Ned Hayes's Blog, page 109
April 10, 2014
"April comes to us, with her showers sweet. I wake to the cries...
"April comes to us, with her showers sweet. I wake to the cries of little birds before the light comes across the heath. They wait all night with open eyes. Now, with the rain at dawn, their voices make melody." I imagine my mother calling to me, her words echoing across the years. Every night, I slip into the empty winter land of memory."
— from the novel Sinful Folk, by Ned Hayes
New Perspective: Theology and Storytelling
Novel influenced by School of Theology and Ministry
Story by: Hannah Crivello, School of Theology and Ministry
Published: 2014-03-25
The newly released novel Sinful Folk recounts one mother’s journey across medieval England following a suspicious house fire that burned five children to death in December 1377. With Mear, a former nun, as its central character, the story begins with heartbreak and ends with redemption. It’s not necessarily the kind of offering you’d expect from someone immersed in the software industry. And yet it all makes sense when you consider author Ned Hayes’s own story-a story in which Seattle University’s School of Theology and Ministry and Associate Professor Mark Taylor factor prominently.
Sinful Folk , last month’s #1 best-seller in Amazon’s historical fiction category, was partly inspired by a 14 th century story Hayes read while doing graduate work in medieval literature. However, it was his time in the School of Theology and Ministry’s Master of Divinity program that really planted the seeds for what would become his first novel.
Currently a senior product manager at Intel, Hayes says his SU experience got him to look at theology through the new lens of a feminist and Catholic perspective. “I don’t think I think I could have written a book on a Catholic feminist theologian with Jewish roots without Seattle University and the diversity of perspectives afforded to me by Seattle University’s School of Theology and Ministry.
“What I found really inspiring about the school was the ability for people of different approaches to find common ground and to learn from each other. I found that to be really very healthy, inspiring and stimulating. The experience opened my eyes to things I had never considered before-a lot of the work around feminist theology, Hebrew understanding of scripture and also Catholic and Jesuit approaches taught me how to write from different perspectives, and honor those voices.”
After studying at SU Hayes continued attended Luther Seminary as a Heritage Fellow. In time, he came to the realization that full-time ministry as leader of a faith community wasn’t for him, and yet, even as he continues his work at Intel, Hayes sees his ministry coming out in writing as he tells sacred stories of forgiveness.
“I really credit Dr. Taylor and Seattle University for inspiring me to write stories that are about redemption and transcendence. The theology I studied was relevant for me in ways I hadn’t anticipated.”
For more information, visit SinfulFolk.com.
New Perspective: Theology and Storytelling was originally published on NedNote
"Cold tears as salty as ocean spray wet my face. I remember the...
"Cold tears as salty as ocean spray wet my face. I remember the day before she died, my mother took me out in our little fishing boat, out on the open water of the sea—the thrum and hiss of surf upon the shore behind us, the rhythm never ceasing. And she taught me something: strange and secret words in a foreign tongue, a lilting singsong cadence to it."
"Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life."
- Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet (via larmoyante)
April 9, 2014
"The sweet small clumsy feet of April came
into the ragged meadow of my soul."
into the ragged meadow of my soul.”
- E.E Cummings, from ”If I Have Made My Lady Intricate” (via nsana)
"Stars steam away as a pale sun rises, hot coal dropped in a...
"Stars steam away as a pale sun rises, hot coal dropped in a watery sky. Light seeps across the forest as the reedy shrieks of wood fowl echo in the trees. The path from our village to the King’s Highway is a crooked line of mud rutted with cart tracks, a rough trough where the dirty snow is stabbed through by the hooves of feral sheep. To the east, that faint track leads up through the forest until it reaches, finally, the open country."
PHOTO: sjalvdestruktiv: Kägelbergets Naturreservat by ensdms
litrant:
On the road to find out
Sinful Folk: A Novel of the...
On the road to find out
Sinful Folk: A Novel of the Middle Ages by Ned Hayes (Campanile Books, $12.95), with illustrations by Nikki McClure.
On a cold winter night in 1377, several boys are burned to death in a house fire. One of them is the son of Mears, a deaf-mute man.
Except Mears is actually the disguise of a former nun, who has hidden away in this village to raise her son in peace.
The fire was not an accident, and the fathers of the dead boys—and other villagers—undertake a pilgrimage in winter and without their Lord’s permission to seek justice from the king. Not only is the mystery of how the boys died—and of why Miriam, a nun, would have a son, let alone be pretending to be a deaf-mute man in order to raise him—a compelling one, based on an historical incident, but the outrageousness of peasants taking it upon themselves to seek justice is a bit of a mystery as well.
Like all good pilgrimage stories—and yes, there are echoes of “The Canterbury Tales” in this, but not overly so—this one unfolds as they move through the cold and brutal rural landscape of medieval England.
By focusing on the underclass, Hayes has given us a view of the period that doesn’t often show up in historical fiction. Nikki McClure’s contrasting paper illustrations add to the sense that we’re looking directly into the past, in a dark and foreboding version of an illuminated manuscript.
A very good mystery, Sinful Folk is also a very good historical novel.
April 8, 2014
"April comes to us, with her showers sweet. I wake to the cries...
"April comes to us, with her showers sweet. I wake to the cries of little birds before the light comes across the heath. They wait all night with open eyes. Now, with the rain at dawn, their voices make melody." I imagine my mother calling to me, her words echoing across the years. Every night, I slip into the empty winter land of memory."
