books like Frances Mayes's Under the Tuscan Sun and Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love will find common themes … and become quickly invested in the lives of the deftly drawn characters."

– Library Journal

The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted

A Novel by Bridget Asher

 

Here is one way to say it: Grief is a love story told backwards.

Or maybe that's not it at all. Maybe I should be more scientific. Love and the loss of that love exist in equal measure. Hasn't an equation like this been invented by a romantic physicist somewhere?

Or maybe I should put it this way. Imagine a snow globe. Imagine a tiny snow-struck house inside of it. Imagine there's a woman inside of that tiny house sitting on the edge of her bed, shaking a snow globe, and within that snow globe, there is a tiny snow-struck house with a woman inside of it, and this one is standing in the kitchen, shaking another snow globe and within that snow globe …

Every good love story has another love hiding within it.

 

***

 

Ever since Henry's death, I kept losing things.

I lost keys, sunglasses, checkbooks. I lost a spatula and found it in the freezer, along with a bag of grated cheese.

I lost a note to Abbot's third-grade teacher explaining how I'd lost his homework.

I lost the caps to toothpaste and jelly jars. I put these things away, open-mouthed, lidless, airing. I lost hairbrushes and shoes – not just one of a pair, but both.

I left jackets behind in restaurants, my pocketbook under my seat at the movies, my keys on the checkout counter of the drugstore. Afterward, I sat in my car for a moment, disoriented, trying to place exactly what was wrong and then trudged back into the store where the check-out girl jingled them for me above her head.

I got calls from people who were kind enough to return things. And when things were gone – just gone – I retraced my steps and then got lost myself. Why am I here at this mini mart? Why am I back at the deli counter?

I lost track of friends. They had babies, defended dissertations, had art showings and dinner parties and backyard barbeques …

Most of all, I lost track of large swathes of time. Kids at Abbot's bus stop and in the neighborhood and in his class and on his baseball team kept inching taller all around me. Abbot kept growing, too. That was the hardest to take.

I also lost track of small pieces of time – late mornings, evenings. Sometimes I would look up and it was suddenly dark outside as if someone had flipped a switch.

So it shouldn't have come as a surprise to me that Abbott and I were running late for my sister's pre-wedding bridesmaid bonding. We had spent the morning playing Apples to Apples, interrupted by phone calls from the Cake Shop – which Henry and I had opened together shortly before Abbot was born and I was still in charge of in my distracted way. Abbot and I ate freezer pops, the kind that come in vivid colors packaged in plastic tubes that you have to snip with scissors and that sometimes make you cough. Even this detail is pained. Abbot and I had been reduced to eating frozen juice in plastic. I'd grown up making delicate pastries, thinking of food as a kind of art, but Henry was the one who convinced me that food is love. We'd met during culinary school and he'd always cooked our meals. I was now kitchen-avoidant.  The fact of the matter was that life charged on without me. This realization caught me off guard even almost two years later, although by this point it had become a habit – a simple unavoidable fact: the world charged on and I did not.

When I realized that the day had gotten away from us and it was now after noon, I shouted, "What time is it?"

And he said, "Auntie Elysius is going to be so mad!"

We then started darting around our little three-bedroom bungalow madly. I found one of my heels in the closet and, after running through the house quickly, found the other in Abbot's bedroom in a big tub of Legos. Abbot was yanking on his rented tux – more wrestling than dressing. He struggled with the tiny cuff buttons and was searching for the clip-on tie and cummerbund – he'd chosen red because it was the color that Henry had worn at our wedding. I wasn't sure that was healthy, but didn't want to draw attention to it.

I threw on some make-up and slipped the bridesmaid's dress over my head. I have to say that the dress wasn't your typical bridesmaid's horror show — my sister had exquisite taste and this was the most expensive dress I'd ever worn, including my own wedding dress. In my rush, I couldn't get the last two inches of the zipper and abandoned the effort…

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Julianna Baggott is the author of seventeen books, most recently THE PROVENCE CURE FOR THE BROKENHEARTED under her pen name Bridget Asher, as well as THE PRETEND WIFE and MY HUSBAND'S SWEETHEARTS. She's the bestselling author of GIRL TALK and, as N.E. Bode, THE ANYBODIES TRILOGY for younger readers. Her essays have appeared widely in such publications as The New York Times Modern Love column, Washington Post, NPR.org, and Real Simple. You can visit her blog athttp://bridgetasher.blogspot.com/ and her website at www.juliannabaggott.com.

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Book Trailer Thursday: CLAUDE & CAMILLE: A NOVEL OF MONET

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Book trailers are such a brave new media. Some are awful droning talking heads (you know what I mean) where the author looks like he'd rather be shoveling coal in Siberia than filming the interview. Some are almost good–but too long. And some, like Goldilocks found, are just right and manage to capture the spirit and genre of the book.

Today's trailer is as lush as the subject. Claude & Camille: A Novel of Monet was described thusly by The Boston Globe: Cowell's graceful, moving treatment of Claude and Camille's turbulent love defies categorization. It's an enthralling story, beautifully told,..Cowell's glimpse into Monet's life and art is convincing and intimate…vividly portrays not just the couple and their life together, but their time and place, their world. She writes in language that is simple, elegant, and extraordinarily evocative."

(Almost) Weekly Launch Wednesday: THE BIRD SISTERS

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Launch Wednesdays provides a taste of a new books, some newly published, some new to paperback. Taste them, hopefully love them, and then get thee to a bookstore or a library.

Today's book, The Bird Sisters by Rebecca Rasmussen has been called, "A magical debut, original and poignant, lovely and moving. The Bird Sisters evokes the richly imaginative joys of childhood and the throat-aching betrayals and loyalties of being an adult. I absolutely loved The Bird Sisters and will carry Milly and Twiss with me as if in a locket for a long, long time." –Jenna Blum, Bestselling Author of Those Who Save Us and The Stormchasers

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The Bird Sisters

by Rebecca Rasmussen

Used to be when a bird flew into a window, Milly and Twiss got a visit. Milly would put a kettle on and set out whatever culinary adventure she'd gone on that day. For morning arrivals, she offered her famous vanilla drop biscuits and raspberry jam. Twiss would get the saddlebag from the hall closet and sterilize the tools she needed, depending on the seriousness of the injury. A wounded limb was one thing. A wounded crop was another.

People used to come from as far away as Reedsburg and Wilton. Milly would sit with them while Twiss patched up the poor old robin or the sweet little meadowlark. Over the years, the number of visitors had dwindled. Now that the grocery store sold ready-bake biscuits and jelly in all the colors of the rainbow, people didn't bother as much about birds.

On a particularly low morning, while the two sisters were having tea and going over their chore lists, Milly pulled back the curtains when she heard an engine straining on one of the nearby hillsides. When all she saw was the empty gravel drive, the hawkweed poking up along the edges, she let go of them.

"We should be glad," she said. "Maybe the birds are getting smarter."

Twiss brought the breakfast dishes to the sink. They were down to toast and butter now, sometimes a hardboiled egg from the night before. "How can you stand to be so positive?"

"We're old," Milly said. "What else can we do?"

But even she missed the sound of strangers in the house, the way the pine floors creaked under new weight. Had it really been a month since a person other than Twiss had spoken to her? Time had a funny way of moving when you didn't want it to and standing still when you did. Milly didn't bother to wind the cuckoo clock above the sink anymore; there was something sadistic about the way it popped out of its miniature door so cheerfully every quarter hour. But the visitors! Though she and Twiss had devoted their lives to saving birds, not wishing for them to be injured, the last few years Milly had perked up whenever a car turned into their driveway instead of continuing up the road. Most of the time, the people would be looking for directions back to town. They'd spread out their laminated touring maps with expressions of shame because "just in case," the words they'd used to justify buying the maps in the first place, meant they were lost, and there were no noble ways to say that. The men would look up at the sky, trying one last time to discern east from west, and the women would look down at the ground because their husbands had failed to understand a simple map. Milly would put the couples at ease by admitting that she missed a turn every once in a while, even though there wasn't one to miss. She'd point to the blank space between the hills and the river.

This is where you are.

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Rebecca lives in St. Louis, Missouri with her husband and daughter, where she teaches writing and literature at Fontbonne University. In addition to writing, she's reading some wonderful nonfiction books these days (My Life in France by Julia Child is her favorite of the bunch!) and is perpetually training for a half-marathon it seems. She also loves to bake pies. Raspberry. Blueberry. Peach. Yum. This is only miraculous because she essentially grew up in a microwave. Because of this, she is interested in all things old and outdated. She loves to think about hope chests and house dresses. Sideboards are big ones, too. At the end of the day, though, when it's 105 outside in St. Louis, she's pretty thankful for my thermal windows and air conditioning. Still…she's always on the brink of trying to put up jam like her great grandmother used to do. Visit her athttp://www.thebirdsisters.com for more information. The Bird Sisters is available for pre-order and hits bookshelves April 12th!

(Almost) Weekly Writer at Work: Dell Smith

 

[image error] Writers' Work-in-Progress showcases the work of new and long-published authors. This is what their first pages look like now—perhaps the published versions will read exactly the same, perhaps they will be quite changed. That part of the mutable beauty of writing—always a work in progress, until the book hits the shelves.

Today's "1000 words of pure first draftiness," according to the author, is the beginning of a novel-in-progress, and so far it captures the pain of relationships. (Warning: swearing ahead.)

 

Alisa

by Dell Smith

Alisa flexed and unflexed her right hand into a fist over and over. It helped her concentrate when she was anxious. She generally had no problem meeting new people on the job—she did it every day—but occasionally she met with clients that rubbed her the wrong way. A young couple, still in college, was meeting with Alisa to discuss reception options at Opium where she was the function sales coordinator.

The girl, dressed in heels with jeans, décolletage spilling into the conversation, trundled across the area of the club in front of the stage that doubled as a dance floor during receptions and other events. She was almost to the stage when she teetered on her right heel and slid. She righted herself, and looked over her shoulder scoldingly at Alisa. "I slipped," she said, as if Alisa had told her icy ponds weren't slippery, and to go right ahead in your lovely heels.

Alisa's dug her fingernails into her palm, just enough to prick, not enough to draw blood.

"Careful, Brittany," the young husband-to-be said.

"Hopefully your heels won't be quite so precipitous on the day," Alisa said. What the hell else could she say? You don't run around on a dance floor with six inch heels. Actually, you don't do anything in six inch heels but pose for pictorials.

"It's slippery out here," the girl said, reaching out to her boyfriend's shoulder and pulling off her shoes. "Maybe you guys should put in parquet floors like everyplace else. I'm serious."

Alisa almost said, "They're ugly. I'm serious," but instead dug her nails deeper. Weddings were a huge business, big money, and Boston was full of places to hold one. Alisa was good at her job, selling Opium and closing the deal. Her phone chimed a text message but she ignored it.

"How much would it be if we ended an hour earlier? I mean—" the girl looked to her fiancé, "I just don't see a lot of the old people, dad's friends and them, staying until 10."

What the hell was wrong with these kids? What did they want, Caruso's Diplomat on Route 1 in Saugus? The VFW in Somerville?

"Unfortunately what I can't do is give you a break on the price," Alisa said, turning on her firm yet reassuring business manner. "What I can do is calm your nerves about the reception by assuring you that when you have your party at Opium, we take care of everything."

The couple finally said yes. After Alisa saw them out, she sat at her desk in her too-small office, updating spreadsheets and checking schedules. Her days were like an open-ended Excel spreadsheet with an infinite number of columns and rows.

Her boyfriend, Len, had texted her twice more and left a voicemail. Unusual for him—usually he was incommunicado. He was a bartender at The Galway, an Irish pub in Central Square. Was he contacting her to apologize for instigating another fight that morning? Or to feed and care for it? It had started last night when he texted her at 11:30 saying he'd be late. When he wasn't home by two, she texted him and called his cell. She had fallen asleep on the couch around four. He finally showed up at six.

"Where were you?" she had said, swinging her legs off the couch cushions.

"Party after work. We all just headed to Union Square." He hadn't sounded contrite; in fact he came across as defiant, primed for confrontation.

"I tried to reach you. All night." Alisa felt relief that he was home mixed with the jittery anticipation of a fight.

"Why?" He looked wired, and she wondered if he was taking something. A stimulant to get him through his shifts.

"You've got this thing about not telling me anything," she said.

"Why can't I go to a fucking party?" He had always been compulsive about not telling her his schedule. He never wanted her to know where he was going or how long he would be.

She walked past him to the kitchen and scooped ground coffee into the drip coffee maker, enough for herself. "All I wanted to know was where you were," she said over her shoulder. "Go to your fucking little party; just let me know about it." The day Len moved in he reduced their relationship from romantic best friends to fuck-buddy roommates. The vibe he gave off was Why date when you live together?

He stared at her, his small eyes going smaller and darker until he was squinting.

"Len, don't try to make me feel bad about this," she said.

"What the fuck? It's not a big deal Alisa." He always said the opposite of what she wanted to hear. "I didn't do anything."

"I thought you were dead on the Common, drunk and drowned in the Charles." The coffee was only half finished brewing but Alisa pulled out the carafe to fill her mug, spilling on the counter, spattering down the cabinet door to the floor. "Mugged and stabbed and shot in Charlestown or Dorchester wherever you troll. That's the only reason I need to know where you are, Len. I'm just that kind of gal. Otherwise, you know what? I don't give a shit." Her bravado was a rote mask, a tired shield.

She counted all the times Len had lied about doing something or being somewhere or not following through. She lost count. It was a pattern set a year ago when they first started dating. She had fallen hard for him; found him scarred by life, wounded by women and an abusive father, but in a sexy way.

Now that she was in deep, she saw plainly that he was in complete control—always working hard to get her to question everything she thought and did. He was less a wounded bird that needed tending and more a mean drunk, staggering in the street, trying to get hit by a car to put the blame on somebody else.

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Dell Smith is a fiction writer. He grew up on Cape Cod and left town to study filmmaking. He writes stories and novels, and works as a technical writer at a software company northwest of Boston. He has also worked as a videotape editor, cook, music video lackey, TelePrompTer operator, accounts receivable clerk, assistant film editor, caterer, roadie, flea market vendor, videotape duplicator, and wedding videographer. He has lived in Worcester, Bridgeport, Van Nuys, Billerica, Ithaca, Florham Park, Fairfield, and Simi Valley. He brings his life experience to bear in his fiction. His writing has appeared in Fiction, J. Journal, and Grub Street's 10th anniversary anthology Hacks. He is a regular contributor to The Review Review and maintains a blog, Unreliable Narrator at dellsmith.com, featuring essays on movies, writing, and the publishing biz, along with book reviews and author interviews. He is currently writing a novel. But who isn't?

 

Working With Violent Men (reprise)

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For ten years I co-led groups for violent men. I sat in a circle with a male co-leader and anywhere from 8 to 18 men who'd been violent with their wives, girlfriends, dates, sisters, or another woman in their lives.

Their violence ran the gamut from emotional abuse of the most devastating sort, to smacking, to slapping, to punching, pushing, prodding, to breaking bones to murder (thankfully not many.)

This was a Certified Boston Batterer Intervention Program. Most men were ordered into the program by the Massachusetts courts, some by the Department of Social Services, and a few were volunteers—or as we called them, wife and girlfriend-ordered.

We followed one of the state-approved educational curriculum (this was not counseling)—in this case, the Duluth Model. The men were in the program for over 40 weeks. They 'checked in' with their behavior, they did homework, they did role-playing (where guess who acted the woman,) and they studied a series of topics in the quest to learn control.

We taught them that they didn't have 'buttons' on their chest.

Him: She pushed my buttons! Me: Oh, really—where are they? I don't want to accidentally push one.

We tried to teach them that they actually had plenty of control.

Me: So, how often do you hit your boss? Him: Whaddya crazy? I wouldn't hit my boss. Me: Why? Doesn't he make you mad? Him: Of course. But he'd fire me.

Their women couldn't fire them. They could leave, but facing that, the men fell into Plan B:

I'll kill myself if you leave!

You'll never see the kids again—I'll tell the court that you're a drug addict.

I love you! Please give me another chance. You're the only person in the world who understands me.

Other than the men we weeded out—the mentally ill and the truly unstable—the men were able to control themselves. Some didn't believe it or they chose not to. Only they could choose a different way.

They fought this idea. Thinking themselves victims of invisible buttons was more comfortable than thinking themselves men who chose violence as a way to get what they wanted. And what did they want? Why did cheeks get shattered and tender skin become black and blue.

Money, sex, jealousy, children, television shows, cold food, in-laws: getting what they wanted.

The most oft-said reason when I asked what it was they wanted so very much?

Him: For her to shut the eff up. Me: Did you get what you wanted? Him: Naw. I got the cops.

It's about intent. Most men didn't have the goal of breaking a bone. They had the goal of a hot supper or a quiet minute or making love or . . . any of a hundred things. They reached for these things the quickest way they knew: with their fists or a raised voice.

It's too much for me to pack this all into one post, so I'll try to sum up with this:

What was it like to work with these men?

It was sad.

It was enraging.

At times, it was toxic to see the sheer hatred of women raw and out there.

It was never just about being drunk or high, but being drunk and high never helped.

It was about power, control, and a violence that seemed all-too-accessible.

It was about denial, and about how the shame these men felt could block their change. Because to change, they had to admit they'd done a hateful thing to people they loved.

People often ask if our program made a difference. For some it did. For others it didn't. On the other hand, not being in the program meant there was almost no chance they'd examine their behavior.

On the best day of my almost-ten years, a woman walked in with a former client of mine. It was her husband. He'd started the program belligerent and angry. In denial.

When he began, his eyes told me how deeply he hated me.

Halfway through the program, this man (who'd grown up seeing his father abuse his mother) almost cried as he spoke of how he'd done the one thing he'd promised himself he'd never do.

He left the program wanting to work with young men in an anti-violence program.

That day, his wife came in carrying a home-baked cake and offering me and for the man with whom I co-led groups these words: Thank you for giving me back my husband.

That sums it up for me.

When people ask me if it worked, this is what I say:

It worked for that family.

Friday First Pages: THE DAY THE FALLS STOOD STILL

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First Pages Fridays offers a taste of an author's work—from books long on the shelves to works-in-progress, because while you can't judge a book by the cover, you can tell plenty from the first pages.

"A wonderful love story…Buchanan weaves Niagara Falls' history and her storytelling together masterfully." − Elle

"The Day the Falls Stood Still stands on its own elegant prose and the vibrant voice of its narrator." − USA Today

The Day the Falls Stood Still pulls us into the maelstrom of Niagara Falls at the time when rivermen drew daredevils from the brink, the promise of hydroelectric power wooed a nation and only a few dared question our relationship with the mighty river.

The Day The Falls Stood Still

by Cathy Marie Buchanan

The stone walls of Loretto Academy are so thick I can sit curled up on a window sill, arms around the knees tucked beneath my chin.  It stands on a bluff not far from the Horseshoe Falls and because I have been a student long enough to rank a room on the river side, I have only to open a pair of shutters to take in my own private view of the Niagara.  Beyond the hedge and gate marking the perimeter of the academy, and the steep descent leading to the wooded shore, I can see the upper river and the falls.  Endless water plummets from the brink to the rocks below, like the careless who slip, like the stunters who fail, like the suicidal who leap.  I nudge my attention downriver, to clouds of rising mist.

In those clouds I have seen aberrations ─ flecks of shimmering silver, orbs of colour a shade more intense than their surroundings.  I have seen them more than once and I have decided they are prayers, mine and everyone else's, too.

There is a light rap on my door and then Sister Ignatius, who teaches us English Literature, steps into my room.  I hop down from the window sill, wondering why she has come with a stack of books and just minutes before all of us at the academy are due downstairs for the commencement of the class of 1915.   "For you, Bess," she says, handing the books over to me.  "They're old."  But the stack includes The Hound of the Baskervilles and The House of Mirth, books which are not old at all.  There are others ─ Wuthering Heights, Tale of Two Cities, Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Last of the Mohicans and The Picture of Dorian Grey -  that were written years earlier, but the copies in my arms are new.  As I mutter a thank you, she touches my cheek, and then she is back though the door and in the corridor saying, "Fifteen minutes until you're expected in the dining hall."

For a moment I cling to the possibility that I will return to the academy in the fall for my final year.  But Sister Ignatius is yet another example of the sisters having gone soft and sentimental, the way people tend to when they are saying goodbye.  It began with Sisters Bede and Leocrita, who teach Composition and Christian Doctrine, returning a pair of examinations I had not sufficiently prepared for, preoccupied as I was with Father's whereabouts.  The comments penciled into the margins were bewildering.  An interesting departure from your usual style.  An original idea. Where were the stern words reprimanding sloppiness and poorly-formulated logic I had expected to find?

I mean to get through the evening dry-eyed and respectable and at the outset all goes well enough.  I file into the dining hall with the rest of the Juniors, all of us in our white concert dresses, and take my place on the low platform at the front of the room.  I stand there, mouthing the words to "The Last Rose of Summer", as the twelve Seniors who will form the evening's graduating class make their way up the centre aisle.

We had been told that with the war the decorations would be less elaborate than in other years.  Still the platform is lined with potted palms and ferns moved from elsewhere in the academy and there are large vases of roses and peonies cut from the Sister Leocrita's garden at either end.  My gaze sweeps the rows of seated parents, moving from powdered nose to clean-shaven face, and finally comes to rest on a familiar navy hat trimmed with silk and an egret.  Mother is impeccably dressed, though somewhat less fashionably than usual.  Her skirt meets her boots rather than ending a few inches above the ankle as do the more daring styles.  And her collar is high, stiffly starched.  She faces straight ahead, her spine as straight as anyone's in the room, yet she twists the programme in her hands.  She is sitting beside the aisle and, though the house is nearly full, the three seats next to hers remain unoccupied.  Surely one is saved for Father.

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CATHY MARIE BUCHANAN's debut novel, The Day the Falls Stood Still, is a Barnes & Noble Recommends Selection, a Barnes & Noble Best of 2009 book, an American Booksellers Association IndieNext pick, and a New York Times bestseller. Her stories have appeared in many of Canada's most respected literary journals. She holds a BSc (Honours Biochemistry) and an MBA from the University of Western Ontario and is a founding member of conservation organization Friends of Niagara Falls. Born and raised in Niagara Falls, Ontario, she now resides in Toronto.

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Book Trailer Thursday: ALLERGIC GIRL

Book trailers are such a brave new media. Some are awful droning talking heads (you know what I mean) where the author looks like he'd rather be shoveling coal in Siberia than filming the interview. Some are almost good–but too long. And some, like Goldilocks found, are just right and manage to capture the spirit and genre of the book.

Today's trailer, a great example of making a fun super-mini movie, highlights Allergic Girl by Sloan Miller.

Allergic Girl Sloane Miller, a leading authority on food allergies, has been allergic since childhood. She now lives a full, enjoyable life full of dining out, dating, attending work functions, and traveling. With tested strategies and practical solutions to everyday food allergy concerns, Allergic Girl shows how readers can enjoy their lives too. Informed by personal narratives laced with humor and valuable insights, Allergic Girl is a breakthrough lifestyle guide for food-allergic adults, their families, and loved ones.

Sloane Miller, M.S.W., L.M.S.W., is ablogger, advocate, consultant, and authorityon food allergies who manages multiplefood allergies herself. Her hugely successfulblog, Please Don't Pass the Nuts (allergicgirl.blogspot.com), was the first blog dedicatedto food-allergic adults. A licensed psycho-therapeutic social worker since 2000, Miller opened a private coaching practice in 2007 for the food-allergic community. She has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Huffington Post, New York magazine, and the New York Daily News, and on cnn.com, abcnews.com, and other websites.