Writing Projects
The Wall
When I lived near Washington DC in the early 1980s, I watched the Vietnam Memorial Wall being built, checking its status each time I drove into town. The Wall soon became my favorite among the many memorials that populated the National Mall. I was drawn to the simplicity of that black granite, arms reaching out, each name representing a promise ended before fulfillment. I watched the memorial fill up with flowers, notes, teddy bears and the many mementos left by loved ones. And I knew that, for each name carved into that wall, there was a story and a circle of people whose lives were shaped by a loved one lost.
The Wall is a novel about the lasting influence a soldier lost in the Vietnam War has on the lives of those he left behind, especially his brother Tommy who, 25 years later, having failed once, sets out again to fulfill his brother’s final request to care for their sister Sarah, a woman with Down Syndrome sent to live in an institution somewhere in Virginia. Those enlisted to help Tommy in his effort to reunite with family find their own lives forever altered by the life of this lost soldier.
David and Carolyn
Imagine falling in love but subjected to a team of people who get to decide if your relationship is appropriate; the psychologist questions your capacity to consent to sex, the doctor decides to put you on birth control to ensure no offspring are produced, a social worker finds your relationship cute but can’t really see you as a person able to make a serious commitment. Sound dystopian? It’s a fact of life if you are a person with a developmental disability living in an institution, small or large, under the care of others. In our well intentioned caring for the vulnerable, we at times discount the emotions and impulses that define all of us as human.
David and Carolyn is a novel about two people in love who met in an institution in eastern North Carolina. David has cerebral palsy and depends on a wheelchair for mobility. Carolyn does not use words to communicate. Neither of these disabilities represents a barrier to their relationship, but the decisions of others tear them apart when Carolyn is sent to live with her sister in the western mountains of North Carolina. The two must find their own way back to each other defying a system that even with its best intentions is designed to keep them apart.
Cardinal Farms
What lies beneath the stories in our headlines? Is there a truth more complex than the belief we assign? A stolen election, a racist murder. How do we find truth and the compassion to forgive?
Cardinal Farms is a novel about a policewoman who quits her job after shooting and killing a black teenager who was about to shoot her partner. Despite being exonerated by an investigation that found the shooting justified, she is vilified by a community angry about the killing of a child at the hands of police. Unable to forgive herself, Kathleen changes careers, attempting to find redemption by setting her gun down forever. Leaving city life behind, she takes a job as a psychologist in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia at a residential school for emotionally disturbed teenagers. As she establishes rapport with the students on her caseload, Kathleen begins to relax into the belief that she might escape her past. But when the Finance Director is murdered and Kathleen’s former fiancé arrives as the chief investigator, she finds herself thrown back into a world she had hoped to leave behind forever.
Other projects
Climbing Mountains: the story of a couple struggling to adjust after his head injury changes their lives. The story received honorable mention in the Writer’s Digest 2020 short story contest.
Woman Under a Bridge: the story of a woman, beaten by a lover, saved by a stranger, and left to recover alone without friends or family
Futility: The story of a family uncertain how to support each other in the face of a terminal diagnosis