Trafalgar, A Cold War Love Story
Carolina Whitson lives in 1973, a confusing era. A sexual revolution seems to promise “free love”, but it seems to be mostly for guys. No one’s bothered to revise the double standard, and there’s no concept of date rape. People are also afraid a nuclear apocalypse will wipe out the planet altogether. There’s much talk of world peace and censure of violence, yet many guys fancy themselves as desperados riding through a desert on a horse with no name and shooting the sheriff. Carolina’s boyfriend, Buckley, identifies with Clint Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars and gets into regular fistfights over injustices to women and to smaller, weaker and crazier males. Carolina takes solace in her friendship with Dennis, a bookstore clerk who turns her on to Jane Austen novels.
Dennis helps Carolina make sense of her world by pointing out the parallels between her time and Austen’s. For example, in both periods two empires with differing ideologies are at war. But Carolina likes Austen’s world better because of its fireplaces, and carriages and well appointed rooms where girls walk arm in arm. Some of the guys are cads but none of them get in fistfights, and none of them have jealous tantrums like the ones Buckley pitches over her friendship with Dennis, aggravating the headaches that make it hard for her to read Persuasion.
While trying to read the last Austen novel, Carolina gets splitting headaches and has vivid dreams of being Charlotte Wilson, who lives in 1805. She begins to find walking difficult, as though she’s wading through deep water. The walls between 1973 and 1805 wear thin, and eventually she finds herself trudging down a muddy road rutted by coach wheels and farm carts, trying to make it to Portsmouth where the man she loves, Richard Woodbridge, is about to set sail for Trafalgar. Will she find Woodbridge? If she can’t, will she make it back to 1973? If so, can she persuade Buckley to drop his desperado act? What does she really want, anyway? Read Trafalgar to see if she figures it out!
“The Other Desperado,” a short story excerpted from this book, was published in The MacGuffin under the name Mary Newton. “Richard Woodbridge,” also excerpted from Trafalgar, is upcoming in Whistling Shade under the same name.
“A powerful book.”
–Ellen Michika, educator, mom and grandmom.
“The characters are well done and engaging and likeable, Buckley in spite of himself.”
–William Brasse, author of The Sound of Sirens and The Needle in the Camel’s Eye
“Trafalgar is a golden egg!”
–Larry Fricano, retired substance abuse counselor and weirdo artist
Where the Time Goes
Stories excerpted from Where the Time Goes have been published in Atherton Review, Evening Street Review, isacoustic, borrowed solace, Potato Soup Journal and October Hill. Another is upcoming Vitni Review.
Tara Roe, daughter of Carolina Whitson from Trafalgar, has always taken pride in her early launch into adulthood. In 1992, Carolina had a nervous breakdown and left her husband and family for a time, leaving Tara to take care of her siblings at just 18. Through the years Tara has pictured her young self as a courageous teen who took on the burden of parenthood when her ultra-sensitive mom couldn’t deal. But at 43, a mysterious old letter falls into her hands—a letter to Carolina from an unknown man. The brief note reveals a secret that explodes Tara’s picture of her mother’s “breakdown” and turns her narrative of her own life to mush. She interrogates Carolina about what really happened, but her questions drag a snarl of painful, infuriating and sometimes hilarious memories out of the closet. Can their relationship, and family stability for that matter, endure this stroll down memory lane?
You may especially enjoy this book if you or your mother had to drop out of college for reproduction-related reasons.
“I enjoyed this immensely. The characterizations and voice are outstanding. The conflicts are authentic.”
–Lisa Savage, author of Ever Heard of Her? Women of achievement to know, and why you don’t.
“It’s even better than Trafalgar.”
–David Costa, PhD, linguistic scholar at Miami University
“It’s f—–g hilarious!”
–Hope Savage, folksinger
The Kidd’s Canyon House
If you’ve read Where the Time Goes, you’re familiar with Tara Roe, daughter of Carolina Whitson from Trafalgar. Although Tara grew up in the chaotic, quasi-dysfunctional Roe family, she has managed to get a college degree, have a successful marriage, and provide a stable family for her own three kids. In 2018, the storms of her childhood and youth seem to have passed, and her worst problem is a teenage son who wants to play varsity football in spite of his terrible grades. All that changes when she receives an email from an unknown sender.
The sender claims to be a voice from Tara’s past and challenges her to guess which voice. And which past. Tara gets queasy thinking of some of the people she knew in her early 20s and is tempted to ghost this person. Then she remembers that her high school best friend, Shelley Nordstrom, used to play exactly this type of mind game. Their friendship ended on a troubled note, but Tara is curious to see how Shelley is doing these days, so she throws out Shelley’s name and is promised a latte at her venue of choice. So far so good. But after 45 minutes in their old favorite booth at the Sea Horse Cafe, Tara has seen no sign of Shelley’s red hair or buxom form. She’s about to leave in disgust when someone slides into the seat across from hers. Someone from her past. However, it isn’t Shelley. Read The Kidd’s Canyon House to hear about the most disturbing night of Tara’s life.
“Very satisfying and also believable. The characters are really good.”
–Elizabeth Newton, chorister, hobby farmer and erstwhile office worker.
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
If you’ve read Trafalgar, Where the Time Goes, or The Kidd’s Canyon House, you’re familiar with Buckley, whose mother left him standing in front of a bar in 1959 when he was seven years old, saying she’d be right back. You probably know that she never came back and that her body was found in the Santa Monica Mountains two years later. You may even remember Buckley’s lifelong belief his mother was murdered by an older man she was dating. A man he had spoken to and remembers well. But is he right? Read Smoke Gets in Your Eyes to find out exactly what happened to Charlene.
“I couldn’t put it down, and read the whole thing in one day!”
–Leah Burns, M.A., Resource Teacher
