Summer Reading: Gems From Book View Café Authors

Before I took off for ten days in New York City, I loaded up my trusty e-readers with offerings from Book View Café writers, then picked books at random. What a delight they were!

Katharine Eliska Kimbriel’s “Alfreda” novels – Night Calls and Kindred Rites. I’d enjoyed Kimbriel’s “Nuala” science fiction novels and looked forward to her Young Adult series. Set in an alternate, magical American frontier, these coming-of-age stories are told in such a powerful, distinctive voice and with such rich world-building, they drew me in from the very first paragraphs. Adolescent Alfreda comes from line of psychically gifted people, which in itself doesn’t sound very original. Her personality, her family, and her world, however, mark these stories as among the very best. I loved the relationships between Alfreda and her parents and brothers, her townsfolk neighbors, but most of all, the natural world – the tangle of forest and harsh weather, wild animals and supernatural entities – ghosts, werewolves, witches, and more. All too often, the characters in fantasy tales are orphaned or in some way disconnected from their families. In Kimbriel’s work, however, Alfreda’s family of loving, contentious, beautifully-drawn people, give her the strength and context to face her magical calling. I loved how competent Alfreda is, not only in the domestic chores expected of any young woman in that age and place, but in wilderness survival. Kimbriel’s writing is so smooth, the dramatic tension so finely handled, that I was caught on the very first pages.

Healing Stories From The Heart

I know this journey well, for it was one of the lifelines that carried me back from my personal

abyss, which I’ve written about before and will do so again. I have heard a dozen variations of what brought writers to their knees and how they found the words to spin despair into hope. Although particular circumstances differ, as does the degree of incapacity, we have enough in common to recognize our kinship. We are those for whom the stories-of-the-heart have been a beacon, a sustenance, and a means of growing even stronger as we heal.

Sometimes, the very act of writing – no matter what the subject matter – helps us to focus. There’s nothing like a thorny plot twist or a challenging bit of dialog to distract us from other problems. Joseph Conrad said, “It’s work that saves us,” and this is as true for writing as for any other endeavor. Stories, unlike so much of real life, must have structure and meaning.

Some stories, on the other hand, do more than provide a framework for intellectual problem-solving. Whether they are characters, situations, or entire worlds we know and love, or whether they arise during our time of crisis, they speak to us – they call to us. They give us a voice. Perhaps a new voice, perhaps one we have lost or that life has battered out of us. Or maybe it is simply that when we are pushed to the wall, emotionally or physically, we need to connect with what gives us joy. Wellsprings of secret delight and unabashedly un-guilty pleasures. And healing.