Author: Catherine Palmer Finerty Publisher: University of Arizona Press ISBN: 9780816520374 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 228
Book Description
What do most career women do after a successful run on Madison Avenue? Catherine Finerty watched her friends settle into the country-club life. She opted instead for Mexico. When the 60-year-old widow loaded up her car and headed south, what she found at the end of the road was far from what she expected. Finerty settled into a comfortable house just outside of Guadalajara and, although not a Catholic, she soon immersed herself in Franciscan volunteer work. It wasn't long before she found herself visiting small settlements hidden in the tropical mountains of western Mexico, and it was in Jesœs Mar’aÑso isolated that one could only get there by mule or small planeÑthat she found her new calling: the village nurse. With its bugs and heat, no phones or running water, the tiny town was hardly a place to enjoy one's retirement years, but Finerty was quickly charmed by the community of Cora Indians and mestizos. Armed with modest supplies, a couple of textbooks, and common sense, she found herself delivering first aid, advising on public health, and administering injections. And in a place where people still believed in the power of shamans, providing health care sometimes required giving in to the magical belief that a hypodermic needle could cure anything. Finerty's account of her eight years in Jesœs Mar’a is both a compelling story of nursing under adverse conditions and a loving portrait of a people and their ways. She shares the joys and sorrows of this isolated world: religious festivals and rites of passage; the tragedy of illness and death in a place where people still rely on one another as much as medicine; a flash flood that causes such havoc that even less-than-pious village men attend Mass daily. And she introduces a cast of characters not unlike those in a novel: Padre Domingo and his airborne medical practice; the local bishop, who frowns on Finerty's slacks; Chela, a mestiza from whom she rents her modest two-room house (complete with scorpions); and the young Cora Indian woman Chuy, from whom she gains insight into her new neighbors. Blending memoir and travel writing, In a Village Far from Home takes readers deep into the Sierra Madre to reveal its true treasure: the soul of a people.
Author: Joy Bounds Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd ISBN: 1780881738 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 257
Book Description
This story which I must tell of war and great courage and treachery, is one of loss. Though France may celebrate her achievements for centuries to come, it is the story of how I lost my daughter, Jehanne, whom people here call Jeanne d’Arc, and the peace of my family. Joan of Arc remains one of history’s most puzzling figures. How, in the fifteenth century, could a peasant girl become the head of the French army and have such success against the English occupiers? Her story ends tragically – aged 19 she is burnt at the stake after a sham trial. Far From Home is Joan of Arc’s story told by her mother, Zabillet. This brilliant, vivid historical novel, published in the 600th anniversary year of Joan of Arc’s birth, brings new insight into what it is like to be the mother of a hero. Zabillet knows nothing of her daughter’s extraordinary future as she and her husband, Jacques, struggle to raise their children. A family of peasants, they work the land for their feudal lords and a meagre return for themselves. The English and French are engaged in a senseless war causing destruction to the land and traditional village life. But Jehanne is fiercely independent and refuses to settle down like all the other village girls. Zabillet is shocked and frightened beyond measure when Jehanne leaves home and travels to the uncrowned King of France hundreds of miles away. She struggles to believe that it could be a daughter of hers who leads the French army in amazing victories against the English. And when things go wrong, she has to stand by helplessly as Jehanne is imprisoned by the English and sentenced to death.Zabillet falls into misfortune and despair. The war drags on and for a while her family falls apart. But eventually Jehanne’s vision of a united France is realised. As an old woman, Zabillet seeks justice for her daughter and restores her reputation.
Author: Paul Boyce Publisher: AuthorHouse ISBN: 1665510358 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 284
Book Description
On April 21st 1701, Yazama Jiutarô, a young Japanese samurai is devastated when he and his fellow warriors are informed of the ritual suicide of their master in punishment for a severe offence. The warriors are now ronin – masterless and on the run – but they vow vengeance on the court official whom they blame, promising to return in force at the New Year, December 31st 1702. They know that their revenge, no matter how justified, will only lead to their own deaths by the same ritual suicide. The band separates and scatters and Jiutarô heads south. As he crosses the sea from the main island of Honshu to that of Kyushu, his boat is hit by a tempest. When the storm abates he finds himself in a world populated by races and species of peoples familiar, strange and terrifying. Believing himself to be in one of the hells he has heard of in myths, theatre and stories, he knows he has to find a way back to the home he is far away from.
Author: Alex Jeffers Publisher: Lethe Press ISBN: 1590211030 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 196
Book Description
From the acclaimed author of Safe as Houses and The Abode of Bliss, ten wondrous tales of yesterday, today, and tomorrow--of our familiar world and others. An American teenager meets Adonis on a sailing cruise off the coast of Turkey. A merchant of the Silk Road encounters an odd dog--and a brother--from another world. An old lady on a distant planet attempts to help her great-grandson grow up in a world that will soon forget women ever existed. A Massachusetts boy refuses an offer to visit fairyland. Another American teenager on vacation encounters three fallen angels and is transformed. Alex Jeffers's first collection of fantastical stories is a treacherous box of delights.
Author: Charlotte Hardy Publisher: St. Martin's Press ISBN: 1250094283 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 434
Book Description
Convinced that life offers more than she can find in her small Irish village, Brid Flynn is reluctant to marry local boy Garrett Doyle. He may be the most eligible bachelor in her village, but she is not sure she loves him. And his quiet, persistent manner makes her uneasy. Then an accident brings Lord Harry Leighton, the handsome younger son of the local landowner, into her life. His beautiful features, gentle demeanor, and British accent remind Brid of the world outside of Ireland. In turn, Brid's beauty and wonderful singing voice captivate the young aristocrat. Brid is sure that the Prince Charming she has been waiting for has arrived at last. And when Harry asks her to follow him to London, she can imagine no obstacle to hold her back. But many a dream has been turned to dust by unforeseen circumstances - and Brid's new life may not be as carefree as she has envisioned.
Author: Ashby Bland Crowder Publisher: LSU Press ISBN: 0807132721 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 278
Book Description
Often compared to William Faulkner, renowned American writer William Humphrey (1924–1997) sought to shatter myths about the South in such acclaimed novels as Home from the Hill, The Ordways, and Proud Flesh, and in his voluminous short stories, critical essays, and memoirs. This collection of Humphrey’s best letters deserves space on the bookshelf alongside these earlier works. Beginning in the 1940s when, as a true starving artist, he wore borrowed clothes and could afford only one meal a day, the letters move to his time as a goatherd, his stint as a teacher at Bard College, and his middle years in Europe. They continue as he returns to America and teaches at Washington and Lee, MIT, Princeton, and Smith, and decrease in number as his health declines in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Humphrey corresponded with some of the central figures in the literary and intellectual life of the twentieth century, including writers such as Katherine Anne Porter and Leonard Woolf, and the publishers Alfred and Blanche Knopf. These letters present a vivid picture of Humphrey as he provides commentary on his contemporaries through personal observations combined with sharp critical judgments. Humphrey amuses readers with witty anecdotes and charming tales, including a hilarious account of Christmas dinner with Robert Lowell, a story about British intellectual Cyril Connolly’s near arrest in New York City, and a series of enchanting misunderstandings between Humphrey and his French publisher. The letters also provide remarkable insights into Humphrey’s own works, showing him to be a man happiest when he forgot about himself also prone to plunging into despondency. The correspondence unforgettably reveals his troubled soul and his life as a quintessential artist: a man with the unswerving drive to make a lasting contribution to American literature.
Author: Ojaide, Tanure Publisher: Cissus World Press ISBN: 0997868988 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 219
Book Description
Nobody wants to be a stranger at home, even if one wants to feel at home in an alien country. Celebrated Nigerian author Tanure Ojaide in this memoir recounts his experiences as a Nigerian living and working in the United States. Feeling at home in the United States, but not all the time is coupled with a longing to visit his natal home, as if possessed by the god of nativity, to his home country he goes. Drawn both ways, in a tough tug of war, depending upon where he finds himself—he is caught up in an unending oscillation; now at home and wishing to leave, and soon outside and wishing to be back at home. Often feeling like a stranger no matter how long he has lived and worked in the United States. Not feeling like a stranger he has also refused to blend, wearing materials that make him stand out as an outsider, an African, a Nigerian, a foreigner. There are other differences of beliefs and ideas which do not follow the mainstream, he seems to see things often from different perspective, as a postcolonial fellow, and the others from their metropolitan position of power. He feels he was already formed as a man before his relocation, maybe he is what he is by choice or remain so instinctively.
Author: Dick Simpson Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0190282169 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 347
Book Description
In April 1861, Dick and Tally Simpson, sons of South Carolina Congressman Richard F. Simpson, enlisted in Company A of the Third South Carolina Volunteers of the Confederate army. Their letters home--published here for the first time--read like a historical novel, complete with plot, romance, character, suspense, and tragedy. In their last year of college when the war broke out, Dick and Tally were hastily handed their diplomas so they could volunteer for military duty. Dick was twenty; Tally was twenty-two. Well educated, intelligent, and thoughtful young men, Dick and Tally cared deeply for their country, their family, and their comrades-in-arms and wrote frequently to their loved ones in Pendleton, South Carolina, offering firsthand accounts of dramatic events from the battle of First Manassas in July 1861 to the battle of Chickamauga in September 1863. Their letters provide a picture of war as it was actually experienced at the time, not as it was remembered some twenty or thirty years later. It is a picture that neither glorifies war nor condemns it, but simply "tells it like it is." Written to a number of different people, the boys' letters home dealt with a number of different subjects. Letters to "Pa" went into great detail about military matters in Lee's Army of Northern Virginia--troop movements, casualties, and how well particular units had fought; letters to "Ma" and sisters Anna and Mary were about camp life and family friends in the army and usually included requests for much-needed food and clothing; letters to Aunt Caroline and her daughter Carrie usually concerned affairs of the heart, for Aunt Caroline continued to be Dick and Tally's trusted confidante, even when they were "far, far from home." The value of these letters lies not so much in the detailed information they provide as in the overall picture they convey--a picture of how one Southern family, for better or for worse, at home and at the front--coped with the experience of war. These are not wartime reminiscences, but wartime letters, written from the camp, the battlefield, the hospital bed, the picket line--wherever the boys happened to be when they found time to write home. It is a poignant picture of war as it was actually experienced in the South as the Civil War unfolded.
Author: Catherine Palmer Finerty
Author: Joy Bounds
Author: Paul Boyce
Author: Alex Jeffers
Author: Charlotte Hardy
Author: Ashby Bland Crowder
Author: Aubin SAINT HELIER
Author: Aubin St. Helier
Author: Ojaide, Tanure
Author: Dick Simpson