Krakow

THE BOOK: Krakow.

PUBLISHED IN: 2018

THE AUTHOR:  Sean Akerman.

THE PUBLISHER: Harvard Square Editions.

SUMMARY: A man moves into a Brooklyn apartment and finds the journals left behind by the previous tenants. As he reads the journals, he discovers two people wrestling with why and how their love disappeared. Krakow is set in the present day, amid the streets of Brooklyn. Divided into two parts–his and hers–the accounts detail the final three months of a relationship: its longings, misunderstandings, fears, and hopes.

THE BACK STORY: When I moved to Brooklyn from Maine in 2006, I found in my first apartment two journals left behind by the previous tenants. Then–and for a long time afterward–I was ensorcelled by the stories of those strangers, who wrote about the minutiae and dramas of their days, as well as the end of their relationship. Their lives form the bedrock of this novella, though I lost the journals years ago, so the novella owes a greater debt to imagination and fiction than it does to any effort at historical re-telling.

 

WHY THIS TITLE?: I’m drawn to sparse titles: often single words that evoke some question or mystery. Much of this story takes place in the walls of a Brooklyn apartment, as well as inside the walls of the characters’ minds. But they each speak of a trip they took to Krakow together in which they were, at least momentarily, the best versions of themselves. So as a place, Krakow and its connotations loom large. I’ve also spent time in Krakow. It is by far the most compelling city I’ve visited, and I felt the need to write about that.

WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT? For me, this book evokes a sense of anonymity that I miss greatly about New York. It’s been about five years since I displaced myself from the city, and what I remember most is the organismal feel of being around other lives, other histories, the regular loss of self. Someone might want to read this novella to be immersed in that. It is also a story about youngish love, one that may feel familiar to many people, its proximities and distances. There is a car wreck quality to these pages, too, insofar we read of the final three months of a relationship, one that can be hard to look away from even as it is hard to look toward. It gives some truth to the adage that people are always most interesting when they’re falling apart.

REVIEW COMMENTS: “With Krakow, Akerman presents characters to be explored through their writings and interrelation, all of whom become fully realized and complex, flesh-and-blood people. As such, readers will alternately care about them, empathize with them, dislike them, and get frustrated by them. We join in their victories and defeats, their regrets and yearnings, and their complicated lives. It remains a testament to Akerman, with the notion that what is written lingers in the mind of the reader long after the book has ended.” -Newfound Review

“Krakow is an intensely literary text that rewards the reader’s close attention to the nuances of thought and feeling experienced by the struggling couple, described with hermetic, elusive prose. Akerman is particularly skilled in delineating the distinctive voices of his protagonists, as well as their conflicting perspectives and needs. The woman’s journal entries are especially impressive: her self-understanding and powers of self-expression contrast vividly with her partner’s chopped-up, disconnected evasions and retreats. Krakow is also a New York story: the various quarters of the city, its streets and bars, the girdling ocean, are an enfolding presence, pierced only by a moment’s betrayal in another city and, above all, by a mysteriously significant visit to Auschwitz, the connotations of which are powerfully suggestive. Devotees of the contemporary American literary movement will respond with enthusiasm to this exemplary novella.” – Readers’ Favorite

“Even if love ends, the marks it leaves are indelible.” – Forward Reviews

“This short novel captures beautifully the twilight of a relationship: the doubts we have about our partners, about ourselves, and our pain at having to leave something so familiar yet wrong.” – Manhattan Book Review.

AUTHOR PROFILE: I was born in the lakes region of central Maine in 1983 and moved to New York in 2006 to pursue a PhD in psychology. I held faculty appointments at Hunter College, Sarah Lawrence College, and Bennington College, and now I work as a therapist amid the varieties of trauma in the North Woods. The moonlighting part of my working life has been as a poet, novelist, and writer of non-fiction. In addition to Krakow, I’ve published a novel, Outposts; a poetry collection, The Magnitudes; and a study of exile, Words and Wounds. Currently, I’m seeking publication and representation for two collections of poetry and a novella about a con-man in regret at the end of his life.

AUTHOR COMMENTS: At the risk of sounding obtuse, the form of Krakow was an extension of its content. In other words, the novella form “fit” the story I was trying to tell. Novellas on the whole are vastly underrated and not utilized enough. Their brevity forces upon a writer a need to lift the story off the ground with intention and force. For reasons beyond my comprehension, many dramas are well-suited to this form, which perhaps says something about life itself.

SAMPLE CHAPTER:Amazon has previewed the first few pages here.

WHERE ELSE TO BUY IT: It’s available on Amazon, as well as the website of Harvard Square Editions.

PRICE: $22.95.

CONTACT THE AUTHOR: akerman.sean@gmail.com; seanakerman83 on Instagram |seanakerman.weebly.com

Phobophobia

THE BOOK: Phobophobia.

PUBLISHED IN: 2019 (a re-released edition of the 1987 out-of-print Prickly Pear Press version),

THE AUTHOR: Karl Elder.

THE PUBLISHER: Cyberwit.

THE BACK STORY: In my twenties I wanted to write what used to be called a longpoem just to see if I was capable of doing so with limited life experience. Nothing hit me for years. Finally, illumination. Literally. I saw a child in dark closet cover the beam of a lit flashlight with his mouth. Holy Hades! His cheeks flamed like distant tail lights. Claustrophobia came to mind, and later, alone, I let my mind wander in pure wonder, which triggered moments of humor, never having appreciated some of the fears expressed by friends and family—only my own childhood fear, not suddenly finding myself in, say, tight quarters, but frozen, unable to climb down a ladder off of a roof or some other height I’d scaled. All my worst dreams are about sweaty hands hugging cliffs, tree limbs, or metals, like the uppermost cables on expansion bridges. The terrifying, teasing absurdity of it all. The hole in the stomach, that roller coaster drop.

So—leaping now to the point—I made a pilgrimage those years ago through all of my spiral notebooks, found phrases, images, sounds, paradoxes, scraps of hilarity. Recopied them all on small strips of paper. Chose, one at a time, particular phobias listed in Steadman’s Medical Encyclopedia that intrigued me, and rifled through piles of those notebook gems until one or two or three or four of them felt right.

The process was analogous to working on a term paper as a student: observation, reading, notes, assembly, writing, discarding, eventually producing chains of associations, only now using sometimes sounds, sometimes logic, sometimes the subconscious, etc., as instruments of order. It took ten years. So liberating the chore was that I’d shy away from it for stretches at a time, not wanting the experience to end. When the journal Poet and Critic grabbed four of those poems, I knew I had a viable manuscript. Dave Oliphant graciously lent his Prickly Pear Press imprint to the first edition of the book in conjunction with my literary magazine, Seems.

WHY THIS TITLE?: Having exhausted my notebooks, I gathered all the pieces—56 of them (actually 57, but I threw one out because, simply, I wasn’t satisfied with it)—and I concluded that Phobophobia was the most suggestive of a handful of titles that had surfaced. At the time, I had found no documented case of an affliction, phobophobia. I suppose one might think, though, that such a title was as natural as it might have been inventive, given how many times I’d penned the word root.

WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT? The collection is apparently (dare I say?) as wild and exciting to read as it was to write. I chose to list blurbs in appreciation of Phobophobia on the back of my following book in 1994, A Man in Pieces (how could I have imagined that three of the five authors of the blurbs would subsequently become Pulitzer Prize recipients?):

A truly remarkable collection full of strong altogether original pieces. –Lucien Stryk

I am greatly enjoying Phobophobia. What a good idea. What good poems. –Mark Strand

Very original! Crazy and wonderful. –Charles Simic

. . . A brilliant idea well and faithfully pursued. –William Matthews

. . . wonderfully various and surprising . . . –Stephen Dunn

REVIEW COMMENTS:

“Wisconsin poet Karl Elder’s full-length collection Phobophobia personifies our fears, presenting them in alphabetical order from acrophobia (height) to zoophobia (animals), with a handy glossary in the back. In between A and Z lurk the usual suspects: darkness, death, and ghosts—along with obscure ones like fear of machines, writing, time, symbols, and jealousy. In this collection, the touch of surrealism inherent in Elder’s style is enhanced by the skewed perceptions of the various sufferers narrating these poems. The book’s psycho-poetic explorations range from cathartic to enjoyably ridiculous.” —Michael Kriesel in Stoneboat

AUTHOR PROFILE: Karl Elder is Lakeland University’s Fessler Professor of Creative Writing and Poet in Residence. Among his honors are the Christopher Latham Sholes Award from the Council of Wisconsin Writers; a Pushcart Prize; the Chad Walsh, Lorine Niedecker, and Lucien Stryk Awards; and two appearances in The Best American Poetry. His most recent books of poems are Gilgamesh at the Bellagio from The National Poetry Review Award Book Series and a chapbook, The Houdini Monologues. Forthcoming in 2020 are Reverie’s Ilk: Collected Prose Poems and Alpha Images: Poems Selected and New. Elder’s novel, Earth as It Is in Heaven, appeared in 2016 from Pebblebrook Press.

AUTHOR COMMENTS: Thrilled one day by an out-of-the-blue invitation from Cyberwit to consider sending the publisher a manuscript, I had just previously bemoaned that Phobophobia was out of print, since some readers considered the collection to be among my most engaging and innovative work. I’m very pleased to have it back in circulation. Humor, after all, is perhaps the best medicine for what haunts us.

SAMPLE:

(Acrophobia)

Life is just time to fill between my act.

— Karl Wallenda

But what we want to know down here

is what’s death.

Something like perpetual vertigo?

The body’s waters’

lust for their own level?

Or is it not that simple?

Like a life spent

trying to get your grip in a thimble.

WHERE ELSE TO BUY IT: Cyberwit.net Amazon.com.

PRICE: $15.00

CONTACT THE AUTHOR: http://www.karlelder.com

elderk@lakeland.edu

Weather Report, July 27

Krakow, Poland (Deposit photos).

Our currently featured books, “Family, Genus, Species,” by Kevin Allardice, “The Zipper Club,” by Thomas Mannella and “Kimber,” by J.K. Hingey, can be found by scrolling down below this post, or by clicking the author’s name on our Authors page.

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UPCOMING ON SNOWFLAKES IN A BLIZZARD, JULY 28-AUGUST 3

“KRAKOW,” BY SEAN AKERMAN

Writes Sean: “I’m drawn to sparse titles: often single words that evoke some question or mystery. Much of this story takes place in the walls of a Brooklyn apartment, as well as inside the walls of the characters’ minds. But they each speak of a trip they took to Krakow together in which they were, at least momentarily, the best versions of themselves. So as a place, Krakow and its connotations loom large. I’ve also spent time in Krakow. It is by far the most compelling city I’ve visited, and I felt the need to write about that.”

“FROM THE LAKE HOUSE,” BY KRISTEN RADEMACHER.

Dizzy with grief after a shattering breakup, Kristen did what any sensible thirty-nine-year-old woman would do: she fled, abandoning her well-ordered life in metropolitan Boston and impulsively relocating to a college town in North Carolina to start anew with a freshly divorced southerner. Dismissing the neon signs that flashed Rebound Relationship, Kristen was charmed by the host of contrasts with her new beau. He loved hunting and country music, she loved yoga and NPR; he worried about nothing, she worried about everything. The luster of her new romance and small-town lifestyle soon—and predictably—faded, but by then a pregnancy test stick had lit up. As Kristen’s belly grew, so did her concern about the bond with her partner—and so did a fierce love for her unborn child. Ready or not, she was about to become a mother. And then, tragedy struck.

Poignant and insightful, From the Lake House explores the echoes of rash decisions and ill-fated relationships, the barren and disorienting days an aching mother faces without her baby, and the mysterious healing that can take root while rebuilding a life gutted from loss.

“PHOBOPHOBIA,” BY KARL ELDER

From one reviewer: “Wisconsin poet Karl Elder’s full-length collection Phobophobia personifies our fears, presenting them in alphabetical order from acrophobia (height) to zoophobia (animals), with a handy glossary in the back. In between A and Z lurk the usual suspects: darkness, death, and ghosts—along with obscure ones like fear of machines, writing, time, symbols, and jealousy. In this collection, the touch of surrealism inherent in Elder’s style is enhanced by the skewed perceptions of the various sufferers narrating these poems. The book’s psycho-poetic explorations range from cathartic to enjoyably ridiculous.”

Family, Genus, Species

This week’s other featured books, “Kimber,” by L.K. Hingey and “The Zipper Club: A Memoir,” by Thomas Mannella, can be found by scrolling down below this post, or by clicking the author’s name on our Authors page.

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THE BOOK: Family, Genus, Species

PUBLISHED IN: 2017.

THE AUTHOR:  Kevin Allardice

THE EDITOR: Jon Roemer

THE PUBLISHER: Outpost19

SUMMARY: Vee just wants to know where to put the present. She’s come to her nephew’s fourth birthday party — at a sprawling urban farm in Berkeley, California — and has brought a simple gift that she hopes will allow her access into the family she feels alienated from. But when Vee’s older sister admonishes her, saying the invitation explicitly told people to not bring gifts, Vee sets out — through a backyard maze of kale plants, fruit trees, and unrecognizable but surely healthy flora — to give her nephew his birthday present.  Along the way, she must negotiate with party guests, capricious children and hostile adults, and those who insist they know more about her than she does. As night falls, and civil unrest flares in the city beyond the backyard, what began as biting satire becomes nightmarish and violent, and Vee’s straightforward mission becomes an epic quest to claim both personal identity and human connection.

THE BACK STORY: I began writing this at the end of 2014, during the start of the Black Lives Matter protests, and I was interested in the ways that privileged, white, ostensibly progressive families were navigating, or failing to navigate, that cultural reckoning. I began thinking about that in conjunction with the Luis Bunuel film The Exterminating Angel — in which a group of elites become mysteriously trapped in a mansion — and that’s when this young woman’s visit to her sister’s backyard had absorbed enough energy to begin generating its own momentum.

WHY THIS TITLE?: The title — Family, Genus, Species — is, of course, part of the taxonomic rank of biology, and it popped up organically in the first chapter, at a moment when the main character — who once aspired to a career in the sciences, but dropped out of college. She often turns to orderly systems of thought to make sense of the chaos of her family relationships, and so when I typed those words in the first chapter, it resonated immediately, and the title stuck.

REVIEW COMMENTS: In a review at Full-Stop, Nina Renata Aron called the novel a “complex, layered not simply with satire, but with emotional revelations about family, community, sexuality, parenthood, race, and class.” And Gloria Beth Amodeo at the Literary Review wrote that “Family Genus Species is a novel about structures, physical ones like urban gardens and inner ones born from trauma. It’s a whip-smart tale of a simple, singular desire that snowballs into destruction and takes all the structures with it.”

AUTHOR PROFILE: I’m the author of one previous novel, Any Resemblance to Actual Persons (Counterpoint Press, 2013). I currently teach high school in the Bay Area, where I live with my wife, son, and our pet rabbit, Harvey.

SAMPLE CHAPTER: Please see a sample chapter in the preview at Amazon.

WHERE ELSE TO BUY IT: Despite the Amazon link above, please patronize Indie Bound.

PRICE: $9.99

CONTACT THE AUTHOR: kevinallardice.com

The Zipper Club

THE BOOK: The Zipper Club: A Memoir

PUBLISHED IN: 2016.

THE AUTHOR:  Thomas Mannella.

THE EDITOR: Dawn Ius.

THE PUBLISHER: Jessica Bell.

 

SUMMARY: For years Thomas Mannella observed the intrigue of people who believed him when he said the scars across his chest were from an alley knifing. This was a lie, but the more scarred by surgeries he felt, the greater his denial. He detached himself from the deteriorating valve in his heart, which he hoped would make him feel normal, and appear that way to others, but living this way, he didn’t own the marks; the marks owned him. With every beat, blood leaked back into his left ventricle. His heart ballooned. Finally, his time ran out: he collected his college diploma and walked off campus straight into the OR. He had long been a member of the zipper club.

THE BACK STORY:  I began writing The Zipper Club just before my first son was born and without knowing I was writing about my heart self.  Half a dozen years had passed since the valve-replacement surgery that saved my life, a surgery that had, in part, prevented me from going to graduate school for an MFA in creative writing.  These circumstances, and the approach of fatherhood, triggered a switch in my subconscious that lit several dark corners: I wanted to publish a worthy book without an MFA, I wanted to leave some record of my health history for my soon-to-be-born son, and enough time had passed for me to shine a light on my heart history and its role in shaping my identity.  Seven years and two kids later, I found myself holding a copy of the book, realizing for the first time that other people were actually going to read the thing.

WHY THIS TITLE?:  I didn’t settle on the title until revising the manuscript for the final time.  Folks who have undergone any sort of heart surgery refer to their scars as zippers, and so, as I finished revising my own book and reading Mary Karr’s first memoir, The Liar’s Club, two wires touched in my brain, thankfully, and I realized my title had existed all along.

WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT? Not everyone has physical scars, but we all carry burdens — figurative scars — that we tuck deep inside our psyches, and these are perhaps the most powerful forces shaping our identities.  Additionally, there is a fair amount of writing about the physical trauma associated with open heart surgery, but much less about the emotional and psychological challenges that accompany diagnosis, pre-surgery preparation, ICU-level recovery, and beyond.  The committee at The American Journal of Nursing, which chose The Zipper Club as the 2016 Book of the Year, plainly stated as much, indicating that the experiences I portray confirmed their suspicions about just how difficult open heart surgery can be, especially for adolescents.

REVIEW COMMENTS:

“Like a pitcher’s muscles charged by the kinetic chain that leads to a perfect fastball, Mannella’s The Zipper Club rushes the reader along his–and his heart’s–frantic journey through pride, craving, and destructiveness to the pivotal moment we feared would come. A rawly honest, extraordinarily detailed, and astonishingly beautiful account of one hard-beating, passionate young life.” —Jane Alison, author of The Sisters Antipodes.”

 

“In the way a good memoirist can, going inward (deep into his own defective heart) in order to go outward, Mannella reveals we’re all of us members of The Zipper Club.” — Bob Cowser, Jr., author of Green Fields.

 

“The Zipper Club is both scary and inspiring, offering valuable perspective for all of us who have hidden our shame and fought to appear normal. I held my breath from the first page to the last.  Eloquent, insightful, and intensely engaging.” — Annita Sawyer, author of Smoking Cigarettes, Eating Glass.

 

AUTHOR PROFILE: Thomas Mannella was born and raised in Naples, NY, and educated at St. Lawrence University and St. John Fisher College.  Winner of the Carol Houck Smith Award in Nonfiction for the 2016 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, he was also a Bread Loaf contributor and a Pushcart Prize nominee in 2015.  The Zipper Club: A Memoir (Vine Leaves Press) is his first book, and has been selected as the 2016 American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year in the category of creative works.  His nonfiction, poetry, and short stories have appeared in SLAB, Blood and Thunder: Musings on the Art of Medicine, The Lindenwood Review, The Cape Rock, Gival, Ghost Road Press, and several other publications.  Along the way, he has worked as: a tennis instructor, a landscaper, a paint-mixing, pipe-and-glass-cutting hardware store cashier, a wine-tent bartender, a factory assembly lineman (twice), a tutor, an intern at Penguin Publishing,  a door-to-door coupon salesman (for one day), a childcare provider, and a teacher.  He lives in the Finger Lakes of New York with his wife and sons around the corner from his boyhood home.

AUTHOR COMMENTS: In many ways, The Zipper Club is a love letter to the place I grew up, the people I grew up with, and the hopes I have for my own sons’ formative years — this figurative heart pulses throughout the story.

SAMPLE CHAPTER: For a sample chapter, please visit this Amazon page: The Zipper Club: a memoir.

LOCAL OUTLETS: Artizans in Naples, NY.

WHERE ELSE TO BUY IT: Purchase The Zipper Club through the following outlets.

PRICE: $15.99.

CONTACT THE AUTHOR:

WEBSITE: thomasmannella.com

EMAIL: tnmannella@gmail.com 

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/thomas.mannella

INSTAGRAM: tnmannella

Kimber

THE BOOK: KIMBER: Book One of the Elyrian Chronicles.

PUBLISHED IN: 2020

THE AUTHOR: L.K. Hingey.

THE EDITOR: Emerging author Hannah Cerney-Brooks & English teacher Katelyn Cooney.

THE PUBLISHER: Indie Published (KDP)

ONE-SENTENCE LOGLINE: Join fierce new heroine, Kimber, on a dangerous journey against corruption as she flees her underground refugee city, traveling through a surface world ravaged by solar winds and scarred by war in search for the evidence of inhumane genetic testing that may be all the can free her people from a life of oppression and segregation.

SUMMARY: KIMBER is a suspenseful, dark, and visually stunning dystopian tale of the fight against corruption and oppression. A cataclysmic solar event drives the remnants of humanity into a subterranean refugee city and it is here, in the shadows of the underground, that an experimental subspecies of Man is being raised. The 23 Auroreans, human embryos with the fused DNA of Earth’s two most radiation-resistant animal genomes, grow and come of age in a city where they are forced to answer a life-changing question. Are they citizens or are they slaves, created to serve as the city’s critical link to the poisoned surface world? Join Kimber, her brothers, and her sisters on a daring journey where self-reliance, discovery, and love come to life.

THE BACK STORY: “Inspiration for KIMBER: Book One of The Elyrian Chronicles: I was a helicopter pilot in the U.S. Army, until I fractured my spine while flying, and was forced to medically retire. I was obviously quite torn up, as I had plans to stay in the military until retirement. I had loved it, lived it, and breathed it. So, I took a five-month trip backpacking the Appalachian Trail, alone. Along the 1800+ miles of the trail, I had the freedom to sort out my thoughts and perceptions of the world around me. I have always been intrigued by social movements, governance issues, injustice, and humanity’s constant fight against oppression.

“I also had a very complex childhood, which plays into my many interpretations about who we are and our place in this great big, beautiful world. The storyline for KIMBER was born in the mountains, and in January of 2020, I began writing it down. It spilled out within three months and it quickly moved into editing and publishing. Works in progress are Books Two and Three of The Elyrian Chronicles, and two Elyrian prequels.”

WHY THIS TITLE?: Kimber is the protagonist. She is one of the first of 23 grafted humans (embryos modified and spliced with radiation-resistant DNA) Kimber is a visually stunning character and is covered in thousands of red and orange scales, and becomes the hero that she did not plan to be, but her people needed her to be. She is complex and battles demons within herself; demons that were born of highly controversial decisions. Many names were brainstormed for Book One of The Elyrian Chronicles, but KIMBER, in its simplicity and intrigue, was the clear choice!

WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT? KIMBER’s world is a futuristic dystopia. The premise is quite unique and has a highly scientific base/ built history to play off of. A rogue planet, Elyria, was pulled into our Sun in the year 2109. Due to the newly introduced elements in the Sun’s core, solar activity becomes increasingly volatile. 20 years after impact, a solar flare of unprecedented intensity lashes out. The resultant CME, a dangerous and all too real charged cloud of particles, slams into the Earth’s magnetosphere, wreaking havoc on the ozone layer. With no ozone, and a world riddled by radiation poisoning, the biosphere crumbles and the only survivors are a group of humans who have sought refuge in an underground city.

Fans of books like The Martian, The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner, Mortal Engines, and fans of movies like The Matrix and Avatar, will find KIMBER’s chilling dystopian tale fresh and invigorating.

REVIEW COMMENTS:

5-STARS: This is quite a good read! The nuances of KIMBER leaves you asking for more. Seeing that this is a series, it leaves ample opportunity for developing characters. Some interesting moments are when Kimber loses hope for her people but finds it anew through compassion, a level head, and sheer determination. The mix between science and the start of the human condition leaves a feeling of apprehension and joy. I highly recommend this book. (verified Amazon purchase)

5-STARS: I could NOT put this book down! Great read! I can’t wait for the next book in the series to come out. (verified Amazon purchase)

5-STARS: Kimber does a great job of drawing on scientific concepts to create an immersive story. I grew attached to the characters and was shocked by the end of it! I’m already looking forward to the sequel! (verified Amazon purchase)

5-STARS: I had the pleasure of reading Kimber: Book One of The Elyrian Chronicles and thoroughly enjoyed it from beginning to end. It was more thought provoking than I had imagined it would be, but I truly appreciated the science and imagery the author brought to the forefront of my mind. The beginning of the book was filled with so much information and descriptive wording that I could not help but feel like I was inside the story all along! The second part of the book brought more action into the mix, none of which would have been understandable had part 1 not been filled with the history of the world and the science behind it. My favorite part of Kimber was the colorful scenery that was mixed into the new, colorless world the citizens of Inanna had to live in. The Aurorean’s colors were magnificent and their personalities were lovable and fun! It felt like they could have been my friends in reality! There were all sorts of other beautiful colors swirled into the journey the main character, Kimber, embarked on.

AUTHOR PROFILE: L.K. Hingey was born, raised, and enlisted into the U.S. Army out of Detroit Michigan. She graduated from the University of North Dakota in 2012 as a private and commercial helicopter pilot with a Bachelor of Science in Aeronautics, before commissioning as a U.S. Army officer. She has since medically retired from the military and continues the Army lifestyle as an Active Duty spouse. She resides with her husband, Jonathon, who is U.S. Army Blackhawk pilot. L.K.’s many interests include her dogs, fitness, backpacking, traveling, and writing. Upcoming works include Books Two and Three of The Chronicles of Elyria, and Books One and Two of The Elyrian Prequels!

AUTHOR COMMENTS: The central theme is the fight against oppression and injustice. It is communicated by the dangerous journey that Kimber embarks upon to discover the deep roots of corruption of the governing entity, and resultantly becomes the savior of her people. As she journeys, she discovers some truths are darker than others, and fights to confront demons regarding her own past. I believe that KIMBER’s story is incredibly relevant to everything that is happening in the world right now and that readers may find a deep connection to the struggle again segregation.

SAMPLE EXCERPT: Attached at the end of questionnaire!

WHERE TO BUY IT: Amazon https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B089CXDQSL/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1

PRICE:

EBook……………$2.99

Paperback……. $10.99

CONTACT THE AUTHOR:

Website……….. Lkhingeybooks.com Email…………… lkhingeybooks@gmail.com Instagram…….. http://www.instagram.com/lkhingeybooks

Facebook……… @lkhingeybooks

SAMPLE EXCERPT:

(Newly revised PROLOGUE that will be debuting in edition two of KIMBER!)

Prologue

Kimberly’s eyes fluttered shut. She could feel the pressure behind her brow bones, constant and unrelenting. The sensation swelled and throbbed, threatening to take over her sight completely. Kimberly inhaled sharply and felt a solitary tear drop off her lashes. The sickness was consuming her. She steadied her breathing, trying to find refuge beyond the shapeless grey haze that her world was turning into. But it was here in Kimberly’s own mind that the demons raged the fiercest.

Kimberly had no doubt that the council was to blame for the cancer that was devouring her frontal lobe. The illness was too swift, too unnatural to be organic. It did not matter anyways. In some twisted way, Kimberly felt she deserved this. She deserved to have her sight stolen from her and her body consumed from within. She had stolen more than that, from individuals much more innocent than she, in the time of the great panic over 20 years ago.

Shadows impregnated Kimberly’s sinister thoughts, and she was taken back in time to the underground laboratories. She was placing something in a hazy jar filled with a strange yellow fluid. What she was holding was too obscure to make out. Kimberly’s memory splintered, and she shook her head in discomfort. The pressure pulsed between her temples. Kimberly felt unhinged. Disconnected. No matter how hard she tried to anchor herself on the pain of the present, her memories kept dragging her back into the darkness.

She was on a cold metal table. Or was that someone else? Kimberly’s thoughts drifted up to the surface world. Panic. Such unprecedented panic. A solar explosion had just been detected and astronomers forecasted the subsequent cloud of radiation to impact the Earth’s atmosphere in a matter of days. She recalled the footage of the hell-bent flare, lashing out from the Sun’s engorged surface, looping nonstop on every media outlet. Kimberly’s consciousness

drifted back down the four subterranean levels of the laboratory. She looked around in her mind’s eye, committing each atrocity of the Bureau of Race Preservation to memory.

Images that she would normally only revisit in her nightmares flooded Kimberly’s mind. She forced her eyelids to remain shut, compelling herself to stay locked in memory. She knew she had to face her past in order to brace herself for the dark days to come. It did not matter anymore if her actions had been right or wrong. All that mattered now was the safety of her daughter. Kimberly’s hands found their way onto her stomach and her eyelid’s fluttered again. She could feel the phantom kicking of a baby’s feet. Kimberly flushed with warmth, the tender memory igniting her courage more than any amount of anger towards the corrupt council ever could.

The freedom of her daughter, whom Kimberly had lovingly named Kimber, was at stake and though Kimber was no longer a child, Kimberly knew she would do anything to protect her. Even if it meant sacrificing everything. Kimberly knew things that no one else in the underground refugee city knew. She knew of secrets, dark truths of illegal genetic manipulation, and crimes committed by not only by the council, but by her own two hands. Kimberly had sworn to keep her knowledge silent in exchange for her daughter’s safety and had prayed every night since to never have to breech her vow.

In light of the tyranny behind the recent ordinances and the impending governmental decrees though, Kimberly knew the time had come. The council, charged with the care of humanities last surviving city, had grown bold in the segregation of the humans and the grafted. They used fear to control and manipulate their citizens, quietly forcing Kimber and the twenty-two other Auroreans into a life of subservience. Kimberly knew she did not have much time left in this world, but before she would draw her last breath, she would see to it that the truth was exposed.

A water droplet fell from a nearby stalactite, the sound echoing off into distance. Everything was so still that it seemed time itself had frozen. Kimberly exhaled slowly. This was the calm before the storm. Her daughter would soon inherit the torch of freedom and be asked to weather a tempest so terrible, that the thought alone drew another tear down Kimberly’s cheek. Kimber was Inanna’s only hope. Kimberly prayed for her daughter’s safety. She prayed for her daughter’s swiftness. Above all, Kimberly prayed for her

Weather Report, July 20

Our currently featured books,  “Million Dollar Red,” by Gleah Powers, “Orders of Protection,” by Jenna Hollmeyer and “DR COPTR,” by Bill Lohmann, can be found by scrolling down below this post, or by clicking the author’s name on our Authors page.

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UPCOMING ON SNOWFLAKES IN A BLIZZARD, JULY 21-27

“THE ZIPPER CLUB,” BY THOMAS MANNELLA

For years Thomas Mannella observed the intrigue of people who believed him when he said the scars across his chest were from an alley knifing. This was a lie, but the more scarred by surgeries he felt, the greater his denial. He detached himself from the deteriorating valve in his heart, which he hoped would make him feel normal, and appear that way to others, but living this way, he didn’t own the marks; the marks owned him. With every beat, blood leaked back into his left ventricle. His heart ballooned. Finally, his time ran out: he collected his college diploma and walked off campus straight into the OR. He had long been a member of the zipper club.

“FAMILY, GENUS, SPECIES,” BY KEVIN ALLARDICE

Vee just wants to know where to put the present. She’s come to her nephew’s fourth birthday party — at a sprawling urban farm in Berkeley, California — and has brought a simple gift that she hopes will allow her access into the family she feels alienated from. But when Vee’s older sister admonishes her, saying the invitation explicitly told people to not bring gifts, Vee sets out — through a backyard maze of kale plants, fruit trees, and unrecognizable but surely healthy flora — to give her nephew his birthday present.  Along the way, she must negotiate with party guests, capricious children and hostile adults, and those who insist they know more about her than she does. As night falls, and civil unrest flares in the city beyond the backyard, what began as biting satire becomes nightmarish and violent, and Vee’s straightforward mission becomes an epic quest to claim both personal identity and human connection.

“KIMBER,” BY L.K. HINGEY

KIMBER is a suspenseful, dark, and visually stunning dystopian tale of the fight against corruption and oppression. A cataclysmic solar event drives the remnants of humanity into a subterranean refugee city and it is here, in the shadows of the underground, that an experimental subspecies of Man is being raised. The 23 Auroreans, human embryos with the fused DNA of Earth’s two most radiation-resistant animal genomes, grow and come of age in a city where they are forced to answer a life-changing question. Are they citizens or are they slaves, created to serve as the city’s critical link to the poisoned surface world? Join Kimber, her brothers, and her sisters on a daring journey where self-reliance, discovery, and love come to life.

Million Dollar Red

This week’s other featured books, “Orders of Protection,” by Jenn Hollmeyer and “DR COPTR,” by Bill Lohmann, can be found by scrolling down below this post, or by clicking the author’s name on our Author’s page.

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THE BOOK: Million Dollar Red

PUBLISHED IN: 2019.

THE AUTHOR: Gleah Powers

THE EDITOR: Melissa Slayton & Amie McCracken (Vine Leaves Press)

THE PUBLISHER: Jessica Bell, Vine Leaves Press

SUMMARY: Gleah Powers began her adult life at age 14, not as a runaway, but as a “send away” in 1962. Known as Linda in those days, her strong-willed grandmother put her on a greyhound bus to travel alone, cross-country, with no firm plans for a return. It was understood between them that Linda, a young artist, was strong enough. By her early teens she was already the jaded veteran of her mother’s first three divorces. She felt ready for the world, all set to navigate men, sex, and love.

As the 1970s begin, Linda moves to Los Angeles in the shadow of the Manson Murders. She then bolts to New York, and falls in love: first, with a gay friend, next, with a famous art-collecting movie mogul, third, with a wealthy philanthropist descended from the Vanderbilt fortune. In a grand effort to put all these false father figures behind her, she takes up with the leader of a powerful upscale cult who holds a number of otherwise intelligent urban professionals under his great spell.

This dark, blazingly honest, and often jubilant and deeply funny memoir, climaxes with Linda’s attempts to break through as an artist, be it as a painter or performer. She connects herself with the world … but it is a marriage and divorce, served bittersweet, a deathbed visit with her father and an icy refuge in Montana that plunge her into her authentic life.

THE BACK STORY: I didn’t actually decide to write a memoir. Most of the chapters were initially written as stand alone stories and the majority of them were published as such. After some years, it occurred to me that if I revised and connected the stories they might add up to a memoir. A couple of the New York stories took me many years to understand the complexity of what happened and to be able to craft the material in all its fullness.

I guess it depends on the writer, but I believe one has to have enough years of living and enough distance from the events in one’s life to write about them from a holistic perspective.

WHY THIS TITLE?: In 1983 I made a collage titled “Million Dollar Red.” I had no idea that five years later, after more than twenty years of making art, I would start writing. My very first story, the words of which felt channeled through me, mostly while driving on the freeway, turned out to be a monologue I called “Million Dollar Red.” I read it in various venues as a performance art piece. In 1990 my dear friend F.X Feeney (1953-2020) and I directed and produced “Million Dollar Red” as a one-act play in Laguna Beach, CA at John Prince’s Flying Cross Art Center and at Highways Performing Arts Theatre in Santa Monica, CA. The dancer, Sue Hogan, played the daughter and the actor Jane Galloway played the mother. I made the stage set. The 15 minute play can be seen on YouTube and on my website (gleahpowers.com) in the Plays category.

In 2019 Million Dollar Red became the title of my memoir (there were two earlier titles) when one of the editors and I decided that the original monologue I wrote so long ago should be part of the book, although it’s written in a different voice than the rest of the book (I won’t give away whose voice!)and ultimately it became the last chapter of the book. Creativity moves in mysterious, unexpected ways and in its own timing.

WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT? Anyone who wants to read about what it was like to live and survive as a woman in the 1960s, 70s and 80s will find plenty of juicy events in this book. One reviewer called it  “One Wild Ride.” At first, I thought it would only appeal to women but I was wrong. Some of the most insightful and poignant reviews and feedback has been from men, which thrills me.

REVIEW COMMENTS:

“An amazing memoir which recounts in flinty, lucid, riveting prose, the story of an American girl and American history–from desert and mountain country to Manhattan, from bare-bones poverty to flourishing old money wealth, from life-broken failures to international celebrities. Gleah Powers’ story is moving, but never sentimental, absolutely and fearlessly candid, stocked with surprises and some real shocks. Abused, used for her looks, she never stops to feel self-pity, never stops her search for something transcendent.”–James Robison, Whiting Grant winning author of novels and short stories

“Million Dollar Red takes us on a glorious, whirlwind tour of the author’s wild life and dazzling mind. The precision of language and of memory will make you weep, and Powers’ dry wit cuts through any risk of sentimentality. This book is an indelible portrait of the US in the 60’s and 70’s in all its gorgeous, shadowy excess, and a testament to the heart-rending talent of Gleah Powers.”–Alistair McCartney, author of The Disintegrations.

“Divorcees, gamblers, celebrities, cultists?  We now live in the culture that Gleah Powers so prophetically explored as a young woman in the 1960s, 70s and 80s …” — F.X. Feeney, critic LA Review of Books, author Orson Welles: Power, Heart & Soul”

AUTHOR PROFILE:  Prior to the publication of her acclaimed first novel Edna & Luna in 2016, Gleah Powers led a life by turns grounded and nomadic. Her Phoenix-based grandmother provided a first intermittent refuge against her mother’s frequent marriages. By 18, Gleah was fully on her own, traveling with the production of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, teaching the great filmmaker — and great insomniac — the card game Gin Rummy while the rest of the crew slept. Thereafter she studied art in Mexico City and Los Angeles; modeled in New York, tended bar, explored the world — and worlds — of adventure she makes unforgettable in Million Dollar Red.

Gleah is available for speaking engagements, interviews, and appearances. She is also happy to speak to reading and writing groups. Visit her website at: www.gleahpowers.com

AUTHOR COMMENTS: I wrote the book because I needed to bear witness to the story of everybody I tried to love or who tried to love me.

This review from a young woman (much younger than I) describes best the larger issue I had in mind: “Million Dollar Red is an eye opening account of what it was (and is) to be a woman in America in the last half of the century. The sentiments and anecdotes Gleah presents are powerful reminders for me, that in our contemporary era of “#MeToo” we have come a long way but still have much more to understand and deconstruct in the complexities of this patriarchal world!!  Gleah is a fierce renegade of a woman and she is inspiring.”

SAMPLE CHAPTER:Please see the Million Dollar Red Amazon page to read a sample chapter.  https://www.amazon.com/Million-Dollar-Red-Gleah-Powers/dp/1925965201/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2SS9SVK5L1J7U&dchild=1&keywords=million+dollar+red+a+memoir&qid=1592743271&sprefix=million+dollar+red%2Caps%2C208&sr=8-1

LOCAL OUTLETS: David Kaye Books, Woodland Hills, CA

WHERE ELSE TO BUY IT:

Paperback $22.99 AUD | $14.99 USD Amazon US​ | Amazon UK ​Amazon CA | Amazon AU Barnes & Noble | Booktopia Book Depository | IndieBound

eBook $3.99 AUD | $2.99 USD Kindle US | Kindle UK Kindle AU | Kindle CA iBooks | Kobo | Nook

 

PRICE: $14.99 for the paperback and $2.99 for Kindle on Amazon USD

CONTACT THE AUTHOR: I can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/gleahpowersauthor/?ref=bookmarks I post writing on this page.

https://www.facebook.com/gleah.powers   I post my art, writing and anything that interests or moves me on this page.

https://twitter.com/Gpwriterartist

http://gleahpowers.com/  Writing, art, media kit, interviews, readings, professional editing & writing coaching services

Orders of Protection

THE BOOK: Orders of Protection

PUBLISHED IN: 2019

THE AUTHOR: Jenn Hollmeyer

THE EDITOR: J. Andrew Briseño, series editor

THE PUBLISHER: University of North Texas Press

SUMMARY: In abuse situations, people can go to court for orders of protection. But in these twelve stories, people also seek protection from various demons in unusual ways — by impersonating famous musicians, cooking pet chickens, marching in parades, shooting at coyotes, calling lost dogs, and more. The characters don’t always find their way to safety or even survival, but somehow optimism prevails anyway. Set in Illinois, these subtly linked stories explore circumstances and emotions through details that stay with you far beyond the last page.

THE BACK STORY: An early draft of this book was my thesis at Bennington College. I kept working on the collection for six more years — removing some of the stories and adding new ones, including the title story.

WHY THIS TITLE: The title of the book is also the title of the first story. As I worked on the collection, the theme of protection became a common theme. I wanted to understand these characters’ fears and the emotional barriers they build to protect themselves.

WHY SOMEONE WOULD WANT TO READ IT: The impact of the past on the present interests me as both a writer and a reader (and just as a human). I think others might share my curiosity about the emotional barriers people build in order to move forward with their lives, and how those barriers affect relationships and shape world views.

REVIEW COMMENTS: “This debut collection marks Hollmeyer’s place among storytellers, sentence-scalpel-wielders, & empathetic observers.” — Derek Berry, Free State Review

“Orders of Protection floored me. The range of style, voice, and angles of approach had me checking over and over to confirm I was still reading the same magical book. However, these stories do more than sing their own unique songs. As I read, the myriad voices came together in a perfect harmony of pain, longing, fear, and, however strangely, comfort. It’s been a long time since I read a story collection with such excitement, so eager to see what each new installment would bring.” — Colin Winnette, author of The Job of the Wasp and Haints Stay and Katherine Anne Porter Prize judge

“Jenn Hollmeyer writes deftly, with a poet’s clarity, about ordinary disappointments in life, secrets, and the keepers of those secrets and disappointments who feel achingly familiar. This is a robust collection of stories to savor.” — Patricia Henley, author of Other Heartbreaks

“The prize-winning collection, Orders of Protection, introduces a wonderfully talented writer. Jenn Hollmeyer has a keen eye for the subtleties and pitfalls of family life. She’s smart, tough-minded, and compassionate.” — Lynne Sharon Schwartz, author of The Writing on the Wall

“Jenn Hollmeyer’s sentences come awake on the page and quickly work their way in under the skin. They move forward with rich implication, but they will also bring the reader to a sudden stop. A writer with a deeply engaged imagination, and a strong moral conscience, Hollmeyer has stepped up and claimed her voice.” — Sven Birkerts, author of Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age

AUTHOR PROFILE: Jenn Hollmeyer writes and paints in the Chicago area. She won the 2019 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction for her story collection, Orders of Protection (University of North Texas Press). She was also a finalist for the 2015 Prairie Schooner Book Prize. Jenn’s stories and essays have appeared in AGNI Online, Shenandoah, West Branch Wired, Post Road, Salamander, Meridian, and other journals. She is a founding editor of Fifth Wednesday Journal and holds an MFA in writing and literature from Bennington College. Jenn is currently seeking representation for her first novel. Learn more at jennhollmeyer.com

AUTHOR COMMENTS: I tend to think life is better without barriers, but they’re sometimes necessary for self-preservation. The pandemic of 2020 has certainly taught us the value that physical distance can bring. Emotional distance can be just as important for some, yet much harder to understand. But with understanding comes compassion. I hope readers will come away remembering that everyone in this world is working hard to protect what they hold dear.

SAMPLE CHAPTER: https://www.amazon.com/Orders-Protection-Katherine-Porter-Fiction/dp/1574417754

LOCAL OUTLETS: Independent bookstores

WHERE ELSE TO BUY IT: UNT Press and other booksellers

PRICE: $14.95

CONTACT THE AUTHOR: jenn.hollmeyer@gmail.com

DR COPTR

 

THE BOOK: DR COPTR: The Flying Physician Who Kept His Promise To Tangier Island

PUBLISHED IN: 2018

THE AUTHOR: Bill Lohmann.

THE PUBLISHER: Dementi Books, a small publishing house outside Richmond, Va., founded by Wayne Dementi, whose family is long synonymous with fine photography in Central Virginia.

SUMMARY: DR COPTR is the story of Dr. David Nichols and the extraordinary relationship he forged with Tangier Island. Nichols, a physician and pilot on the Northern Neck of Virginia, began flying to the tiny island in the Chesapeake Bay on his day off each week to provide medical care to islanders who had been without a resident doctor for many years. He vowed he would never abandon them, and for more than three decades he never did. The one-time national “Country Doctor of the Year” left a remarkable legacy on the island, including a state-of-the-art health center and his successor, a high school dropout he encouraged and mentored and now is the island’s primary medical caregiver. Also woven into the fabric of the story is Tangier’s current plight: its gradual disappearance due largely to climate change.

THE BACK STORY: I met Dr. Nichols in the spring of 2010 when I interviewed him for a freelance piece about Tangier I was writing for Parade magazine. The island’s health center was under construction and scheduled to open later that year. David and I agreed to meet again in August, so I could write another story for my day job as a feature writer and columnist for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Shortly before we were to reconnect, David was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. The tone and focus of the story changed as the island braced for the loss of a man that residents considered a member of the family. In his final months, he asked if I would consider writing a book about his work on Tangier. I agreed and set to work. Real life and my day job got in the way, but I finally completed the book eight years later.

WHY THIS TITLE?: DR COPTR was the license plate on David’s car. He had begun flying the island in a single-engine Cessna, but switched to a helicopter in later years.

WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT? I found David and history most compelling, particularly when coupled with Tangier, which kept calling me back after I first visited about 20 years ago. I’ve always been intrigued by the remote island and its people, who still speak with a dialect that some believe traces back to their original English settlers. Far from a resort, Tangier is a blue-collar village whose residents have worked as watermen – harvesting crabs and oysters from the bay for generations. There are few cars on the island – it’s only about a mile long, so there’s nowhere to go – and the island has been losing ground for decades because of rising sea levels, erosion and subsidence. Scientists say the island might not be habitable within 50 years.

REVIEW COMMENTS:

“The story of the late Dr. David Nichols and his dream to care for the medical needs of the forgotten and beautiful people of Tangier Island is one for the ages. Bill Lohmann engages his razor-sharp journalistic skills with the grace notes of Southern storytelling to bring us DR COPTR. Glorious and uplifting, this story will inspire you. Required reading for every Virginian and every citizen who embraces healthcare as a hopeful art as much as a healing one.” –Adriana Trigiani, author of Big Stone Gap” and other books.

“Dr. Nichols was such a great, great man, and he saved so many lives. He loved Tangier dearly and was devoted to it. I hope this book will help people understand what Dr. Nichols meant to Tangier.” –Tangier Mayor James “Ooker” Eskridge.

“This book so beautifully crafted by Bill Lohmann is a fitting tribute to my good friend Dr. David Nichols and the iconic community on Tangier Island. If you never had the opportunity to meet David this book will introduce you to this remarkable, caring man.

“David and Tangier were perfect for each other. Tangier is an insular community where you need to earn acceptance, and they don’t suffer fools gladly. David’s solid stature and loyalty made him a beloved member of the island. David was a keen observer, he knew how to diagnose complex medical problems and challenge those around him to strive for greatness. He taught us by example that there are no shortcuts on the road to meaningful accomplishment. The David B. Nichols Health Center was built by and continues to be supported by the Tangier Island Foundation, which David and I started. It stands today as a legacy to this great man.

“David died too early. I said at the time that I had never seen a man love a place with such a passion. When he was buried on the island next to the clinic, you could sense the closure. He was happy. He achieved what was most important to him: a life well lived, doing his best.” — Jimmie Carter, founder and president of the Tangier Island Health Foundation

AUTHOR PROFILE: I’ve spent more than 40 years in the news business, starting as a sports writer with the Charlottesville Daily Progress, working for United Press International in bureaus in Richmond, Orlando and Atlanta and eventually came back home to Richmond, where I’m a columnist with the Richmond Times-Dispatch. I’ve authored four other books, including a compilation of columns from my family’s cross-country road trip in 2000 (“Are We There Yet?”), a travel guide about Virginia (“Backroads and Byways of Virginia”) and a pair of coffee-table books that were collaborations with my good friend and photo legend Bob Brown (“Back Roads: People, Places and Pie Around Virginia” and “On the Back Roads Again: More People, Places and Pie Around Virginia”). I was the recipient of the 2019 George Mason Award, presented by the Virginia Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, for outstanding contributions to Virginia journalism.

LOCAL OUTLETS: : http://www.drcoptr.com Also Richmond-area shops such as Book People and Fountain Bookstore, as well as Amazon and Barnes & Noble. An ebook is also available.

PRICE: $23.75 .

CONTACT THE AUTHOR: Bill.Lohmann@gmail.com or wlohmann@timesdispatch.com. https://www.drcoptr.com/ You can also find me at http://www.facebook.com/bill.lohmann and on Twitter @BillLohmann

SAMPLE CHAPTER:

Chapter 1

Waiting for the doc

‘He’s always teaching’

On a blustery November Saturday, the wind blowing hard off the bay, Inez Pruitt drove her golf cart to the Tangier Island Airport, parked near the landing strip and waited. “Airport” is kind of a strong word for the facility: 2400 feet of asphalt airstrip surrounded by grass and dirt on the western edge of the island. There is no terminal or tower or any other structure, for that matter. But the airport represents one of the important lifelines to the outside world, allowing visitors to fly in for business or lunch and making it possible for residents to be plucked from the island in the event of emergencies and transported quickly to the mainland for medical care.

The airport also enables physicians to make house calls.

As Pruitt searched the sky for the helicopter piloted by Dr. David Nichols, she considered how glad she was that he was making a special trip to see a patient who had become ill but was refusing to leave the island for treatment. She also thought about how she dreaded, at least a little, having to face Nichols again.

Nichols was a physician who lived on Virginia’s mainland and for years had made a weekly trip to the tiny Chesapeake Bay island – it was almost always Thursdays when he or someone from his practice would make the 15-minute flight to Tangier – to tend to the medical needs of its residents. The island had no resident physician, and Nichols had adopted the place and its people. Over the years he had been coming to Tangier, he had essentially become one of the islanders, no small feat in a place where wary residents welcome outsiders but hold them at arm’s length, at least at first. Unless you live there and know well the joy and hardship of having a home on a fragile speck of land in the middle of the bay or you make your living on the water as generations of Tangiermen have done, you can’t truly become one of them. Nichols had managed to bridge that divide.

However, he and Pruitt, at this point, were another story. Pruitt had worked for Nichols in the Tangier clinic for about a decade, learning the medical business from the ground up. A lifelong resident of Tangier, she was a high school dropout who had evolved from fetching sandwiches for the clinic staff to performing the duties of a nurse. She proved to be a fast learner and Nichols a good teacher. He taught her everything, including this: the patient always comes first. All of Nichols’ expectations, demands and occasional barking intimidated Pruitt at first; she was terrified of him. But then she realized everything he did was for the good of the patient. Everything. He had a bad case of tunnel vision that manifested on occasion in outbursts directed at his staff, but it was nothing personal, she came to know, though that was a hard lesson to learn.

The more she watched Nichols, the clearer it became. She noticed the way he hugged the patients and held their hands and cried with them when the news was not good, the way he made house calls and didn’t mind crawling onto beds to tend to patients or simply to comfort them. He spoke to patients in a kind but straightforward way, not holding back if unpleasantness needed to be discussed but not in a manner that would make matters worse. At a time when medicine was taking a less personal and more corporate approach, when physicians found themselves increasingly squeezed by business demands and time constraints, and patients began to feel like two-legged widgets on an assembly line, Nichols was a throwback. He took his sweet time when meeting with patients. Pruitt and anyone else who worked in his office confirmed this with immense admiration and a tiny measure of exasperation: as he conversed and consoled, counseled and cajoled, appointments were backing up in the waiting room.

Pruitt could see Nichols was much more than merely a physician who dropped into Tangier once a week to check a few pulses, write a couple of prescriptions and mend a broken bone or two. To patients, he was a trusted friend, a brother. This, she figured out, is what medicine is about: not just procedures, technology and information, but also compassion. Nichols seemed to have this in spades. For her, this had become not so much a job as an education.

“He’s always teaching,” Pruitt said years later. “He doesn’t like to keep knowledge to himself. He loves to share it, and you just feed off that. He loves to teach, and he does it in such a way that you love to learn. His attitude has always been, ‘The world should be a better place because one has lived. We’re in this world to do something. Make it good.’”

Nichols and Pruitt made a good team, the willing teacher and the eager student, absorbing everything he had to offer. He saw in her considerable potential; she saw in him something to be emulated, a smart man doing something good for her beloved island. They were of one mind on many things; they came to be able to finish each other’s sentences, to know, somewhat eerily, what the other was thinking. Neither objected to hard work, and both exhibited an unmistakable single-mindedness. They also shared another trait: stubbornness. Yet, Nichols had the upper hand. He was in charge, and from time to time he flashed a fierce temper, though usually all was forgotten and forgiven a few minutes later. Despite his propensity to occasionally blow off a little steam, Nichols was not a man known to hold grudges.

Pruitt eventually moved past being intimidated, but she tired of his occasional criticism and reprimands, which could be over-dramatic – such as the time she had neglected to order a supply of X-ray film, and the clinic ran out.

“I just want you to know,” he blurted to her, “you’ve crippled the practice today!”

Because of changing personnel in the clinic and shifting assignments, Pruitt wound up doing a lot of lab work – drawing blood, processing it, analyzing urine samples. Important work, to be sure, but not what she enjoyed. She wasn’t working as much with patients or with Nichols. “It was just so bland,” she said. “I wasn’t getting anything out of it.” It also was a time of considerable personal stress as she was helping with her husband’s boat-building business and managing a gift shop, as well as assisting her parents as they moved into a new house, tending to her aging grandmother and getting the clinic ready for a federal inspection. Worst of all, her sister-in-law was dying of cancer.

Pruitt didn’t realize how unhappy she was at the clinic until she and Nichols had a difference of opinion over the use of a piece of equipment. Words were exchanged. She got angry and stewed over it. He wouldn’t budge. Neither would apologize. She was totally fed up – for reasons not solely connected to the dispute – so she quit. She didn’t just walk out, though; she gave him several weeks to find a replacement. Then she left in the spring of 1998. The months of summer dragged on, and the longer she stayed out, the more it looked like she would never return.

“He thought he was right, and he wouldn’t admit he was wrong,” Pruitt said. “I wouldn’t admit I was wrong either.”

Dr. Bob Newman, the other physician in Nichols’ practice across the bay in White Stone that came to Tangier on alternating Thursdays, called Pruitt several times, trying to talk her into coming back to the clinic. Her sister-in-law died and her kids went back to school in the fall, and Newman told her returning to the clinic would be good for her and good for the practice. She did indeed return in the fall, but on those Thursdays when Nichols came to Tangier, it was clear to her the freeze between the two had not thawed, and she was convinced he was still angry with her.

“He would barely speak to me,” she said.

Though, she noted that during the summer of her exile from the clinic Nichols called her when he acquired a new helicopter and invited her for a ride. In retrospect, perhaps he was extending a peace offering? They took off in the new helicopter, and Nichols landed nearby on an even smaller island, Port Isobel, home to an outpost of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation but otherwise uninhabited, and, Pruitt remembered with a laugh, “I really thought it was to kill me and hide my body there.” It wasn’t, and he didn’t. But Pruitt was struck by the fact he remained angry at her for quitting the clinic.

“Out of the office, I was a friend, but in the office I made him so mad,” she said, “Go figure.”

Then came the breezy Saturday in November – after weeks of Nichols’ cold-shoulder treatment since her return to the clinic – when Pruitt received a call from the adult daughter of a stroke patient on the island. Her father, who was already bedridden, seemed worse, and she didn’t know what to do. Would Pruitt come by to check on him? The daughter thought Pruitt knew about all things medical since she worked at the clinic. Pruitt didn’t, of course, but she was glad to look in on the woman’s father. Pruitt checked his vitals and determined something wasn’t right. She suggested the man would be better off in a hospital, which meant leaving the island, but the man was adamant that he didn’t want to go.

Pruitt called Jean Crockett, a nurse who lived on the island but was away for the day, and asked for advice. Crockett told her she needed to call one of the physicians from the White Stone practice. And, she said, the physician on call that day was Nichols.

Ugh, thought Pruitt. Nichols might not have been the last person on earth she wanted to call that Saturday, but he was on the short list.

“I didn’t want to talk to him,” she said, “but the patient was more important than my personal feelings.”

So, she took a deep breath, and she called. She explained the situation to Nichols. She suggested he call the family and insist the man be put on a boat to the mainland and a hospital.

“They’ll listen to you,” she told him.

No, Nichols said. He couldn’t make a decision based on what she was telling him. “I’m flying over to see what’s going on,” he said. “Meet me at the airport.”

It wasn’t long before Nichols’ helicopter came into view. He landed, walked over to Pruitt’s golf cart and climbed in. The conversation was “cordial,” Pruitt recalled, but nothing more. They reached the patient’s home, and Nichols went to work.

As he examined the patient, Nichols reported his findings to Pruitt, and he started quizzing her about what that information might lead her to believe about the patient’s condition. He systematically went through what could be causing the man’s discomfort and included Pruitt in the process – just as he always had– pointing out this and asking that. It was just like old times, and she was reminded why she had loved the job she had walked away from.

Finally, Nichols told the family that he could not rule out a brain hemorrhage and he couldn’t determine that without sending him to a hospital. But he also told the family it might not be a hemorrhage and that he was leaving it up to family members whether they wanted the man transported to a hospital, which was against the man’s wishes and could, at this stage of his life, cause him more stress and suffering. Ultimately, the family elected against the hospital option. (The man’s condition improved, and he lived several more years.)

Pruitt returned Nichols to his helicopter, and he flew home. That night, Pruitt lay in bed, sleepless, as the day ran around in her mind. She thought about all the knowledge she had gained from the house call to the ailing patient, and it suddenly struck her why she had grown so frustrated with her work that spring: she had stopped learning. She had simply been doing a job – lab work – and she hadn’t been doing what she loved to do, which was working with patients and seeing to it that the clinic ran smoothly. Everything going on in her life outside the clinic had only compounded what was going on inside it.

So, the next week she talked to Nichols, and they reached an understanding, and she returned to doing the work she loved all along. “The understanding was silent,” Pruitt said years later. “We just started back to working the way we always had prior to the ‘disagreement.’” Neither apologized; each was too hard-headed for that. However, even though Nichols wouldn’t say it, she could tell he wanted her back the way it used to be, and Pruitt wanted to be there, or as she put it, “I left because of him and returned because of him.”

“I had missed it so much,” she said. “I came back to loving my job. That’s when I realized that’s where I was supposed to be.

“I loved learning, and he loved teaching. In spite of us, we made a great team.”