With this short story P.A. Naparstek and I have begun an experiment of writing and publishing a series of interconnected short stories that will at the end create a novel. Two storytellers; one man, one woman, viewing, reacting, considering the same events through male and female eyes, interpreting its color through the prism of widely different experience.
The first short story, Bereft, can be found here at Amazon.com.
This and each subsequent story will be published on Kindle Select on or near the first of each month and be offered free for five days from the 20-24th of that month.
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The stories feature two main characters:
Michael Walker, a disgraced soldier, has returned home. He is divorced, separated from the military, estranged from his daughters and has lost a son.
Charlotte Fine, a therapist, once a dancer, in a crisis of loss has taken up residence in an absent friend’s home to tend to her own long neglected wounds.
The backdrop for the story is the landscape that too has suffered and insists on participation in the narrative.
People came to this harsh and beautiful landscape to live, marry and die, to pass through or put down roots. Roots that find it difficult to take hold in a place that exports its young and where the space is austere and seemingly empty.
About the authors
USA MSGT Ernest Townsend with Family, 1942
Robert Townsend’s family on his father’s side is Scots-Irish, redneck and proud, soldiers into the mists of time. His mother, Slovenian, on occasion called his father a “@&+ Indian,” by which she meant he could not settle in one place. On other occasions, she called him a “#%& Indian,” which meant he lied. There is a story here.
P.A. Naparstek is the child of immigrants, the only one in her family to be born in the U.S. A Jewish father and a Lutheran mother with survivor’s guilt was not a marriage made in heaven, but in post-war Berlin ending a few years later in post-war Japan.
Patrice and Robert, now living in Madison, Wisconsin, will be living in Boulder, Colorado until the snow flies, then to Rovinj, Croatia in November 2013 until May 2014.
Word-of-mouth is crucial for any author to succeed. If you enjoyed the story, please consider leaving a review at Amazon, even if it’s only a line or two; it would make all the difference and would be very much appreciated.
I invite you to visit My web site, my vehicle to make sense of, develop strategies to cope with, or find techniques to avoid the liars––all too often my own self––with something more than raw intuition. You are welcome to drop by and add your two bits.
