How a Library Helped Save Me
The Ernie Pyle Memorial Library Albuquerque, New Mexico A newly-discovered portrait of the famous WWII journalist Ernie Pyle is his last: a photograph taken just moments after his death. The body that housed all those words lies still and immortalized in black and white. Ernie Pyle housed other words in a very literal way – words that meant survival to me, long after he was gunned down by a Japanese machine gun on a Pacific Island in 1945. When I moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico as a ten-year-old girl in 1962, I devoured the written word. From the time I was a toddler I had wondered at the magic of black marks on white paper and determined I would solve those mysteries; and once I learned to read I was voracious. Previously living in the raw-boned...
Review of When Mermaids Sing
The central plot of When Mermaids Sing by Mark Zvonkovic (IUniverse, 2008) focuses on the narrator, Larry, a man still finding himself. His own endeavors are side-stepped though, when his close friend and cousin, searching for many of the same things becomes affiliated with a powerful cult in the Cape Cod area. As Larry tries to remove him cousin from the cult he not only learns of the destructive of cults, but is startled to find many parallel constructions in the arguably commonplace society that he resides within. Expertly written, the novel pans back and forth between Larry’s past and present. Larry not only begins to understand the inner workings of cults, but makes some startling discoveries about the world he lives in. –Reviewed by Jason...
Interview on Examiner
The Examiner recently interviewed me with the following questions: Q-How did you get started writing?A-Writing begins, I think, with the art of noticing. One of my earliest memories is this:I am standing at the end of a peach orchard in Farmington, New Mexico, in which my parents have cleared spaces to make a trailer park. Many of the trailers sit on blocks because their tires, along with the women’s wedding rings, sit in a hock shop until payday.The peach trees are at the end of bloom, filing the air with a stinging sweetness and the ground with pale, brown-edged petals that swirl around in the wind. Down the row of trailers are cars and trucks, and men’s legs sticking out from underneath them, this way and that. Above them, the automobiles’ hoods are open,...
No Silent Reading
There have been many ground-breaking events in the history of Christian literature and its readers. Perhaps one of the most shocking events came about in about 400 AD when the famous St. Augustine walked in on Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, and found him doing something so unusual that Augustine described it in detail. Ambrose was scanning the page of the book before him, Augustine said, and his heart was obviously deeply involved in the meaning of what he was reading, but “his voice was silent and his tongue was still.” So what was the extraordinary, even shocking behavior the bishop apparently practiced? He read to himself. All the time. That was. . . remarkably unusual. That’s because from antiquity, what was written was meant to be spoken. Books were...
Reason #126: A fictional account of losing faith in Mormonism
In the previous item on the “365 Reasons” blog I described the situation that caused me to lose faith in Mormonism. I have tried to describe this in a fictional account, too: my novel, Latter-day Cipher. In this passage, an LDS man who is a spokesman for the church is explaining how he will counter the criticisms of non-members in an upcoming press conference. But this man, Roger, does not know that his wife Eliza is beginning to have doubts about the LDS church: “But don’t worry – the Church has people – many of them—who are fulltime researchers, who spend every day working on explanations that Gentiles would understand. And of course money is no object. BYU has a Web site, and scores of individuals do too, that make it their...
Writing begins with Noticing
Writing begins, I think, with the art of noticing. One of my earliest memories is this: I am standing at the end of a peach orchard in Farmington, New Mexico, in which my parents have cleared spaces to make a trailer park. Many of the trailers sit on blocks because their tires, along with the women’s wedding rings, are visiting a hock shop until payday. The peach trees are at the end of bloom, filing the air with a stinging sweetness and the ground with pale, brown-edged petals that swirl around in the wind. Down the row of trailers are cars and trucks, and men’s legs sticking out from underneath them, this way and that. Above them, the automobiles’ hoods are open, making them look like birds lined up, waiting for someone to feed them. This is a sight I...
