Dear Mary

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“The Reader as Mediator”

Review by Joey Madia

Dear Mary, Rupert M. Loydell’s twentieth collection of poetry, is a series of meditations on the Virgin Mary and the circumstances of her miraculous conception. True to form, Loydell, a painter as well as poet, approaches the mystery through the dual lens of words and images. And one does not have to be raised Catholic like myself to appreciate the large number of images available to us that take as their subject Mary’s receiving of the news from the angel Gabriel and her subsequent life as mother of the Savior, Jesus Christ.

Indeed, “the appearance/of the angel,” as Loydell says in the poem “A Process of Discovery”: “the event/the moment/as pregnant/as the Madonna” (18). With this encounter heavily weighted from the onset, Loydell explores the crafting of the image, as in “Colour by Numbers,” although he does not take the elitist angle of painting as something only for the highly trained—especially with religious matters as its subject—but something for everyone, something as simple as a color by numbers painting, which you can “take… to the next level” (26). This is more Bob Ross than Old Masters, and refreshingly so. Continue reading →

The History of My Body

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“How to Manage the Void”

I am going to be up front here. I love this book, which is in large part due to its main character, Fleur Robins, daughter of an ultra-Conservative US Senator from Pennsylvania and an alcoholic mother who had Fleur as a teenager. Fleur is one of the most delightful, complex, and often contradictory child characters since Holden Caulfield in JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and Sheila Tubman in Judy Blume’s Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great—two characters that had a profound impact on my childhood and, subsequently, my life.

Perhaps it is my own growing fascination with Complexity and Chaos Theory, but I have been noticing a recent trend in storytelling—be it novels, television, or (to a lesser extent) film—that comes into play with Sharon Heath’s approach. It began with the male anti-hero in television shows like The Leftovers and Walking Dead, who is flawed, isolated, and oftentimes just plain Wrong. That trend has now broadened and extended to not only female characters, but to entire families. I just finished watching the debut season of Santa Clarita Diet on Netflix. Not only are the relationships between spouses, parents and children, bosses and co-workers, neighbors, and so on incredibly Complex and always on the verge of or in the midst of Chaos, but these multi-level flaws create a much richer, deeper view of Life as We Know It than I think was ever possible before. Continue reading →

A Debt of Survival

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A Debt of Survival

Every now and then you come across a story that creeps up on you, and before you know it you’re gripped, furiously turning the pages to reach the end. Then the end arrives, and you release a breath of air you didn’t know you were holding in. With the book closed, you smile and wonder how you’re going to come to terms with the depth you’ve just encountered. My experience with L. F. Falconer’s latest offering was that; it kept me up long past my bedtime.

“A Debt of Survival” is one of those books that speaks to you as you read it. Layered and complicated and yet a breeze to read, this supernatural suspense is complexly human. Falconer is a writer who knows not only how to layer a story, but also to layer her characters. Don Lattimore is a hero in every sense of the word. He’s a war veteran, a stand-up friend, a law-abiding sheriff, a devoted father, and a committed husband, despite his wife’s frigidity. But he is also flawed, steeped in trauma, and imperfect. Characters are Falconer’s specialty. She’ll make you fall in love with hers, and you’ll have a hard time letting them go. Don, with all his defects, is the quiet hero we all carry around inside of us. You’ll root for him from beginning to end. Continue reading →

Redeeming Grace

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Of Redemption and Forgiveness

Review by Joey Madia

Some writers have a gift that sets them well above the rest. Being a teacher of writing as well as an author, Zeidel deftly augments her natural talent for storytelling with sharply drawn characters, tight plots, seamlessly woven research, and a high level of symmetry and macro/micro structure.

I was first introduced to her work several years ago, when I received The Storyteller’s Bracelet for review. I was very taken with the mythological nature of the Native American–based tale she told, so it was with great pleasure that I received this special release.

Engaging the dogmatic/religious more than the mythological, Redeeming Grace centers on a family’s ongoing struggles following the separate deaths of two children and their mother in late 1920s rural Maryland.

The title character, the oldest daughter of a hardcore minister named Luther, marries a somewhat older man, Otto Singer, to get her and her sister away from Luther’s physically and emotionally abusive ways. His grief has poisoned his mind and instead of being the kind-hearted family man and well-respected religious figure of years passed he has become an abusive mis-interpreter of the Bible. Continue reading →

Stories of Music (Book 2)

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‘Music is the universal language … it brings people closer together.’ – Ella Fitzgerald

Review by Grady Harp

Now and then along comes a book that simply changes everything. STORIES OF MUSIC, of which this is Volume 2, is that kind of book, though ‘book’ would hardly define this heart work: this is a multimedia project that includes audio and video aspects of the physical, very handsome book that can be held in the lap for musing and with the little miracles of modern technology expand that reading experience spherically. Art, poetry, stories, songs, photography from around the world are gathered as a tribute to the influence of music in our lives.

STORIES OF MUSIC is the creation of Holly E. Tripp, a musician, freelance writer, editor, and marketing consultant based in Denver, Colorado who stepped from the corporate world to respond to her own memories of childhood and stories from her grandmother, realizing the impact music has had in her history. Appreciating that relevance she decided to merge all of her talents to create a multimedia anthology featuring works from more than 40 authors and artists from around the world – a book that now includes poetry, nonfiction, photography, audio, and video presented in a print book with a free companion web edition. She is accompanied by California ‘blue collar’ poet Bill Cushing who has absorbed life across the USA, gaining his education from the University of Central Florida and earning an MFA in writing from Goddard College in Vermont. Bill teaches English at East Los Angeles and Mt San Antonio colleges and lives in Glendale, California. Continue reading →