TLC Book Tour: The Orchardist

The Orchardist is such a rare and beautiful specimen of a book, I barely know where to begin in my praise of it. Should I write about the sweeping breadth of the Washington landscape that becomes as important as another character?

Should I tell you of the achingly beautiful prose that describes every event in the most perfectly chosen details?

Should I warn you that there are moments so painful your breath will catch, so haunting your eyes will not close in sleep?

Perhaps I should write of Talmadge, the quiet and introspective Orchardist for whom the book is named, and the way he cares with such deep intensity for his land, his product, and the people he loves. The way he sees so clearly into the soul of everything and everyone - except perhaps himself.

Or maybe you'd like to know about Jane and Della, two frightened young girls, heavy with child, who appear at the outskirts of Talmdige's orchard, fleeing an unspeakable evil,  and work their way bit by bit into his heart, stirring within him every ounce of protectiveness he can muster.

And I must not forget Angelene, Jane's daughter, whom Talmadge raises and instills with a feminine version of his unique quiet intelligence and intensity.

The Orchardist is stunning, almost Biblical in the epic span of its story about determination and loneliness and loyalty and hope. It takes the reader into a far-away place - the Pacific Northwest at the turn of the century - a time when a man's land governed his life and his choices, when people worked hard from dawn until dark because their very living depended on it. A time when distractions were less, and simple pleasures enjoyed more.

But still there was darkness...there was evil and loss and destruction. Talmadge is no stranger to it, even before Jane and Della with their heavy baby-laden bellies, arrive. His father has died in a mining accident, his mother has died a few years later, leaving he and his younger sister- neither of them barely more than children -alone to run the orchard. And then his sister Elspeth disappeared one day, goes out to gather herbs and never returns. Talmadge is nearly crushed by this loss. Forty years later, it fuels his obsession with Jane and Della, and his desire to protect them from the evil they have fled.

Readers and writers alike will savor The Orchardist, for its story, its characters, its maturity of style and prose. A novel eight years in the writing, begun when its young author was only 24 years old, The Orchardist is an amazing tour de force and should become part of the canon of modern American literature.

Link to the author's website and Facebook page.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for the privilege of reading this book.

Write On Wednesday: The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of

Andi Cumbo first crossed my path in cyberspace about five years ago when I began writing Bookstack, and she then participated regularly in my Write On Wednesday blog meme. So it's fitting today's Write On Wednesday post should honor a major step in the achievement of Andi's long-held writing dream. Last fall, Andi purchased a farm in the hills of Virginia. She named it "God's Whisper," and then wrote a book describing her vision of the community she hoped to grow. Today (thanks to Mindy Koenig!) Andi's friends have come together online to help launch this book into the wider world. The God's Whisper Manifesto is a lovely and thoughtful little book. It starts out as Andi's vision for her home, the God's Whisper farm, where she dreams of a community of artists who will come together under the ten guiding principles set forward in this volume. Yet as you read, you become aware that the God's Whisper Manifesto is much more than just one woman's dream for her ideal community. It's really a set of principles which could govern the world, each set forth in gently beautiful prose. Andi's writing style is easy and true, and she makes the reader feel the practicality and necessity of each of these precepts.

"Here at God's Whisper we practice 'Do unto others' by figuring out how the 'other' is like us. We love people first and hard. Every day. All day." At God's Whisper, the work of the artist is valued as much as the work of the lawyer or plumber or teacher. Play is "good," at God's Whisper, and rest is "treasured." Rolling down grassy hills is "wildly encouraged." You can lay on blankets and do nothing for hours if you want.

But service and work have their place, the earth is honored, food is simple and shared with love. And story - well, story is paramount at God's Whisper. "We know that our stories are our very lives. That we thrive and grow and fight and love because of the stories we know, the ones we live, and the ones we want to create."

The God's Whisper Manifesto will both calm and excite your spirit. Yes, you think with a deep satisfied sigh. This life is the stuff that dreams are made of. And you will want to be part of it, to make it come true in your world as well as on the God's Whisper farm.

In honor of today's book re-launch for The God's Whisper Manifesto, I am giving away a copy of Andi's book. For an opportunity to win, simply share this blog post via Facebook or Twitter, and leave a comment here telling me you've done so. The winner will be chosen at random on Friday, March 22, 2013. 

For Twitter folks, join us tonight, 8:30 p.m.,  at the Twitter party (#godswhisper) where Andi will join us in discussing her  vision for the God's Whisper community.

This Year, What I Will Do

The other day my friend Angie sent me an e-mail, and I always love getting e-mails from Angie. She has great ideas, for one thing. And when I read her writing, I can hear her soft South Carolina accent in every word. It never fails to make me smile.

Anyway. Back to the e-mail. Here's part of what she wrote:

I believe we are bound by the universal nature of our personal stories. ​By sharing them, we inspire, we entertain, we connect. We learn, we grow. We realize that our flaws and our screw ups make us more normal than we thought. Our secret hopes and dreams suddenly seem possible.

She writes about a friend and fellow blogger who invited her to answer five questions - and while she plans to answer them one by one on her blog this week, she has sent the invitation out into the world as well. "I saw it as an opportunity to try something here that I've wanted to try for a long time," she writes.  "And that's build a community of shared stories."

"A community of shared stories." Bloggers do that so well, I think. We share our stories, our beliefs, our hopes and dreams with the wide world. And in doing so, we definitely learn and grow, are comforted and encouraged, supported and inspired. Even though Angie and I are a generation apart in age we share the same vision about the importance of personal stories.

But I'm going to tell you a truth here...when I read today's question, I heaved a big sigh. Here's the question -

What is one thing you’d like to accomplish (professionally or personally) in the next year?

If I'm honest today (and since we're telling our personal stories I'm going to be brutally honest)...I'm tired of trying to accomplish things.

I'm also tired of thinking about trying to accomplish things.

This year I want to simply LIVE.

I want to soak up every minute of sunshine that God allows me to feel.

I want to savor every word of every book I read.

I want to kiss my Grandson's silky smooth cheek nine hundred million times.

I want to sit on the back step and watch my little dog come racing up the yard with his tail flying like a banner in the breeze.

I want to listen to my mother tell me stories about growing up with all her cousins and the games they used to play in the blue Kentucky grass.

This year I want the soundtrack of my life to be simple folk songs with singable melodies, not three-part inventions or finger twisting toccata's.

This year I want the epigram of my life to be a Mary Oliver poem, not a Tolstoy novel.

This year I want to just BE.

Happy. Yes.

Alive. Yes.

True to myself.

Yes.

Let's see if I can accomplish that.

How about you? What's your story? To join in Angie's initiative to create a community of shared stories, go here and add your link to the chain.

Reading Revisited

A few weeks ago when I finished arranging all the book on my new bookshelves, my husband asked me how many of them I had read. "Well, all of them, of course!" I answered, somewhat surprised that he even had to ask. I do have a separate shelf for library books and review books, and I've been doing a great job of keeping that under control (yes, that's me patting myself on the back). I might have a huge TBR list in my mind, but  everything placed on my shelves right now has been read - at least once, and often more than once.

I'm a big re-reader. In fact, as I was unpacking books and organizing them, I started getting all kinds of urges to re-read this one, and then that one, and then this other one...

It all started me thinking about re-reading, and thinking led to writing, and   - well, here's the result, in an essay at All Things Girl today. Here's a snippet to get you started. Read it, and maybe you'll be inspired to revisit an old friend from your bookshelves too.

Why shouldn’t we return to those wonderful stories we loved the first time we read them? Would we consign a Monet painting to a dark closet after seeing it once? Would we leave the concert hall after hearing a Beethoven Symphony and say “I know how that sounds so I need never listen to it again”? Of course we return to the music and works of art that move our spirits, bringing fresh eyes and ears to the familiar melodies and images. Why shouldn’t we do the same with literature?

Write On Wednesday: Just Desserts

Money and writing don’t need each other. We can do all kinds of things to make our living – shining shoes at the airport, walking dogs in the city, teaching 6th graders how to write really good sentences.  Those are all worthy and wonderful occupations, and they may even be your vocation. But you don’t need to do them in order to have money to write. Writing is free.  And while we hope, love, dance joyously when we get paid for our writing, we don’t need the pay to value our work. That value comes in the way it shapes us as people, in the way a reader writes an email to say, “yes, just that, yes,” in the way someone, someday keeps a copy of something we’ve written tucked into his Bible and reads it with teary eyes on a Sunday morning.  Writing and money are mutually exclusive. ~Andi Cumbo, To You, Writer

Although I get paid (a little bit) to write, the writing I get paid to do isn't the writing that feeds my soul. Still, I take pride in making sure that it's concise, accurate, and that it conveys the pertinent medical information in an accessible way. Sometimes it's necessary to say things carefully in that writing so that it doesn't legally implicate people in the wrong way. And sometimes that writing must spell out hard medical facts which clearly denote wrongdoing that must be rectified.

This is my professional writing, and I do it well.

But then there's my real writing. The writing that takes me down meandering roads of thought, that sends me to the library to research something that's caught my interest (right now that's reclusive women writers). The writing that searches my soul, that helps me uncover feelings I never knew existed. It's the writing I share in my stories on the blog and as a contributing editor at All Things Girl. The writing I get lost in for hours at a time, until I look at the clock and wonder where the day has gone.

There's no remuneration for that writing. Unless you count the satisfaction I get from doing it, which can't be quantified with dollar amounts in the bank account.

Do I wish I made money from writing? Sure. Who doesn't wish they could make a living from doing the very thing which feeds their soul? Writing is my dessert at the end of full day, the sweetness that comes from thinking about ideas and feelings and expressing them on the page.

But as Andi says, I don't need money to write. The value comes from the way writing makes me feel, the pure pleasure of doing it and sharing it. For the love of it.

And in this consumer driven society, we writers should loudly proclaim our willingness to work for love.

For more thoughts on the relationship between art and money, check out these posts at Andilit.

To You, Writer

Art and Money - Why We Write