NOTHING FOR FREE

Two of my latest books from Border Press became available at amazon.com this week. One is a young adult book, the sequel to MARTIN’S QUEST entitled MARTIN FINDS HIS TOTEM, and the other volume is an adult “cozy” mystery set in Louisiana entitled NOTHING FOR FREE.

MARTIN FINDS HIS TOTEM was reviewed in an earlier blog and involves young Martin Romero’s fascination with voodoo following a major Louisiana hurricane that almost sweeps away his Grandmother Eulalie’s treating shed while she is in it, a disaster which causes her to become ill. Grandmother Eulalie’s opposition to voodoo influences Martin to search for a native American totem to help him extricate himself from his fascination with voodooiennes so that he can continue his work as a traiteur using native American and Cajun healing practices.

The second book, NOTHING FOR FREE, features Kate Patton, a woman who leaves her job as food editor with a New Orleans newspaper the day her husband threatens her life while they are netting crabs in Lake Pontchartrain. She flees to Robeline in central Louisiana, intending to write about food specialties of the area, and lands a job as a columnist for the Robeline newspaper. Kate is invited to dinner at Roselea Plantation, a place to which writers and painters often retreat to pursue their artistic projects. During a dinner held at Roselea, Kate witnesses the poisoning of a guest writer, and Amelia, a descendant of the People of Color, points a finger at several of the boarders at the plantation. When a plantation worker becomes a second victim of poisoning, local police arrest a guest painter, and all visitors become suspect. Kate, frightened by Amelia and her brother performing suspicious dances in the backyard of Roselea Plantation, is led to uncover a mystery involving the old plantation and its eccentric owner.

I’ve been working on another writing project daily, and the publishing of these two books is almost anticlimactic, but I’m pleased to see their bright covers on amazon.com. Both covers are derived from paintings by my brother Paul, who lives in California, and designed by my grandson Martin, who practices landscape architecture in Madisonville, Louisiana.

Readers can order copies of both titles, MARTIN FINDS HIS TOTEM and NOTHING FOR FREE, from amazon.com. I think you’ll enjoy my latest books… they’re suspenseful “reads.”

If you’re interested in other books I’ve written, log on to the Border Press (www.theborderpress.net)site. Thanks for being part of my reading public. Young readers have been asking for a sequel to MARTIN’S QUEST for several years, and might appreciate your ordering copies of MARTIN FINDS HIS TOTEM for them. NOTHING FOR FREE is my first adult fiction book to be published.

THE GRAND TOUR IN LITERATURE

Back in the late 80’s, I returned to college for a spell and was fortunate enough to land in honors classes at ULL in Lafayette, Louisiana, one of which particularly absorbed me, a course in American Literature taught by Dr. Mary Ann Wilson. Mary Ann not only re-awakened my interest in American Literature, she encouraged me many times when I went to her with complaints about my feelings of inadequacy as an older student. I remember that she made “The Scarlet Letter” come alive in a way that no teacher had ever been able to do, and, shortly after, when the movie by that name appeared, I knew every detail of the characters and plot as the film unfolded. She later became a close friend, and three years ago, after I had become an archdeacon in the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana, when I had to deliver the homily for an incoming class of deacons, I turned to her for a reading and critique of the sermon. Again, she gave me wonderful support for the work, and I was inspired to deliver a homily she deemed “excellent.”

Mary Ann is a small, dark-haired woman of Italian descent who has published several critical works, one of which concerns a major 20th century American, Pulitzer Prize winning-writer, Jean Stafford, and she’s presently writing about the Louisiana literature of Grace King, New Orleans writer of the late 19th and early 20th century. Mary Ann is one of the best advocates for the advancement of women I know, personally, and has fostered Women’s Studies at ULL for many years. She has received the award for being a distinguished professor at ULL, and is an endowed Professor in the Humanities. Her credentials stretch further than this brief acknowledgement, but it’s perhaps expansive enough to call her the quintessential professor of the Humanities. A lunch session with her always inspires me to write and study. She’s an ardent proponent of T. H.White’s comment in The Once and Future King: “…the best thing for being sad is to learn something…”

Shortly after the New Year, Mary Ann invited me and former ULL professor, Vickie Sullivan, to lunch at a Thai café in Lafayette and dessert afterwards at her home on Duncan Drive. She showed us a flier that she had prepared for a Study Abroad Program during the Summer of 2009 in Florence, Italy. The studies are English courses 206, American Literature II cross listed with English 435, American Realism and billed as “The Grand Tour in 19th century American Literature.” She advertises the courses as an exploration of four 19th century American writers – three male and one female – who were seduced by Italy. The writers include Nathaniel Hawthorne (why am I not surprised?), Mark Twain, Henry James, and Edith Wharton. Students will visit the gardens and villas of these writers while participating in their studies.

In English 380/Honors 385, Mary Ann has set up a course entitled “Desiring Italy: Women Writers and the Italian Experience,” an exploration of la dolce vita from a woman’s perspective. “Come with us to see how women writers in Italy write about food, about fashion, about landscape, about men,” she writes. … “What is it about this old world setting that inspires women writers and often changes their lives?” she asks. “From antipasto to dolce, we will savor the tastes, sounds, and sights of Italy through the lens of women writers…”

What a wow summer this should be! Students don’t need to be ULL students, but they do need to register as ULL students the summer they take the courses, May 27-July 8, 2009. Cost of $6600 will include round-trip airfare to Italy, transfers to and from the airport, housing for six weeks in furnished apartments with kitchens in the city center of Florence, summer school tuition; field trips to Pisa, Lucca, Siena, San Gimignano, and a four-day trip to Rome with admission to museums, palaces, and churches. However, students will be responsible for their own meals during the program. Students can earn up to nine hours of college credit. For more information, contact: Dr. Mary Ann Wilson at pasta@louisiana.edu. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience with an outstanding guide and teacher!! P.S. She knows how to speak Italian.

AFTER THE WEDDING

Last Friday evening, my grandson Martin Romero was married to Kristin Walker at St. Thomas More Roman Catholic Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It was a joint ceremony in which I, an Episcopal deacon, was allowed to participate fully with a Roman Catholic priest, Father Tom Duhe, and I delivered the wedding homily with his blessing to do so.

I experienced trepidations about meeting and rehearsing for the wedding because I had visions, from my childhood, of a disapproving Roman Catholic clergyman resenting my grandson’s request that an Episcopal religious be a part of this important wedding rite -- a rite once restricted to Roman Catholic clergy only --and also a rite once restricted to betrothed Roman Catholics. I was not only surprised by the embracing manner in which I was received, I was humbled because I had expected disapproval. The priest told me I could do any part of the service I wished to do, and during the rehearsal, he grasped my hand and led me up and down the altar steps, insisted that I give the couple the rings, read the Gospel, deliver the homily, and stand beside him at all points of the ceremony. We were all blessed by his calm movements, his inclusive manner, and the way he took care of every person about to “faint and fall out” on the altar.

The altar was simple and unadorned except for the Gospel book with its gold cover, and the focus was on the handsome couple celebrating the beginning of a life together, on those who supported that union, and on the community of believers. In short, the focus was on the people who formed the community of God. This is true ecumenism, I thought, and felt filled with the essence of real community, something that Phillip Gulley describes in his FRONT PORCH TALES as “a beautiful thing…which sometimes heals us and makes us better than we could otherwise be…”

I think each person who had a part in the service felt communal, imbued with the spirit of inclusion as they moved through a rite luminous with caring. It was a safe place where the bride and groom, filled with the wonder and rapture of new love, felt free to weep as they knelt on the prie dieu listening to a homily that borrowed freely from the great treatise on the four loves by C. S. Lewis, Anglican apologist of the last century.

Many people acknowledged me for giving an inspired sermon, and I appreciated their support, but I was humbled by their comments and kept replying that the priest, with the help of the Holy Spirit, had created the place for inspiration and love to prevail. In 1 Peter 4:8, Peter wrote about the community of love much like the one Fr. Duhe had helped to create during this short time of a mixed wedding ceremony. Peter said: “Above all else, hold unfailing your love for one another…”. We experienced and witnessed that love.

I’m grateful to this compassionate priest for helping to make the wedding of Martin and Kristin “the most personal I've ever attended,” one of the wedding guests told me. Yes, the church, the service, the priest, and God’s people participating – it was a wedding where compassion and inclusivity took first place… thanks be to God.