Anna Furtado reviews four books
and Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly...
 Descanso - A Soul Journey |
 Girls with Hammers |
 Minus One - A 12-Step Journey |
 Mulligan |
Descanso—A Soul Journey
by Cynthia Tyler
ISBN: 13-978-1-56023-549-1
Publisher: Harrington Park Press, Alice Street Editions (Sept, 2005)
Price: $14.95
Pages: 169
Genre: Fiction/Lesbian
Early on in the story, we are informed that descansos is the term used for the roadside memorials, Spanish for “resting place,” marking the spot where there has been a death [pg 2] and this story shows us the many little descansos in the life of a woman named Chris Cameron.
Grieving the sudden and violent death of her partner, Chris tries to carry on in her job as a psychotherapist and feels the frustration caused by having to supervise incompetent student therapists and do the damage control that inevitably must follow as a result of their inexperience.
Her personal life is no better. She goes through the motions of trying to carry on, yet feels that she is unable to move past the loss of her beloved Robyn. Trying to establish relationships with other women isn’t working—not with an old flame with commitment issues—and not with the cute young thing that doesn’t understand why a 40 year old who has recently experienced a traumatic event in her life can’t just get on with her life and join the party scene.
Corey Parker, Chris’ best friend, often can’t get beyond her own relationship difficulties. Although she always comes through in some measure when Chris needs her, Chris still becomes the sounding board for Corey and her partner Kaye as they try to work through their own issues.
In the midst of all this turmoil, Chris learns that her aging aunt and her partner of 40 years need some help of their own. She comes to their aid with groceries and errand running and, finally, brings them to a mailbox chain store to have their domestic partnership agreement notarized in one of the book’s most poignant and witty scenes.
While all this is going on, other strange events begin to take place around Chris. She thinks she hears her dead partner’s voice, the birdbath in the backyard runs bloody, and she gets a strange e-mail that causes her to be concerned that she’s heading toward madness. She decides that, although therapy doesn’t feel right, she must do something to let go of her inability to say goodbye to Robyn so she begins a quest to decide what form her healing process will take.
When the police are called to the clinic after a violent incident with a patient, Chris encounters Linda Vasquez, a police officer she had met earlier in the story. Chris had already recognized something of a mutual attraction, but this second encounter leads them to exchange phone numbers. As the story progresses, Chris realizes that Linda is someone that she would like in her life, but she isn’t ready—yet. First she needs to concentrate on dealing with Robyn’s death and, choosing to do so with a shamanistic healer, she takes a first step in saying goodbye to her beloved partner. This is the turning point for Chris. She starts to emerge from her cocoon of grief into the light of wholeness and happiness.
The story is well written and portrays grief in very real terms. The struggle that anyone must go through at the loss of a loved one, while still trying to live in and cope with the real world is indeed that—a struggle. Often the person making this journey encounters moments when she questions her sanity, when events seem larger than life, and troubles seem more than any one person can bear. Yet there is a doorway, if it can be found. There is emergence from the cocoon. There is hope and life on the other side of grief as Chris Cameron eventually finds out, but not until one final nearly catastrophic event.
The characters in this story are fully developed and realistically portrayed in this story whose plot twists and turns. We wonder over and over if Chris is really losing her mind or if someone is playing a sick joke on her. We also hope against all odds that this woman will find a path that will lead her out of her grief into wholeness again. It is a true journey of the soul, revealed in an entertaining tale.
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Reviewed by Anna Furtado
Anna Furtado
Book Reviewer for Just About Write; Author of The Heart’s Desire – Book One of The Briarcrest Chronicles, a 2005 GCLS “Goldie” Award Finalist.
Anna's Web site: http://www.annafurtado.com Contact her at annaf@annafurtado.com.
BIO: Cynn Chadwick is a lecturer for the Literature and Language Department at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.
Girls with Hammers
by Cynn Chadwick
ISBN 13: 978-1-56023-475-3
Publisher: Harrington Park Press, Alice Street Editions (March 1, 2004)
Price: $19.95
No. of Pages: 280
Genre: Lesbian Fiction/Mystery/Romance
Lily Cameron finds that the simple life she has led, running a two-woman carpentry operation, is about to become much more complicate in Girls with Hammers. This work was a recent Lambda Literary Award Nominee as well as a Golden Crown Literary Award Finalist. In this sequel to Cynn Chadwick’s Cat Rising, Lily struggles with having lost the companionship of her best friend, Cat, off on a quest in Scotland, as she tries to contend with the uncertainty of a waning love affair. As if that weren’t enough, the unexpected death of Lily’s father finds her at the head of Cameron Construction, a much larger company than her own carpentry operation from which the title of the book is derived.
As soon as Lily takes over, the construction crew walks off the job, leaving her scrambling for workers. She manages to round up some reluctant trainees in an attempt to salvage the job and receives help from the single holdout who worked for her father, the enigmatic Arlo Halsey. In spite of Arlo’s uncertain past, he becomes Lily’s conscience, her Jiminy Cricket; as she struggles with a brother who tries to undermine her, a motley crew, trouble at home, and her own grief and loss.
After Hannah, Lily’s partner, announces that she is accepting a job in Amsterdam to further her career, she leaves Lily with a crumbling support system. Things deteriorate even further when Lily must deal with vandalism, hate crimes and an undercurrent of doubt about whether or not she can really trust Arlo—or her own brother, for that matter. As she struggles to try to salvage the pieces of her life and her family’s business, Lily longs for the days when life was much less complex and the comfort of Hannah and Cat were close at hand.
A bright spot in the story is Lily’s mother, Sophia Cameron. The quiet, acquiescing seventy-year old evolves into a feisty conspirator and she turns the fight for her daughter’s place in the family into a personal mission. Taking the bull by the horns, Sophia plots to overcome her son’s determination to get rid of the business and to save Lily from herself. As the story unfolds, Lily realizes that she really doesn’t know her mother nor does she understand what Sophia truly wants for own life, a mirror of the feelings Lily has about her own life.
This story carries the reader along easily, revealing more about Lily, her mother, her crew and various other characters that surround her. In the end, we want Lily to figure out what it is that she really longs for and then we want to see her get it. Her struggles are the stuff of which our own lives are made and a happy ending for Lily, as for us, seems to come only when she is finally open and ready for it. Girls with Hammers is a study in overcoming grief and adversity, given to us in this entertaining tale of an imperfect heroine. Read it for enjoyment and for thought provoking meditations on life, grief and the search for the hidden truths in all our lives. A word of note: there are unresolved issues in this story. In the end, they are not unfinished business so much as details that tantalize us with the possibility of another sequel.
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Reviewed by Anna Furtado
Anna Furtado
Book Reviewer for Just About Write; Author of The Heart’s Desire – Book One of The Briarcrest Chronicles, a 2005 GCLS “Goldie” Award Finalist.
Anna's Web site: http://www.annafurtado.com Contact her at annaf@annafurtado.com.
BIO: Bridget Bufford is an Amherst Writers & Artists affiliated workshop leader. Her poetry and stories appear in several journals, as well as the anthology Pillow Talk II. She has personal essays upcoming in Life Stories: Casework in the First Person and in A Continuing Passion. Another of Bridget's essays, "Sacrifice" is featured in The Use of Personal Narratives in the Helping Professions: A Teaching Casebook. (Hayworth Press).
Minus One – A Twelve Step Journey
Author: Bridget Bufford
ISBN 13: 978-1-56023-468-5
Publisher: Harrington Park Press, Alice Street Editions (March 1, 2004)
Price: $17.95
Pages: 236 pages
Genre: Fiction/Lesbian
When we first meet Terry Manescu, in this Lambda Literary Award Finalist offering, she is truly at “minus one” on her twelve-step journey. Out of control and out of luck, she calls her friend Angie, who comes to her aid without becoming a rescuer. With Angie’s help, Terry leaves the town where she has been living, and the woman she loves, but has hurt both emotionally and physically as a result of her addiction.
Returning to her hometown of St. Louis, Terry finds the Mississippi River a metaphor for her life. “The Mississippi’s faster than I remember…. The sides are full of twisting eddies and trash that swirls, submerges, resurfaces to spin out of control.” [pp 1-2] With this realization, Terry takes a first tentative step toward wholeness, but she doesn’t walk easily. Sometimes, she walks unsuccessfully and, often, her steps are reluctant.
Accompanying Terry through her struggle through her twelve-step program is fascinating, intriguing and surprisingly entertaining. As Terry learns to interact with old friends in a new way (without alcohol or drugs), she faces her demons with a tenacity that makes this character both real and more lovable than she perceives herself to be. Along the way, we meet others who are making the same journey, some wise, some with obvious flaws, but each of them has something to contribute to Terry’s healing. Finally, there are two more ghosts to confront—the woman she left behind on the day she hit bottom—and her fear that she will ultimately be rejected. Instead, she finds the tentative beginnings of the wholeness that she seeks.
This story ends fairly early in Terry’s recovery, but she is stronger and more whole than she or we ever thought she would be even at this stage. Her life is now filled with as much hope as there was despair when we first met her. In the course of reading this fine story, the reader is both inspired by and educated about the hardships and the triumphs of overcoming alcoholism through the struggles of one valiant woman.
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Reviewed by Anna Furtado
Anna Furtado
Book Reviewer for Just About Write; Author of The Heart’s Desire – Book One of The Briarcrest Chronicles, a 2005 GCLS “Goldie” Award Finalist.
Anna's Web site: http://www.annafurtado.com Contact her at annaf@annafurtado.com.
Mulligan
Author: KG MacGregor
ISBN 13: 978-1-56023-468-5
Publisher: Bookends Press (2005)
Distributed by Starcrossed Productions (www.scp-inc.biz)
Price: $17.95
Pages: 306 pages
Genre: Fiction/Lesbian/Romance
In golf, a mulligan is a “do over,” a second chance.
When Louise Stevens lost the love of her life to a heart attack, she was convinced that she would spend the rest of her life alone with her memories of her only love of thirty-one years, Rhonda Markosky. After retiring from her teaching job in Pennsylvania, Louise moves to Florida and settles in to live what was the couple’s dream of a quiet life relaxing and playing golf. Louise’s days are lonely without Rhonda. Her only respite are Petie, her Boston terrier, a gift from her homeroom students at Westfield High, and her two friends, Linda and Shirley, former teachers who preceded Louise to retirement in Florida.
In an effort to escape from the solitary pattern to her life that she has established in her new home, Louise packs up her golf clubs and heads out for a practice session at the country club where she has become a member. Her game has suffered from lack of practice. She struggles to reclaim her swing, but her frustration is compounded by the appearance of Marty Beck, the golf pro at Pine Island Golf Club, who plies her with good-humored ribbing, which is not well received by Louise. In spite of her annoyance at Marty, she finds herself attracted to the wise-cracking, enigmatic golf pro.
When Linda and Shirley drag Louise to a Valentine’s Day dance in an effort to keep Louise from pining away at home, Louise finds herself dancing with and escorted home by Marty Beck. The two women decide that they need a fresh start in their relationship and thus begin anew. However, the path isn’t smooth. They encounter all manner of sand traps and water hazards in the links of their lives. Louis is conflicted in her feelings over Marty while her grieving process for Rhonda continues. There are issues about her years of closeted existence, and her emotional state and denial over her relationship with Marty.
Marty has her own difficulties. She has been in bad relationships and is concerned that she will lose her ability to be herself if she embarks on another commitment and she struggles with the ghost of her most recent relationship.
When a teacher, one of Louise’s former colleagues, is fired from his job because he is suspected of being gay, events are set in motion which make Louise realize that it’s time for change in her life, about her need to let go of Rhonda and move on with her life, her attitude toward being closeted, and her relationship with Marty.
This story is refreshing in its portrayal of vital older women, still capable of living and loving. A welcome change from coming of age stories, baby boomer women will see a lot of their own lives in Louise and Marty’s story—even if they don’t play golf. MacGregor takes us on a journey which skillfully swings back and forth between the current story and the main character’s flashbacks, in a way that is reminiscent of a masterful golf swing. It’s easy for the reader to root for Louise and want her to overcome her grief, her hesitations and her emotional upheaval. We want Marty to be successful in wooing Louise, showing her that her faithfulness is true.
Finally, Louise’s turmoil gives us insight into those who have been closeted for so many years—whether from fear or necessity—and the difficulties in making a decision to come out publicly late in life. All this is cushioned within an entertaining story—touching romance where both women get a second chance at love.
Note: KG MacGregor recently announced that her books are going out of print as she transitions to a new publisher (Bella Books) where they will be re-released over the next couple of years. Starcrossed Productions (www.scp-inc.biz) will continue to sell her books until they are no longer available.
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Reviewed by Anna Furtado
BIO: Judith P. Stelboum is Editor-in-Chief of Alice Street Editions for lesbian fiction and nonfiction books. She is the author of Past Perfect, a novel of lesbian life, and co-editor of The Lesbian Polyamory Reader: Open Relationships, Non-Monogamy and Casual Sex. Her essays, fiction, and poetry have appeared in a variety of anthologies and journals. She is a reviewer/essayist for Lesbian Review of Books and Lambda Book Report. She is Professor Emerita of English, Women’s Studies, and Lesbian Studies at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York.
Title: Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly, July 2005 (Soon to be renamed: Harrington Lesbian Literary Quarterly)
Editor: Judith Stelboum
ISSN: 1522-8894
Publisher: Harrington Park Press, Alice Street Editions
Available From: http://www.haworthpress.com/web/HLFQ/
Price: Individual Subscription, $28 per year
Genre: Fiction/Lesbian
Another fine literary offering is found in the second issue of the Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly (Volume 6, Number 2) for 2005. The first work, In the Nick of Time by Felicia Von Vander Botch, is an amusing tale, a sort of Spaceballs meets Star Trek story. In it, three women take a side trip on their way to a Valusian vacation to save the earth from being destroyed at the hands of its own inhabitants due to eons of environmental mismanagement. Their attempts to visit key places, where they intend to violate the Prime Directive (reference Star Trek) to change the outcome of history, are constantly thwarted by a time-transfer station that is slightly out of calibration. An attempt to beam to 1948, New York, lands one of the women in Roswell, New Mexico at an alien Other-worldly convention where she fits right in. The space-gals have an alternate plan, should they fail to save the planet—they intend to miniaturize the millions of lesbians and beam them aboard their small ship. In the Nick of Time is a creative and funny story that is sure to entertain—a great leadoff to this issue of HLFQ.
Kathleen Warnock’s Last Call captures the poignant side of dealing with a dying family member as she skillfully uses a splash of that humor that must accompany any tale about a dysfunctional family in order to make it palatable. The funny parts are, indeed, laugh-out-loud funny. The touching segments reveal one daughter’s experience while her mother and sister present very real, though different, looks at how people handle such events.
In My Heart in Her Hand, Amie M. Evans gives us an unexpected perspective of the way in which we can be captivated by someone and find ourselves surprised by love. Added to this mix is another fine collection of artwork by Kristen Roos and Jennifer Polhemus, which is enhanced by Jennifer’s poetry, featured in this volume.
Jean Roberta explains the historical differences among erotica, pornography and obscenity in print from the 1500’s through more recent times. This is an interesting and revealing piece entitled Clever Curll and Other Culprits: Lust and Reading Under Fire.
In Treating Juno, Ragini Werner gives us a tale that weaves itself around us until we’re entangled in its mesh. It’s a fascinating portrayal of the minds twists and turns as it plays tricks on its owner for one purpose—to survive a traumatic event. This is a very well written story with an unexpected ending.
Meredith Doench gives us a different type of Survival in her tale by that name. It’s the name of the game as Jules Hyde, the story’s narrator, tells us the rationale behind her choices that may well leave her lonely and alone.
This issue of the Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly is packed with a wide variety of both entertaining and thoughtful snapshots of lesbian life with a survival theme. This issue of the journal, soon to be renamed The Harrington Lesbian Literary Journal, is not to be missed.
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Reviewed by Anna Furtado
Anna Furtado
Book Reviewer for Just About Write; Author of The Heart’s Desire – Book One of The Briarcrest Chronicles, a 2005 GCLS “Goldie” Award Finalist.
Anna's Web site: http://www.annafurtado.com Contact her at annaf@annafurtado.com.