A box recently arrived in the mail. I knew what it contained and did not rush to open it. I let it sit in my hallway for a couple of days. Eventually, of course, I opened it.
I’m not quite sure what the hesitation or nervousness was about. I suppose it’s what we experience when something that’s begun in the imagination — whether a garment we’ll sew or a garden we’ll plant or a story we’ll write, or even that baby we dream of — finally becomes the thing itself, and we recognize it’s too late to change it now; it is what it is. And will it be okay?
Once in hand, yes, it is. The long process of each story, the seed in the ground, gives way to the result. It may carry its own surprises, but it’s good, it’s fine.
Yes, I’m truly glad about this book, Like a River Divides the Earth. There’s a story that begins with a 14-year-old seeing her soldier father’s face for the first time. And four older women sharing a house, which is something of a current trend apparently, until a mystifying event causes them to question what they thought they had. Two stories emerge from Mennonite historical events, but their themes are universal: disappointment and survival, and an individual life awkwardly poised in the midst of the larger and powerful community identity. In another, a seemingly simple tale of mother and son becomes something more complicated for the one who hears it.
There’s a rather small window of time for a book’s notice in the world of publishing, so that’s why I’m leaning out the window now and waving and saying: it’s here!
Available wherever you get your books (or could be requested as an addition to your library.) I’m deeply grateful to every reader.
Borrowing Bones 