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Join Cynthia Reeves, author of The Last Whaler and Falling Through the New World, with Carla Spataro, author of More Strange Than True at the Camden Public Library on Tuesday, April 15, at 6:30 PM for a conversation about novel writing. They will discuss why they chose to tell their stories in the way they did. Did the “form” come before the writing, or did it follow after the drafting was underway? All are welcome. Light refreshments will be provided.
A writer and poet for almost thirty years, Cynthia Reeves was honored with Miami University Press’s novella prize, and residencies at Hawthornden Castle, Vermont Studio Center, Galleri Svalbard, and the 2017 Arctic Circle Summer Solstice Expedition. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College. Her novels The Last Whaler and Falling Through the New World are both finalists in Literary Fiction for the Foreword INDIES awards.
Falling Through the New World is a novel in stories that spans a century, from World War I Italy to modern-day America. The collection comprises fourteen stories. The eponymous piece, “Falling Through the New World,” traces the experiences of a young married couple—Anna and Vincenzo Desiderio—as they negotiate the impact of the Great War on their lives. “La Dolentissima Madre” follows the parallel journeys of Anna and her mother as they grapple with their sister/daughter dying of the Spanish flu. “Sign Language” reaches back into the Desiderios’ family history as Anna and Vincenzo’s daughter, Rose, grapples with her father’s desire to reunite with his dead wife. And in the final story, “All This the Heart Ordains,” Kate returns to Italy after her mother’s death to seek out an understanding of Rose’s deep commitment to her Catholic faith.
Svalbard. Midsummer’s Eve, 1937. Astrid’s body cupped in mine, I clasp my arms around her waist. Our pulses coursing together through our skin, I enter her from behind. This was the beginning of our undoing.
So observes Tor Handeland in The Last Whaler, an elegiac meditation on the will to survive under extreme conditions. Tor, a whaler, and his wife, Astrid, a botanist specializing in Arctic flora, are stranded during the dark season of 1937-38 at his remote whaling station on Svalbard when they misjudge ice conditions and fail to rendezvous with the ship meant to carry them back to their home in southern Norway. Beyond enduring the Arctic winter’s twenty-four-hour night, the couple must cope with the dangers of polar bears, violent storms, and bitter cold as well as Astrid’s unexpected pregnancy.
Carla, or C. J., Spataro is an award winning short story writer who directs the MFA in Creative Writing and MA in Publishing programs at Rosemont College in suburban Philadelphia. She was also one of the founding partners of Philadelphia Stories magazine and PS Books. She recently published her debut novel, More Strange Than True.
Jewell Jamieson unknowingly eats a meal spiked with magic and makes a sloppy drunken wish. When Jewell awakes the next morning, she discovers her beloved dog Oberon is gone and, in his place, (in her bed) is a beautiful naked man. Things get complicated when Titania, the impulsive Queen of the Faeries, decides she wants Oberon for herself. Is Oberon simply a man who used to be a dog, or is he somehow something more? When Jewell discovers the answer, she will be faced with a devastating choice. Will she choose to save the man she’s grown to love by giving him up, or will she honor his wishes and watch him die?
Set in contemporary Philadelphia, More Strange Than True can be best described as a mash-up of literary fiction and grounded fantasy in the vein of Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic or Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus – and there’s lots of Shakespeare. The novel takes some of its characters (and its title) from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Other characters are pulled from Greek Mythology and Goethe’s poem “The Elf King.”