Next year, we will have lived in our house 40 years. We raised our two sons here. Every room (and the basement) has stories to tell.
But we’re newbies compared to our parents. My mother lived in the house in New Orleans I was raised in for 57 years. My mother-in-law has lived in her house in Shreveport for a mind-boggling 77 years.
Houses provide shelter and family community. They can be a refuge. They can oppress. They are workplaces. They require ongoing care and attention. Houses can inspire our hopes and haunt our dreams.
As Diane Lockward has discovered, houses have often served as the subjects for poets. And she’s edited an anthology, What the House Knows, that shows exactly that.
In early May, I was readingA Farewell to Armsby Ernest Hemingway. Coincidentally, a writer named Harvey Stanbrough announced a writing contest for short stories inspired by any work of Hemingway's.
This must be a sign, I thought; I'm right in the thick of what's known as the great love story of World War I.
I wrote a story and submitted it. It wasn't one of the stories chosen as top 3 (with a little prize money) but it was chosen to be in the e-book anthology, "Echoes of Hemingway."
The title of my story is "Sonnets to Psalms," and it's about what happens to the main character in A Farewell to Arms, Frederick Henry, after the war ends. The title comes from a sonnet written in 1590 by George Peal, which some literary critics believe inspired Hemingway to write his World War I story. The sonnet’s title: “A Farewell to Arms.”
Then it became a matter of fitting pieces together – the town of Montreux, Switzerland, where Frederick and Catherine lived; an abbey not too far away; and some basic research.
The anthology contains 20 stories by 13 writers (a few overachievers wrote more than one story), and it has some very fine short stories covering a surprising number of genres. My own story would be categorized as general or historical fiction.
You can find more information about the anthology at https://payhip.com/b/3ibI5, and it will be available on the various book sites July 12. It can be pre-ordered at Amazon or at Books2Read. And it’s available right now at Harvey’s web site.
I’d never done this with a short story before, and it was actually a lot of fun.
Dheepa Maturi served as Tweetspeak Poetry’s Poet Laura for 2024. We learned quite a bit about the monarch butterfly, as she wrote several posts for the Tweetspeak-proclaimed “Year of the Monarch.” And we learned she cared deeply about the environment, and she helped readers celebrate Earth Day. We discovered how poetry could be applied to environmental and climate concerns.
And now we know what she’s been up to since then – publishing an ecothriller, entitled 108.
It’s sometime in the near future. The planet’s climate is in crisis, with the air in the cities almost unbreathable. Farmland has been affected as well, raising the possibility of famine. Agricultural production has been divided into 20 zones, and research has been underway to find ways to make those zones more productive.
After reading the short story “Abscond” by Abraham Verghese, I was convinced that it was at least partially based on his own life. When I read the biography on his web page, I knew I had guessed correctly.
Ravi is a young teen who is turning out to be one of the best tennis players of his generation. An only child, he lives with his parents in suburban New Jersey. His father is a surgeon who commutes daily into New York City, maintaining a unvaried schedule of returning home at lunchtime to eat and take a short nap. Ravi’s mother runs the household. His parents maintain a network of friendships with other Indian-Americans.
The day starts like any other day. Ravi’s father goes to work and returns home for lunch and his nap. Except this day, he never wakes up. And Ravi’s life changes forever.
Abraham Verghese
“Abscond” is Ravi’s story, and it is a story of family life, family upheaval, grief, and a boy having to grow up faster than his years. It’s also a beautiful story of how friendship and maintaining tradition steers a family through crisis. It brings tears to the eyes more than once.
Verghese is a doctor and vice chair at the School of Medicine at Stanford University. He is also a writer of fiction and non-fiction. His works include My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story, The Tennis Partner: A Story of Friendship and Loss, and the novels Cutting for Stone and The Covenant of Water. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2016.
I haven’t read Verghese’s novels, but if “Abscond” is any indication, then I have a fine reading experience ahead.
In visits to London, I’ve walked the short two blocks of Essex Street many times. It’s in the area called the Temple, and it connects the North Embankment and Fleet Street. I’d walk from the Temple tube station, travel up Essex, and arrive at Fleet. Historically, the buildings have been occupied by law offices; The Royal Courts of Justice site right on Fleet across from Essex. It was here that I located the offices of the character Trevor Barry in Dancing King and Dancing Prophet, counselor and advisor to Michael Kent-Hughes. I was completely charmed this week to read about the street at A London Inheritance, thinking “that’s where my character works!”
Historian Eric Strener has two articles this week, both about a famous figure of colonial and Revolutionary America named Samuel Brady. He was once a household name, but he’s largely forgotten today. He became famous for the rescue of a frontier woman, Jane Stoops, and became even more famous with what was called “Brady’s Leap,” which may or may not have been true.
At Front Porch Republic, writer and poet Benjamin Myers considers the Oklahoma landscape, remembering scenes from childhood, and how he came to internalize the concept of nature. You can see some of his books here; his poetry collection Black Sunday is a personal favorite.
I read The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth way back in college; I think I even glowingly reviewed it for the campus newspaper. Forsyth died this past week at age 86, and the tributes are pouring in. The Guardianhas a fine obituary; Nigel Jones at The Spectator writes about the Frederick Forsyth he knew.
