The Gifted Ones (A collection of the Late Bronze Age Stories)
The Gifted Ones: Volume 1
This story starts in 1346 BCE in Egypt, known then as the Land of the One River. During the reign of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten, Thutmose was his Master of Works. A gifted artist, he was the start, along with his mate Hasna, of a people known in these stories as the Kin. All but Thutmose arose from the author’s imagination. These are stories of gifted men and women and how they survived in tough times. Along the way, we will meet many – the greedy, the power hungry, the foolish, the wise, the young, the old, those in the grip of passions. In other words, human beings living their lives as best they can. This, Volume 1, has the origin story and then the stories of Thutmose’s descendants into the fourth generation.
The Gifted Ones: Volume 2
The adventures continue. Dalil realizes his vocation as a story teller, and also as a wanderer who collects stories before they vanish in the great destruction. He gains a worthy mate as he gains his vocation. Alimah the singer of songs and dancer studying in Egypt, meets a man of the far north at that school. Danger and violence pursue them both; they fl ee and have many adventures until he goes back to his home land. She stays and bears their child and mates with Kaliq, as she meant to do. Nahid, the jeweler, goes to the far mountains of Badakhshan for lapis, returns and fi nds that the Kin are leaving Mesopotamia for a remote mountain valley near the Great Green Sea. He, driven by his dreams, must go to Amarna where Th utmose made his great art. He does so and acquires the mysterious Rabiah as his mate. Fleeing Egypt, as so many have, they return to the Kin in their mountain valley in the hills of Lebanon.
The Gifted Ones: Volume 3
The two brothers rescue a woman from the north countries, and take her with them to rejoin the Kin. Another man comes and tries to abduct the child Muti whom he sees as a ‘lost heir’ of a powerful ruler. He is defeated. Trygve, a good man who with his family and supporters has left the north country to seek safety elsewhere, is blood uncle to the child Muti. Petros the Wise and Trygve decide to merge their two peoples, which will give them a better chance to survive to survive in the perilous times of the Great Destruction. Meanwhile, conditions in Egypt have deteriorated and many flee that regime, including Petros the Wise’s long absent son, Bakmut, and many of the artisans and weapons makers. Muti, the living bridge between the northerners and the Kin, is the leader although very young. As he proves, again and again, he is a worthy leader, destined for great renoun.
Penelope and the Lawyers
Penelope asks for help from the lawyer she once knew. He is retired, but his nephew takes care of her. She pays a call to the old gentleman in his aerie above Lake Shore Drive. Thus, this tale of a love deferred commences in all its humor, realism, sweet moments of recounting the drama of their long lives and finally, acceptance of their fates.
BUY NOW
32 Linden Avenue, 1943-1965
32 Linden Avenue is perched high up on a hill overlooking a small town in western Pennsylvania and is the heart of this evocative journey through the author's fragmented memories of Appalachia. The murmuring of the women, the love and everyday lives of those living in the hard hill country and then the drenching of those memories in the deep hushed and hovering Protestant faith of that time and that place is woven into a spell drenched in the detailed memories of everyday life.
A child, temporarily separated from her father and mother and brother by fate, found magic and succor, and most of all enduring love. The young mother sees the same magic through older eyes and in the midst of the pain of her mothers final illness and bitter frustrated life is, as when a child, comforted by her family from the hill. Haunted throughout her life, the author sees all this from even older eyes and vows that her children, and now grandchildren, shall not be deprived of the chance to seize meaning and beauty and, thus, comfort from these remembrances.
Late Bronze Age Stories
"I could see that the editing was impeccable, closely attuned to the poetry of the sentences."
- Fred Shafer, Lecturer in the School of
Continuing Studies at Northwestern
Thutmose is a historical figure about whom nothing is known except his art works (the Nefertiti bust) and his name. He and his mate Hasna and their histories are the creation myths for their descendants.
The series explores the roles and problems of being an artist and because many of the artists are female, of gender.
Part Twelve: Muti is now available on Amazon!
BUY NOW
As well, it explores the stories and strategies of the warriors and traders who protect and hold the kin together in a time of great change and destruction. Seeking safety, they must wander throughout the ancient world, to Minos, to Ugarit (Syria) and then along the trade routes in what is now Iraq and was then Mesopotamia. Always the kin are attracted to the Egypt of Thutmose which was their first home.
Book Club Chronicles
Parts 1 - 9
Set in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, this contemporary series explores the friendships and lives of a group of ladies who meet to study books.
Parts 1 and 2 are framed with the study of The Tale of Genji which was written by a woman in Heian Japan (circa 1200). In Part 3 they study Romeo and Juliet. Then in Parts 4 and 5 they take on Macbeth and Hamlet. In Part 6 it's The Tempest.
The friends of the core group have known each other in many stages of their lives - small children, baseball games, teenage years, dying husbands, romances that either work or don't, retirement from professions or jobs.
They learn from the books they study, learn from each other, take care of each other in hard times, and try to stay mentally alive and sane in an unpredictable world.