Terry Phillips-Seitz's Writing Pages
What Have I Done So Far?
A Long Ride Home
This is the story of Ted Dashiell, a travel writer from the Lower Delmarva Peninsula, and the Honduran-American family who have made him one of their own. He and their daughter, Carolina ("Lina") Arias, have loved each other since they first met in high school. However, their adolescent reticence to tell each other led to their marrying others. But
thirty years later, when they return home for Lina's father's funeral, their feelings, unchanged, finally become apparent to them both.
Two events, however, stand in the way of their happiness. Miguel, Lina's twin brother and Ted's best friend, has asked him to drive to Houston to return with a cousin who entered the country without documents. On the ride south, Ted barely escapes the first of two attempts on his life.
Upset that someone has tried to kill Ted, Lina joins him for his return home. A few nights later, when they arrive at the family farm, a second attempt leads to a tragedy. Again, Ted is unharmed. However, he becomes for Lina an unbearable reminder of her loss. She returns to Jerez, Spain, where she has lived for years, and does not try to contact him.
Eventually, Ted moves to southern France, where he hopes to restart his life. Once a year in October, he visits Sanlúcar de Barrameda for two weeks, spending his time writing in a bar cafe on the beach. It is here, in Sanlúcar, that an unexpected encounter might change things.
Alce
Mikey Walker, the youngest child of Lina Arias Walker, whom we met in A Long Ride Home, is awakened by his cell phone ringing. Seeing that the call is from his former girlfriend, Alce, he doesn't answer it and tries to go back to sleep. But Alce is persistent. She had seen him the day before in Gamla Stans, the old center city of Stockholm, and wants to know why, even if they no longer
are together, he didn't bother to call her while he was in Sweden.
Several years earlier, they met and fell in love while they were students at the University of Delaware, but when Alce returned to Sweden as a graduate student at the University of Uppsala, Mikey remained in Delaware to work on the family farm. Their attempt to find a way to spend time together in while Alce remained in Sweden ended in disaster when Mikey met her parents. Although they were pleasant to him, afterward, Alce told him they forbade her to see Mikey again--an apparent reaction to seeing that Mikey was half Latino. Alce had begged Mikey to help her find a way to circumvent her parents' demand, but insulted and offended, he refused any plan in which her parents would remain a part of her life.
He has spent the previous year unsuccessfully trying to put aside his feelings for Alce, and in their phone conversation, he tries to maintain the impression that she no longer mattered. But Alce isn't buying it and gets Mikey to agree to take the train to Uppsala to spend the day with her.
After she meets him, Alce wastes no time in making Mikey admit that he still loves her just as much as ever and has missed her, too. But his feelings about her parents are still the same. When he says as much, Alce confesses that they had made no such prohibition. She had told Mikey that because it was her younger brother, an irrationally bigoted member of a reactionary political group, who had threatened both Alce and, indirectly, Mikey if they stayed together. She hadn't told him the truth because she was afraid Mikey would hurt her brother or worse.
But now Alce has to stay in Uppsala only for her current semester. Afterwards, she can meet with her thesis advisor via Skype, and so, she hopes, can move back to Delaware to be with Mikey.
They only have to manage their situation with her brother for four more months. ...
Kate
Randy Hastings, a widower, runs into Kate, a friend he hasn't seen in the three years since his wife died. They go to lunch, where Kate begins to tell him about herself since they last saw each other. While they are eating, a large, heavily built man approaches their table and tells Kate he doesn't like to see her with other men. Since elementary school, Calvin Elzey has considered Kate to be his
girlfriend. As she has to from time to time,she tells him unequivocally that they have no relationship. When Calvin threatens to hit her, Randy grabs his arm, then his thumb, forcing him to lower his arm. After Calvin threatens Randy and leaves, Randy offers to follow Kate home. She accepts and asks if he would like to stay for dinner. Kate's reintroduction to Randy continues through the evening, and as Randy gets ready to leave, she asks if he would like to stay for the night.
The Abuela
Ted and Lena, now married and living in Montpelier, France, have come to Buenos Aires to visit some of Ted's friends. In the cafe at the corner of their block, where they take their coffee each morning, they meet an older lady who comes every day, as well. One morning, when they share a table, their new friend reveals that she was one of the "Abuelas of Plaza de Mayo," and she still goes down to the plaza almost every day.
An Untimely Death
Lee Waller, a childhood friend of Ted Dashiell, has apparently died. At least, that's what the letter to his lawyer says.
What I'm Reading
Like everyone, I enjoy being caught up in each novel's story, but I also read fiction to try to learn from other authors' style and imagery. I read as much non-fiction as I do fiction, but unlike the latter, I tend to be reading more than one non-ficton book at a time, so, typically, you can find three or four science and history texts lying open around my house.
Recently
Claire Jiménez
What Happened to Ruthie Ramirez?
In wondering what has happened to her sister, Nina Ramirez intimately describes her family and their lives on Staten Island. Claire Jiménez uses Nina's voice, as well as those of her mother and sisters, to narrate the story in her charming vernacular that never is out of character. Their often amusing observations about each other and their community carries the plot through to the end.
It was an easy read (easier if you know a little Spanish) and I'm interested in the lives of Latinos in America.
Donna Everhart
The Moonshiner's Daughter
This has to be one of my favorite books in years. With a theme that speaks to the sad folly in the lives of Appalachian moonshiners, even as late as the 1960s, it reminds me of the 1958 movie "Thunder Road" (if you're old enough to remember it). But whereas the movie was in black and white, Donna Everhart's prose is in full color. And her familiarity with the world of Appalatian moonshiners is obvious.
Katherine Blake
The Unforgettable Loretta Darling
Loretta is a young, ambitious woman from an English seaside town who charms her way to California. With no resources, she is befriended by Priscilla, a prostitute she meets while walking around Hollywood. Loretta finds a job in a diner where she meets Raphael, who first becomes her friend, then her boyfriend, and finally the husband who betrays her.
Then her life really begins.
I was interested in this story because I wanted to follow another style of first-person narrative. But this one wasn't what I expected. It could just as easily have been told in third person. Katherine Blake's romantic novel tells a story that is often predictable, but laced with a cynical self-awareness. In the end, the dialogue and story line become increasingly oblique, and for me, lose much of their entertainment value.
Amor Towles
A Gentleman In Moscow
I wanted to read this immensely popular novel because of its setting in Moscow during the years when the Bolsheviks are still struggling to establish a clear power structure. Its story shines its light on a period in the USSR's history not so clearly understood my most of us. It's fascinating, romantic, cynical, and ironic.
Lincoln Highway
This story of two young men and one's younger brother, as they followed the Lincoln Highway (that was later to become US 30). Everett and his younger brother, Billy, were headed at Billy's insisence, to California in Everett's car to find the mother they hadn't heard from in the eight years since she left them. Wooly wanted to go to New York first, and circumstances had them drive from their home in Indiana to Manhattan before starting west.
Amor Towles uses multiple voices and their points of view, to tell the story. In it he has captured the feel of Middle America and the boys who were living in it during the decades after World War II. Like A Gentleman In Moscow, the story at first seems to have no particular importance, but through their adventures, acquires meaning and significance.
Donna Leon
Aqua Alta, the last of Donna Leon's books that I have read, is about Commissario Guido Brunetti, a police commissioner (inspector). As in most of her other novels, Inspector Brunetti has to solve yet another case involving a mysterious crime in Venice. I really like the way she has him deal with a frustrating superior, while he is supported by his funny and clever assistants.
Insightful and almost prescient by the end, his solutions are satisfying to me. Perhaps my favorite aspect of these stories is Guido's interactions with his wife, Paula, a professor of classics at a university in Venice. Their dinner conversations always lead to arcane literary subjects that are rewarding if you bother to know or more often, discover what they are about.
Some Of My Favorites
Alan Furst
Alan Furst is an authority on the period preceding and during the Second World War. His novels are set throughout Europe, but mostly in France. A great and graphic story teller, he is one of my favorite writers.
Willa Cather
Although her literary career began around the turn of the century, Willa Cather has been a favorite of mine since I first read O Pioneers! I still love her descriptions of the Nebraska, particularly its winter scenes. Her ability to describe an apparently sterile landscape in such a vibrant way has been an inspiration for me when I write about my home on the Delmarva Peninsula.
She was born near Winchester, Virginia. It is from her memories of her earliest years that she wrote Sapphira and the Slave Girl, a short novel that in contrast is filled with rich imagery of the Appalachain mountains.
Naguib Mafouz
is an Egyptian author who received the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature. I discovered him after listening to a NPR story about his resistance to the military government. As a popular and prestigious author, he could afford to be outspoken.
Midac Alley is part of a collection of his short stories. I remain a devoted fan these many years after I read it. His emphasis on imagery as he describes the apartments, buildings, the alley itself, and, of course, its denizens makes it equal to the plot. It's awesome. His books are never far from me.
Author's Bio
Terry Phillips-Seitz is an emerging writer whose ability to tell stories and describe places can transport readers into the worlds he creates. With a unique blend of creativity and insight, Terry's works will leave a lasting impression on those who delve into his writing.
Always working from his own experiences, Terry believes his ability to evoke emotions and convey powerful narratives have been the best features of his work. In addition to descriptions of places he knows, Terry includes recollections of the "Lower Shore" of the Delmarva Peninsula, where he was raised.