Having lost my only child and my only husband, I wanted to honor my life with them and before. This memoir of a 90-year-old is in verse which best distills the depth of feeling and the height of humor.

As Yeats wrote:

Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,
Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.

In “Faulkner and the Thoroughly Modern Novel,” readers are transported into a world where tradition clashes with the avant-garde. The narrative follows the journey of an aspiring writer, Evelyn Pritchard, who discovers a lost manuscript by William Faulkner that challenges the very essence of modern literature. Set against the backdrop of the Roaring Twenties, Evelyn’s quest to unveil the manuscript’s secrets leads her through a labyrinth of literary salons, jazz clubs, and the rise of modernist thought. As she delves deeper, she finds herself entangled in a web of intrigue, romance, and a profound exploration of the human condition, all while questioning what it means to be a modern novelist. This book is a tribute to Faulkner’s genius, a fictional reimagining that captures the spirit of innovation and the timeless quest for artistic truth.

These poems relate the experiences of an introspective small-town girl growing up during the late 30s and 40s from the retrospective vantage of an urban-wise adult of the 80s and 90s, exploring a singularly traumatic hidden event, uncommon to the time, that affects the rest of her life.