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Dear Ghost: Fragments and Letters
Love letters, born from high school dances and stereoscopic slides of toddlerhood, Ferris wheels and suntan oil, the streets of Hollywood and Toronto, 1980s music, driving too fast, Hershey bars and bottles of Molson Golden ale, first real kisses and broken hearts. Our eleventh birthday parties, our first cars, our true loves, and our monsters.
Getting old. Falling in love. A dash of each, and all together.
Letters to all of us, from all of us—the things we remember and the things we’ve lost.
Getting old. Falling in love. A dash of each, and all together.
Letters to all of us, from all of us—the things we remember and the things we’ve lost.
187 pages, Mass Market Paperback
Published March 22, 2022
About the author
Bob Bickford
13 books21 followersFINALIST: International Thriller Writers 2017 Best First Novel
When I was little, the library was my favorite place.
I was born in Lone Pine, California. My parents liked to move and so did I, for a while. I have roots throughout the United States, but I was mostly raised in Toronto, Canada.
My father was a psychiatric social worker who grew up in the slums of Boston. He was a tough guy who got an education on the GI bill and pulled himself out of his birthright. He married twice, the first time to a woman who left him a widower. Alone with a toddler, I suppose he was determined that it wouldn’t happen to him again, because the second time he married a woman much younger than he was.
She was the product of a Southern family; royalty that included the same Duke family that bought a university and named it after itself. Wilful and rebellious, she scorned Southern convention, rejected the closeted skeletons and wide streak of alcoholism that hid behind decorated formality. She disowned her family, converted to Catholicism, marched for civil rights, and married the older man from a poverty-stricken background. I am the oldest of the seven children she bore, one after the next.
We were brought up in curious contrasts. There were the economies that so many mouths to feed on a middle class income made necessary; (hand-me-down clothes, Tang and powdered milk, peanut butter for ten thousand consecutive school lunches), but my mother’s background dictated private schools, music and dance and art lessons.
I attended St. Michael’s Choir School and studied piano and organ at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. I hated studying anything at all; my mother was determined that I should be a doctor and despaired over my future. I only wanted to read fiction, and did so endlessly. The library was my favorite, enchanted place (it still is). I didn’t realize I was in fact studying for what I wanted to do most.
My father’s plan to not be widowed again fell through, and my mother was suddenly gone when I was 16. He had been ill equipped to raise one child the first time, and now there were eight of them; the youngest only three years old. In some sense we lost him, too.
Life changed, just like that. My behavior guaranteed me a quick expulsion from my exclusive school. I did manage a high school diploma (by the skin of my teeth) but I was mostly happy to leave school for good. I lost an early love, and wandered to Los Angeles. I learned about the streets, and about living in the places that cause most people to lock their car doors when they drive through. I was blessed with the same genes that took my father through life in the mean part of Boston, and survived.
Eventually, I grew up and moved again, first to Atlanta and then back to Canada. I made a living in the 'fixing cars' arena. I live in a very old house on a wooded lot that is infested by dogs and turtles and parrots, and perhaps the ghost of a young girl. My teen-aged son is a light in my life who wants to be an author and a professional football player. I never tell him that both are nearly impossible, because they aren’t.
The library has continued to haunt me. When age said the possibility of a university degree was long past, I decided to try my hand at a novel anyway. Somehow I finished it, and have produced one a year since. I’m working on my tenth.
When I was little, the library was my favorite place.
I was born in Lone Pine, California. My parents liked to move and so did I, for a while. I have roots throughout the United States, but I was mostly raised in Toronto, Canada.
My father was a psychiatric social worker who grew up in the slums of Boston. He was a tough guy who got an education on the GI bill and pulled himself out of his birthright. He married twice, the first time to a woman who left him a widower. Alone with a toddler, I suppose he was determined that it wouldn’t happen to him again, because the second time he married a woman much younger than he was.
She was the product of a Southern family; royalty that included the same Duke family that bought a university and named it after itself. Wilful and rebellious, she scorned Southern convention, rejected the closeted skeletons and wide streak of alcoholism that hid behind decorated formality. She disowned her family, converted to Catholicism, marched for civil rights, and married the older man from a poverty-stricken background. I am the oldest of the seven children she bore, one after the next.
We were brought up in curious contrasts. There were the economies that so many mouths to feed on a middle class income made necessary; (hand-me-down clothes, Tang and powdered milk, peanut butter for ten thousand consecutive school lunches), but my mother’s background dictated private schools, music and dance and art lessons.
I attended St. Michael’s Choir School and studied piano and organ at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. I hated studying anything at all; my mother was determined that I should be a doctor and despaired over my future. I only wanted to read fiction, and did so endlessly. The library was my favorite, enchanted place (it still is). I didn’t realize I was in fact studying for what I wanted to do most.
My father’s plan to not be widowed again fell through, and my mother was suddenly gone when I was 16. He had been ill equipped to raise one child the first time, and now there were eight of them; the youngest only three years old. In some sense we lost him, too.
Life changed, just like that. My behavior guaranteed me a quick expulsion from my exclusive school. I did manage a high school diploma (by the skin of my teeth) but I was mostly happy to leave school for good. I lost an early love, and wandered to Los Angeles. I learned about the streets, and about living in the places that cause most people to lock their car doors when they drive through. I was blessed with the same genes that took my father through life in the mean part of Boston, and survived.
Eventually, I grew up and moved again, first to Atlanta and then back to Canada. I made a living in the 'fixing cars' arena. I live in a very old house on a wooded lot that is infested by dogs and turtles and parrots, and perhaps the ghost of a young girl. My teen-aged son is a light in my life who wants to be an author and a professional football player. I never tell him that both are nearly impossible, because they aren’t.
The library has continued to haunt me. When age said the possibility of a university degree was long past, I decided to try my hand at a novel anyway. Somehow I finished it, and have produced one a year since. I’m working on my tenth.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 2, 2022
This slender volume, Dear Ghost: Fragments and Letters, is a treasure I stumbled on several months ago, and I've returned to it many times since. A unique and bewitching read, it's a collection of lyrical letters -- addressed to the elusive “Ghost” -- that blend the narrator’s memories, musings, imaginings and realizations. His "fragments" roam over miles and collapse time; we don’t so much sit back and read them as lean into them and trust each one to carry us somewhere special. It doesn't hurt to be open to the mysterious, and to believe, at least a little, in magic. Who or where “Ghost” is, well, we’ll never be sure. But whether past, present or future, she’s listening closely, just as we are. These are tender missives to life: about childhood, growing up and moving on, love and loss, loneliness, discovery. About beauty in the everyday. Ranging from poignant to amusing, they are always deeply observant. And though the line between reality and fiction blurs, every letter rings with truth. The narrator’s voice -- original, vulnerable and intensely personal – makes Bob Bickford’s Dear Ghost an unforgettable little book with a big beating heart.
May 29, 2022
wonderful
Strange and haunting and poignant. Dear Ghost is difficult to describe and more difficult to review, since I can’t recall reading anything quite like it.
Trust me, though, when I tell you how I relished every sentence, and how it made me feel both deeply sad and also full of wonder, how perfectly drawn every character was, even the one we never quite meet, and in short, what a beautiful little book this is.
Highly recommended.
Strange and haunting and poignant. Dear Ghost is difficult to describe and more difficult to review, since I can’t recall reading anything quite like it.
Trust me, though, when I tell you how I relished every sentence, and how it made me feel both deeply sad and also full of wonder, how perfectly drawn every character was, even the one we never quite meet, and in short, what a beautiful little book this is.
Highly recommended.
May 10, 2022
Dear Ghost: Fragments and Letters is like a song and a poem, an indie film and a dream. It's way past wistful and whimsical. Love and monsters. It's innocent, ("Blushing is important - because that's when things are real and true"), and wise, ("In my experience, tribes composed of like people are nothing but pure evil.") I don't know how to fully describe this. It's one of the most beautiful book I've ever read. A classic. The short letters that begin "Dear Ghost", and meandering yet on point memory fragments, act as a portal into the beauty, joy, poignance, angst, and harshness of life. The letters are to a young girl he knew and the woman she may have become. One bit after another spoke to me. The part about the Greyhound bus is hilarious; I swear I was there.
Georgous photos of two dogs that convey an earthy and mysical magic separate the chapters. "No matter how much I write," the author says, "I can't tell you everything because some stories don't have words. I use crayons and do my best." The photographs gift us with that complimentary, elusive piece visual arts provide.
Georgous photos of two dogs that convey an earthy and mysical magic separate the chapters. "No matter how much I write," the author says, "I can't tell you everything because some stories don't have words. I use crayons and do my best." The photographs gift us with that complimentary, elusive piece visual arts provide.
October 4, 2025
It’s not a story, just incredibly beautiful writing and a refreshingly original way of looking at things and then describing them in a way that resonated with me, strongly
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews