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| Lambert-Musser Home |
I adore this non-fiction essay that appears in Black Warrior Review Fall/Winter 2014.
The author, Sarah Minor, is writing about an old home that belongs to her grandmother--the home that is known as the Lambert-Musser Home in West 2nd, Muscatine, IA.
I must admit I knew nothing of Iowan architecture on the West Hill of Muscatine or that there even a city in IA called Muscatine.
That hardly matters though because Muscatine is a river town and if you've lived in a river town its easy to feel connected to another river town.
Of course, Baton Rouge doesn't have a historic district that matches West Hill but it has other attributes.
Muscatine is one of the river cities that Mark Twain was much enamored of. It's still a small town, unlike Baton Rouge, which has become a metroplex.
More to the point, Minor's "Into the Limen" is about forgotten spaces deep within large historical houses.
In the obscure space under the roof, bracketed by the eaves, is a place called a soffit. This is where you find tools and old letters yellowed photographs, and possibly skeletal remains.
Minor believes soffits in old homes are "thresholds" or liminal spaces. Other liminal spaces, according to Minor, are airports and beaches. I would add river fronts and swamps to the list.
Even though I had read Poetics of Space for a creative writing class, the power of liminal spaces was never so clear.
Black Warrior Review
Set in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, this is crime story mixed with revelations that come from the narrator's flashbacks. Even though its fiction, the narrator presents the story as memory, as the first time he fell for a girl, Lindsey.
Unfortunately, the girl he desires falls victim to a terrible
crime--rape. The young narrator claims not to even know what the word means. Nonetheless, he, like three other boys in the neighborhood, are suspects.
The narrator and the the two other suspects come from a privileged background, attend a private school and live in a pristine neighborhood. Many wonder how such a dark crime can happen midst so much "sunshine" and innocence.
Walsh does an incredible job of peeling back the layers of each character to reveal their secrets. For Lindsey, it's not the rape that makes her moody and morose; it's in fact, therapy, where she turns dark.
In therapy, Lindsey meets cutters and anorexics and sex-abuse survivors, and, thus, she learns how privileged her life has been.
The narrator's crush on Lindsey is innocent, or it something darker, like a twisted obsession? At one point, the narrator makes an elaborate structure out of yard clippings that resembles Lindsey.
Two other suspects, Bo Kern and Jason Landry, are even more suspicious. But which one of them is truly guilty of this violent crime?
What at first appears to be a coming-of-age story or a crime story set in the deep south, turns out to be something much richer. In the end, it ponders identity, gender, memory and justice.
For more information about this author,
http://www.mowalsh.com
This young adult novel tackles the slippery nature of coincidence. While researching a non-fiction book about coincidences, a disabled girl's father he mysteriously disappears.
Laureth, a blind teenager, leads an unofficial investigation into her father's disappearance. Her mother refuses to help her and seems on the verge of splitting up with her father.
Readers can immediately identify with Laureth, not because of her blindness, but because they recognize her plight. She is in real trouble--the starting point for any great narrative.
Convinced someone on the Internet has her Dad's notebook and may know his whereabouts, she books a plane to New York. She has told no one and her only guide to the seeing world is her seven-year-old brother.
She had no idea where her father may be staying; she has no idea where she and her brother will stay. She only goes on a hunch that her father is in trouble and needs her help.
Wearing dark glasses, she must also keep up the pretense that she is not blind. She needs to be seen as the one caring for her brother instead of the other way around or someone may call authorities or notify her mother in England.
Every encounter--from navigating the airport to New York's public transportation--carries the risk that Laureth will be uncovered as a blind, and, thus, invisible person. Laureth's ability to find her way in New York and find her father proves the title.
