“We are a country of immigrants and every family has a story to tell.” A MEMORY FOR MIRRY, a literary historical novel, is set on the Atlantic coast of America in the 20th Century. Thirty-three year old, Mirry McPherson has learned to accept her memory losses, apparently the result of an injury from an automobile accident in 1951 at nine-years old. However, in 1975, after years of having unexplained attacks, including fainting spells and blackouts, she is determined to find out what is making her so sick. Now pregnant with their second child, she and her lawyer husband, Gavin, and their two-year old daughter (Lizzie) return to the old lighthouse estate in the ‘Village of Bellevue at Hallowed Sound’, a port town on the Atlantic Ocean on the southeastern coast of America. Mirry has inherited the estate from her paternal great grandfather, Ivor MacIvor, a direct descendant of Bellevue’s ‘Founding Father’, Donovan Angus MacIvor, a Scottish builder of lighthouses. Despite the locals advising them that ‘Ivor’s ghost haunts the old place’ and that he had conspired with the Nazis during the war, they move forward with their plans to reconstruct the estate into a modern day ‘Bed and Breakfast’ Inn and Nautical Museum. Not long after arriving at the Lighthouse, Mirry becomes very ill, experiencing multiple unexplained blackouts and fainting spells. Gavin is worried but Mirry is adamant that she wants to continue with their plans to refurbish. She remembers promising Ivor “never to forget”, quoting the words of his Scottish family motto: “Numquam Obliviscar”. However, as hard as Mirry tries, she can’t remember what it was that Ivor had told her ‘not to forget’. The more she tries, the sicker she gets. As Gavin takes on his first case as the defense lawyer in a appeal trial of a man convicted of a murder in 1950, his investigations lead him back to Mirry, when she was eight years old and living with Ivor at the MacIvor Lighthouse Mansion.
The novel is appropriate for young adult and adult readers of all ages. It is the third stand-alone and non-sequential volume in the author’s collection of books launched in 2014 and titled, THE SCATTERED SEEDS, TALES FROM THE ‘GREAT MELTING POT’. These stories are American fictions set in history depicting the lives of the many immigrant families that have become a part of the ‘great melting pot’. The first volume, ANEW, and the second volume, DARBY’S ROAD are available in paper at createspace.com and Amazon.com or as Kindle at amazon.com. They are also ‘print-on-demand’ at your favorite bookstores in worldwide distributions and available at your favorite libraries upon request.
Maura Clu Gallagher is from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, U.S.A. A retired Art/Computer Teacher in the Pittsburgh Public Schools, she is enjoying her senior years engaging in her ‘passion’, Writing. For more information about her and her work, please visit her personally designed website, “You like to read. I like to write. Together, we make a great pair.” www.clugallagher.com/
Maura continues continues to live in the Pittsburgh area and in her ‘home-away-from-home’, Ocean City Maryland, with her husband of forty years and her family, including eight grandchildren.
When the man who cost him his job offers Jack Teagarden a beachside house-sitting assignment, he latches on to it like a man overboard. For a child of Silicon Valley, the counterculture freakiness of Santa Cruz is hard to deal with, until Jack’s life coach takes him to an all-night drumming party. Under the spell of a thunderous stream of percussion, a pigeon-raising witch named Audrey LaBrea and a tragically unmarked plate of brownies, Jack wakes up with grass stains all over his body and rumors that he initiated a naked light-saber battle. So what’s harder, fighting the freaks? Or realizing that you are one? From the award-winning author of The Popcorn Girl and Nature Boy.
“English, Major skillfully navigates the world and young adulthood through a lens only accessible to someone young, experiencing things for the first time. As a reader, I felt the sense of possibility, infinity, and creativity of my early 20s in a way that could only have been related by someone who captured those stories and thoughts as they themselves were in the throes of them.”This is a collection of short stories from an English major exploring Wolfcats, shapeshifters, mermaids, mood swings, rock climbers, bad rapper names, etc. Solo Ruffian delivers a fantastic collection of short stories sure to relate to anyone that is young.”An honest collection of short stories fueled by the unique thoughts, relationships, and experiences that accompany the journey into post-college independence.”If you enjoy coming-of-age short stories, you’ll love this one. About the Author: Solo Ruffian is the pen name of Jack Riewe, a recent college graduate who lives in Austin, Texas. Jack is a part-time climber, full-time writer, and believes moshing at concerts is the best form of exercise. “English, Major” is his first published book.
Robert Gaze, the renowned war photographer, waits in hospital for the results of a battery of tests he has endured. A terminal diagnosis sharpens Gaze’s inclination to record his experiences of the Vietnam War, in particular the story behind the photograph that catapulted him onto the world stage.
Gaze has resisted many invitations over time to discuss the photograph, satisfied merely with the name of the Marine, and the knowledge that he never came home.
As Gaze traces the journey of the young subject of his photograph, he begins to recount his own story of how he arrived in Saigon; on the path towards the photograph that in turn would define his life.
This is a list of Poems that only comes from that space at the edge. The edge of lost, the edge of clear insanity.
