Bending Birches

I have quietly launched a book that contains two connected novellas set seven years apart. The setting is close to my heart because I am western MA born and bred so Hadley, Amherst and the Berkshires have been my playground all of my life.

The first novella, Bending Birches, is primarily set at a Mount Holyoke-like college called Bircham College in the novella. Senior Jordan James is close to graduating from Bircham. One of her former English professors, Reid Lockwood, has been attracted to her since she was a freshman in his Dickens class. Jordan is from southern California and he is worried that she will immediately return to the west coast upon graduation and he will be unable to tell her how he feels about her before she goes. As he is on the verge of letting her know that he has more personal feelings for her a sex scandal erupts in the English Department. Jordan's elderly landlady, Mrs. Thayer, quietly plays matchmaker between the two when she realizes that Professor Lockwood is interested in more than helping Jordan prepare her senior thesis which is Dickens-theme based, his specialty. He's also trying to land her a job as a photojournalist for a magazine in Stockbridge where he has a summer cottage where he lives when teaching summer classes there and assisting with Stockbridge Playhouse productions. Romance blooms between the two prior to her graduation but they realize they must not let anyone know, other than Mrs. Thayer or else he'll lose his job.

In Seventh Year Itch, Professor Lockwood and Jordan have been married nearly seven years and they have a three year old son, Charlie. Charlie lives with Jordan in their Stockbridge cottage while Reid lives most of the year in their larger Amherst home while he teaches at Bircham. He joins them in Stockbridge during the summer and visits them on weekends when he can getaway. Jordan discovers that she's pregnant with their second child, and the stress and strains of basically being a single parent who works full time begin to fray her life at the edges until, on the night that Reid hosts the department's staff meeting at their Amherst home, and is on the verge of infidelity as he is seduced by a former classmate of Jordan's after drinking too much wine, that Jordan packs up Charlie and heads home to Amherst to let Reid know that they cannot continue to lead separate lives, that there has to be a change. He is unaware that she is pregnant again. Before she reaches home there is a terrible accident on the MA pike and she is critically injured. Charlie is hurt, but not as badly. Reid's world implodes as he struggles with the accident, guilt about how close he came to be unfaithful to the woman he loves, the realization that he nearly lost the two most important people in his life, and the fact that he has been unhappy about living apart from them for far too long. As Jordan recovers they struggle to find a way to save their marriage and their family, and forge a life together in one house.

I wrote the first novella back in 2015 when my elderly button friend Pauline Johnson was still alive. She loved the story and was thrilled to find herself fictionalized as Mrs. Thayer. The second story was partially written in 2016 and then abandoned until I recently found Bending Birches in a file box of binders and reread it, deciding to track down the sequel and finish writing it, and then combine them into one book.

It is now available- a little treat for lovers of the beautiful Berkshires in scenic western MA and lovers of little romance stories.