You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
and now that Manchester isn’t quite the same the drive flew along trees past their prime yet beautiful in that chaste turning more shadowy and wintry the closer I got to home, a still full moon flirting with clouds during that final stretch of reggae beat back around to Worcester a few tears shed as I passed sparkling Baltimore in a twelve-hour trip taking a shade over nine but here they still haven’t fixed the dripping kitchen faucet
Cassia’s future father marries into a family that owns a popular restaurant. So that’s one additional connection for the members.
Considering his wife’s sister and three brothers, all with potential partners of their own, he’s not the only spouse thrown into the mix. And that’s before getting to those who want careers elsewhere.
What holds your extended family together? Or are you widely scattered?
~*~
from an unspoiled spot on Maine shoreline I’ve watched seasons, storms and calms both within and without, eaten wild strawberries, collected shells and rocks and bits of weathered lobster pots (in Baltimore, I’d retreat to a stretch along the rapids of Gunpowder River north of Sparks) bedazzled with premature color extended with near-perfect cool an eye-opener with a predominance of red luminous fragile fields of blazing our clear windows of gold and copper branches finally die and fall away and are grieved so that the new vision may emerge
Would you agree that a close-knit extended family like the one in my novel What’s Left, is uncommon in today’s American society? Of my own five surviving first-cousins, only one remains in communication — a brief note every Christmas. None grew up in our city; two lived in the other corner of our state; the other four, at the time, in California.
~*~
In a passage I cut from the final version:
It wasn’t quite like that when Baba shows up, but only because we kids aren’t yet on the scene. First, we need some marriages, like when Barney and Pia get a new generation rolling, followed by Tito and Yin and then my parents.
~*~
And if Cassia’s uncle Dimitri or her aunt Nita had been adding to the gene pool, we’d have an even bigger slate of first-cousins to draw on. When it came to the novel, I had to limit things somewhere.
Have you ever been introduced to family members and found yourself asking yourself: Just who are these strangers? Have you enjoyed some of your kin at one point in your life but not at others? Do you ever feel some have been treated better than the rest?
~*~
One approach I employed may help readers keep track of the spreading number of family members.
In drafting my novel What’s Left, I envisioned each chapter as a module that could stand alone from the rest of the book. Think of it as a short story. That way, the number of characters in each chapter is more focused.
And while first names are usually repeated frequently in a Greek-American family, I limited this to just one great-grandmother and one descendant, and used a nickname for the elder one. Neat, eh?
Yes, the family members do show up in other modules and there is continuity over the whole, but at least you don’t have everyone in your face at once.
When you go to a social event and are introduced to many new people, are you able to remember their names and faces? Or do you go into a blur? How do you cope with this challenge?
the mailman didn’t leave the stack in the hallway, as I had worried, but rather held it to give to me today (twenty-four pieces, which included one personal letter to me, from somebody amplifying on our Seventh-day conversation in North Carolina, or as he pronounces it, Nor’car’l’na, a personal letter to Iowa from another in Pennsylvania who must have his addresses mixed up, I’ll forward adding my own greetings; three magazines; my union newspaper; six bills; unsolicited junk including offers of wild credit lines if I accept more I’d be rich if I could reach the right country without extradition
In my novel What’s Left, Cassia’s aunt Nita writes a daily newspaper column focusing on local people and their real interests. It’s not all that different from CeCe Cobb’s in my earlier novel Hometown News, but Nita’s is far less corny and far newsier.
In Dayton, where I grew up, it was Marj Heyduck of the Journal Herald. Her mug shot on her daily column featured a new hat each week as a signature touch. And in Cincinnati, it was TV host Sally Flowers.
But I can think of others who just seem to know everybody.
Does your community have a local voice? A minor celebrity or just a naturally curious friend of all?
so pleased entering my apartment to see everything tight, still in place, no vandals, though the temperature was 89 degrees, apparently the maintenance crew had come in and set the thermostat at 80 to get the radiators going and then left while ignoring repairs to one of those single joy-stick faucets that takes an eight-dollar washer kit to repair, I know, because the three-dollar one I bought had the wrong kinds of springs and plugs and doodads, and none fit
A multi-generational family tale like the one in my novel What’s Left can lead to a lot of characters, and keeping them all straight can be a problem.
My plot line takes a few twists that minimize their numbers, but when you get four generations over time, it’s bound to create a challenge, no matter how hard you try. Sometimes it helps to stick with somebody who knows everybody, when you’re circulating through the crowd.
When reading a big book, do you have tricks for keeping track of the individuals? Anything you’d like to share?
~*~
behind plaster we rip from the kitchen crumbling accounts of protracted death Floyd Collins 15 days 1925 age 36 Sand Cave Crystal Cave Kentucky as published in Boston, accounting inescapably cold mud and implacable rock when my own parents were first walking, yet this story my mother related as if she were on the carnival rides of its macabre vigil but now we find nothing holding this roof to the walls so much callous indifference riding on the blind arrogance a foolish turn, perchance, or just dumb luck when it comes to catastrophe of course, I remember living on the roof of a cavern down in muddy Indiana
Jnana's Red Barn 