I’m thrilled to have won first place in the Leslie Garrett Knoxville Writers Guild Short Fiction Contest. Two days before I received the news, my story “Milk House Water” was also accepted for publication in the Chaffin Journal
Family Stories
Battles Won, Lost, Yet to be Fought
My brother turned 65 the day Osama bin Laden was killed, but he didn’t hear about it until the next morning. By the time the President came on TV to tell the world what had happened, Fred was already asleep. The party was over, candles extinguished
College Reunion, 2010
We were twenty-one years old when we left our Valley home in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Emerging from the shadows of the Blue Ridge Mountains, we scattered like thistledown blown by autumn winds. Armed with our degrees, we traveled across America to places we’d never been. We crossed oceans and visited countries we’d studied in history and […]
You Can Get Used to Anything
My brother is a quadriplegic. He’s lost all feeling in his feet. He has to look to see where they are. If he tries to walk, he falls. His right hand is useless, though he has some residual feeling in his left. He’s very protective of that, careful not to injure it in any way. […]
A Kitchen Fire and its Aftermath
I’ve been into genealogy for so many years I can’t remember when it started. Maybe it was when I found the grave of my great great great grandfather behind the church I attended when I was a child. Or when I read the chapter in a local history book about the immigrant who began the […]
Fire Ants: War to the Death
Fire ants have moved to South Carolina. Two years ago my brother, who lives near Florence, began to find them in his back yard. There were two kinds, he noticed: red and black. The red ants were bigger, but both were aggressive, hostile, angry creatures. My brother lives near the Pee Dee River. On a […]
