My reticent leanings began at a young age. I was about eight years old when my younger sister died from leukemia. Life for us before that was idyllic. Our father worked for a multinational oil company and we’d lived abroad starting soon after I was born, with all the benefits bestowed upon expatriates. My sister, Gail, was born in Jamacia, which for us in the 1950s was a paradise, very safe and very British. Gail’s cancer put an end to all of that. We returned to the United States.
Gail’s death was my fault, as far as I knew. I’d failed to do what a big brother was supposed to do: keep her safe. Sixty years later, I’ve not convinced myself that isn’t true. And I don’t expect I ever will.…
Hearing this, my perpetually obedient sister looked to our mother, awaiting her response. The kitchen, a historically feminine domain, was no place to make such declarative statements, but I didn’t care. I have always known what I wanted out of life, and it didn’t include getting hitched before I obtained my medical degree. But as my mother calmly shut down that conversation, I realized we would never agree on the role of women in modern society. So within this concoction of differing perspectives lies my belief that women deserve equality, but men are not entirely to blame for societal inequities. While recognizing the dualities of feminism and toxic masculinity, I pen this love letter to those of us who are in the middle.…
I’ve never actually listened to Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon. Nevertheless, the 1973 album made a lasting impression on me starting in the mid-90s. That’s when “MTV News” host Kurt Loder reported the music’s surprising synchronicity with the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.
We were still on dial-up at this point. No one downloaded (much less streamed) albums and movies. With neither the music nor the film available to me, I simply marveled at the notion that two works—separated by decades—could be brought together by the happy, accidental discovery of a (probably stoned) fan.
Even now, with the internet at my fingertips, I have yet to test the Pink Floyd/Wizard of Oz theory. I worry the reality will never match my childhood reverie.…
The Central Park Pact Series is a romance series comprising three books: Passion on Park Avenue, Love on Lexington Avenue, and Marriage on Madison Avenue. They center on three women—Naomi, Claire, and Audrey—who were all duped by the same man, Brayden Hayes. Claire is the wife, who believed her husband was faithful, if absent. Audrey was the girlfriend, who believed he was going through a divorce and would marry her someday. Naomi was the mistress, who thought Brayden was single, and having a fling. All three find out the truth when Brayden dies in a freak accident. The wife, girlfriend, and mistress connect and become unlikely friends, striving to protect each other in their future romantic endeavors.…
All the boys of my class thought Miss Eliza beautiful and mysterious. Like an American film actress, she had pale skin and wore skirts or jeans. The other teachers wore saris or dresses more concealing than the nun headmistress’s black blankets. She was also kindhearted. For the two slum kids in class, she sometimes brought food. And before going home, she gave everyone a hug.
Despite being written and published decades apart, Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions and Shena McAuliffe’s The Good Echo bear similarities in how each novel breaks the fourth wall in order to engross the reader. While the novels also have differences in this approach (Vonnegut’s work utilizes drawings while McAuliffe’s novel utilizes a father’s dentistry notes where his story is told in his journal’s footnotes), the most notable similarity is that each novel utilizes a first-person narrator who at first seems disassociated from the story but slowly becomes more and more involved. In the case of Breakfast of Champions, the first-person narrator can be interpreted as the author; in The Good Echo, the first-person narrator is 12-year old Ben, the deceased son of Cliff and Frances Bell, who died from a botched root canal performed by his father.…
