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The Blessing Box By Maria Morrison - Reviewed by Perle Champion
First published in First Draft Magazine

    Is Maria Morrison’s The Blessing Box a memoir told in poems, or pieces of other lives glimpsed and absorbed into her soul and retold in first person? I don’t know. I do know what reaches me in every poem is the ‘I’, and the ‘My’.
    The feeling is most poignant in the poem The Hours: "my mother photographed/the hours we had/each day between /my father leaving the house/and my father returning…I pull them out/to remember what we were/supposed to be."
    In Constellations: "Each night,/crystals of frost form like stars/on our bedroom windows/from our warm breath asking-/When should we go for help? When / can we come back in?"
    The lines are simple and straightforward, as a child telling us her secret. We lean close, and say, yes, or oh, no! This is not an easy childhood we are invited to witness. This slim volume is a life told in vignettes stripped achingly bare. It seduces us in the early pages with sunshine and prayer, and then it takes us farther into dark corners and asks us to read between the lines. This is poetry noire It opens up parts of our own soul we do not know we have until a turn of phrase echoes deep and resonates throughout our being and reminds each of us our own fragile childhood and how it shaped our lives.
    Morrison wears no rose-colored glasses, as she looks back on her childhood and then at the woman it created. The naked words seem stark with a matter-of-fact and childlike narrative voice that flashes back to past hurts that repeat in each generation. We witness her innocence flee before love that hurts, and her hope hang by a slender thread. In Monastic, she tells us her siblings were each named for those who came before and how the cycle continued, but she ends with, "I am their last./I have my own name."
    I hear an echo of the women in Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club. An-Mei: "My mother not know her worth until too late – too late for her but not for me." And again, Suyuan to her daughter June "I see you.
    If this is Maria Morrison’s story, it is between the lines that the full tale is told. I read The Blessing Box, and know it’s not too late. I see you; I see me. I have my own name.

Wings of Morning By William Cobb – Reviewed by Perle Champion
First published in First Draft Magazine

    William Cobb’s "Wings of Morning", is strewn with magic both real and surreal. It is 1965 in Hammond, Alabama – any Alabama small town of that time. It begins slow, as a simmering southern summer morning with the prodigal – here daughter – returned to the fold. Gone is the youth and innocence, which were her gold. Yet, Rachel Taylor is full of life and a quiet confidence in herself and her magic. She attends the birth of her nephew, Eshu, and sees her mother to and through death’s door. These steps along the measured path of her life set the tone for what’s to come.
    The stage is set for the dance of life and death, and they take many forms at Cobb’s hand. He creates a cast of ordinary people leading ordinary lives, a healer, a ‘Mam’bo, a hoodoo’, a ghost and more. Each is a fully rounded character bringing every part of their nature to bear to survive the rapidly changing times. There is the crisis of identity for some, and everywhere there is the intolerance of closed minds, all laced with violence, hate, lust, and fear, and hope.
    Set against the backdrop leading to the historic march from Selma to Montgomery, the key players are two families – one white one black – inextricably bound by sin and secrets, race and culture. They walk a path begun long ago when one did not acknowledge aloud what everyone knew in whispers, and the children were always the last to know.
    As with most journeys, these people don’t know how long the road is, nor with all its turns, its destination. Never do they imagine the full impact of taking the trip at all. It is all choices made at each juncture that shape the person and the future: this way or that, harden the heart or soften it, give up or press on. In the end, each choice, each step upon their chosen path tosses this small group from small town Alabama into the current that feeds the tide in the affairs of men. This was and is the Civil Rights movement.
    New ideas are being born, and struggling to stand up-right, and an old way of life is in its death throes. As the old guard rails against the tide, the marchers take it at the flood looking for a new way, toward a better day, and their hopes are borne on the "Wings of Morning".

Furnace By: Muriel Gray – Reviewed by Perle Champion
First published in Birmingham Weekly

‘Furnace’ lacks the fire of true horror

    Muriel Gray has an interesting tale to tell, but like a comedienne with a good joke and no sense of timing, she falls short.
    A novel about an alchemist who murders apparently at will, who summons demons and sacrifices infants in the summoning, should be horrifying. I should feel some sense of horror. I wanted to. I kept reading and waiting, but the feeling never came.
    Trucker Josh Spiller’s girlfriend, Elizabeth, is pregnant and she’s not keeping the baby. After a brief and bitter quarrel, each runs a different way. Elizabeth runs off to her store and work; Josh jumps in his truck and hits the road. We are given the briefest glimpses into these people. Gray puts her pedal to the meta driving us hastily from place to place, person to person, description to description. There’s never a sense that any of her characters has more than cardboard depth. I want to know more about them, but more is not forthcoming.
    Josh’s mad dash from the frying pan of confrontation lands him in Furnace, Virginia. Here surely burn the fires of hell, and here surely will begin the horrifying story promised by the book’s jacket. Josh is a man in the wrong place at the wrong time, and is made party to a horrendous crime, and ho-hum, someone has slipped him a strip of human flesh inscribed with the message that he has "five days alive permitted." He must return it to the giver or die a horrible death at the fangs of a demon.
    The narrative voice is dispassionate and sterile, with no real building of tension. Details and scenes are described; peoples’ feelings, including those of Elizabeth’s unborn child, are described; the demon’s feelings are described. The only thing missing is a set direction to the reader saying: "Stand back in horror here." It would not have helped.
    This is a tale, too calmly told, that in the hands of a master f horror would leave me sleepless with all the lights on. I turned off the lights and slept soundly.

Sky of Stone By Homer Hickam – Reviewed by Perle Champion
First published in First Draft Magazine

    In his memoir, Sky of Stone Homer Hickam takes us on a vicarious journey through a life we would not otherwise know. His story unfolds much like a suspense novel. A mystery unfold, and even by turning the pages and paying close attention, we do not know the truth until Hickam tells us. There is not the usual predictability, nor even the I remember aspect of ordinary memoir. In stead, every detail is told in the interesting yet matter-of-fact manner of a good storyteller. The scenes sparkle with clear-cut characters, as if Hickam has whittled away the unnecessary to show us each person in high relief.
    This is the third installment of the Coalwood series. We enter his story in 1961 as he is struggling with college and fanaticizing about summer break at his mother’s new Myrtle Beach home, reading Heinlein and meeting girls. The dream is short lived when his mother, Elsie, informs him in no uncertain terms, that he will not visit her at the beach. "Your daddy needs you, you’re going home." Once there, it is obvious that his father doesn’t want him there, nor in fact, do any of the locals. He escaped; he left them behind; he is a college boy now – an outsider. Even his father makes it obvious that he does not want him there.
    With no other options open to him, alienates his father further by taking a job in the mines, and compounds that sin by joining the union. Through it all, he asks about the dead miner and endeavors to find out why his father is being blamed.
    With his mother in Myrtle Beach; his father under suspicion of wrong doing at the mine; state and federal investigators on the way; and Homer "Sonny" Hickam persona non grata by pretty much everyone; this story is a gratifying and multifaceted read.

The Letter – By: Richard Paul Evans
Reviewed by Perle Champion - First published in Birmingham Weekly

‘The Letter’ a good way to tie up ‘Christmas Box’ trilogy

This is an old-fashioned moral tale. Questions are raised; bad things happen to god people; lessons are learned; and love is the message. Think It’s a Wonderful Life, and you instantly know what I mean.
    In The Letter, Richard Evans tells a story that tugs at parts of our hearts we don’t often acknowledge. It is the final book in The Christmas Box collection. All three books are good reading, but I liked The Christmas Box best.
    The Christmas Box introduces us to MaryAnne Parkin, an aging widow whose bittersweet memories haunt her nights and harry her days as she tries t convey the true meaning of Christmas and life to a young couple and their daughter.
    In The Timepiece, book two in the collection, we meet MaryAnne as a young woman in trouble, who is rescued and married by the wealthy businessman, David Parkin. Before the novel’s end, their idyllic life is torn asunder by bigots of the time because of David’s good deed. He saves his friend Lawrence, who is black, from sure death by lynching.
    In The Letter book three, we enter the Parkins’life when love seems a fading memory. They are two people living solitary lives together until MaryAnne can’t stand it any more and goes back to England where she was born. She leaves behind a letter and The Letter. The letter, mysteriously left on the grave of the Parkins’ only child, leads David in search of the mother who abandoned him when he was six. He doesn’t find her, but he does find himself and realizes that is what he was looking for all along.
    Crisis brings MaryAnne and David home to sit by the bed of their dying friend, Lawrence. David remembers Lawrence once likening love t a tree that needs taking care of. David realizes that love needs nurturing and that, like a tree, neglect is its death knell. MaryAnne and David rekindle their love and fall back into the blissful days of their early life together until real life intrudes once again.
    Bad things do happen to good people but good people do go on. I wish Evans ended his story on a more upbeat note, but he has an agenda – moralists always do There is no gathering under the tree at the end here, and no bell rings when Evans’ angel gets his wings.

Rain - A Memory
© Perle Champion – First published in Birmingham Arts Journal
               The sky was leaden as I drove to pick up the child. After a particularly long day at work, the thought of an even longer evening ahead was not enticing. The gravel crunching beneath my wheels tells me I’ve arrived. I hate that gravel: My heels sink into it – all my shoes bear the marks. I turn off the car and just sit there. The day was so hectic, but suddenly I wish it wasn’t over yet. I wish it were 8 a.m. again. Hurry now, deep breath, I’ll be late. Mrs. Larremore needs to go home, too.
               Mrs. Larremore is a large and pleasant lady. Her garrulous, scolding love for her charges reminds me of the nanny in Gone with the Wind, in a polyester pantsuit instead of red petticoat. Her pleasant disposition never waivers. She and Mrs. Barrett are the ‘special education’ wing (one classroom at my daughter’s preschool). They both adore Dawn. In this catchall room of ‘exceptional’ children, Dawn is at the top of the class. She has learning disabilities, dyslexia, early childhood schizophrenia and is hyperkinetic in the extreme. It’s an awesome string of diagnoses, but Dawn can walk and talk (she usually runs). To the uneducated eye, she appears normal. The other children in her class are not so fortunate. Sean is autistic, lives in his own world and neither sees nor speaks to anyone. There is a Mary with Down Syndrome. At eight-years-old she can neither talk nor walk and still wears diapers.
               It’s 5:30and all the moms have come and gone. I crunch across the graveled drive, mount the stairs and turn the worn brass knob on that old familiar door. The hall echoes the sound of my heels. Here and there a locker slams, a child shouts. I know the path well: down the far hall to the very back, last door on the right ‘Special Ed’ says the sign on the door.
               Special Education is for ‘exceptional children’. Exceptional is a polite term for every kind of child with problems that encompasses the mild to the severe.
               I take a deep breath. Smiling, I turn the knob and walk in. There she is. What a beautiful child. Her hair a spun profusion of copper curls. Her eyes are dark and flashing stars. Her smile makes you wonder what she’s up to. My heart hurts inside me. She looks so normal. Is it possible to love a child so much it hurts. My friends and family say I love her too much. The voices echo in my mind – so unkind. “You’re holding her back”, they say. “Put her away,” they say. “You need a life of your own,” they say. It’s like the lyrics to a song they’ve all rehearsed, and they sing it over and over again. They don’t understand; she’s special. She talks to God and flowers and butterflies and on rainy days she puts stray ‘roly-poly’ bugs back in the grass, so they don’t get stepped on. She is special - my Dawn.
               But tonight, I am so tired. All day I work and all night there’s Dawn. Some nights I would just like peace and quiet and solitude. That, I would not have until 10 or 11 tonight. A hyperkinetic child begins running at daybreak (mentally and physically) and only stops when exhaustion is reached and she sleeps. Her day is one headlong rush of frenetic activity. The mind cannot focus but a moment on any given thing. Dawn is such a child. There is no peace or rest or solitude with such as she around. By the time she falls into exhausted sleep, I too am exhausted. And, I too sleep.
               Sometimes, I find solitude within; I block out everything and everyone around me - even her. She doesn’t understand. How can she. I love here - I hate her.
               Dawn turns and sees me across the room. I drop my purse in time to catch her as she hurls herself into my arms. “Hi, Mom, Hi Mom,” begins a rush of conversation that will only end when she falls into exhausted sleep sometime tonight.
               “Hi kiddo, how’s my punkin today?”
               “Fine - Linda hit me and I hit her back and we gotta frog and he got loose and Mrs. Barrett jumped on the chair, and..., and..., and...” we echoed down the hall - the child’s soliloquy, my heels and an occasional uh-huh from me.
               The ride home was one long sentence for Dawn. Fortunately, she seemed content with an occasional uh-huh, and I retreated to a quiet corner of my mind.
               Home, and just in time. The clouds had just begun to dump the weatherman’s 20% on us. We ran into the apartment and Dawn ran to the window. “Can I go out, Mom, please? It’s a warm rain not a cold rain. Can I? Mom? Please?”
               No is on my lips, but I’m not ready for that battle yet. I look at her. She is like a colt champing at the bit, in need of a good run. Maybe it will tire her out sooner. Maybe it will make the evening smoother. Maybe. So, I say, “Yes, go change clothes.” I do the same and run to the kitchen to put leftovers in a low oven. All the while Dawn runs back and forth from the kitchen to the door urging my haste. Finally, hand in hand, we’re off. Umbrella was for appearances sake, we’d find the biggest puddles and jump in the middle to see how high they’d splash. Dawn ran ahead – always in a hurry, the incessant chatter had subsided. She’d lift her face to the heavy clouds and open her mouth and then look at me and say, “Look, Mom, God’s giving me a drink.”
               “Not to mention a bath.” I’d say, taking her hand as we rounded the bend back towards home. The sky had darkened; the rain was no longer warm.
               A hot shower and a dry gown later, I started a roaring fire. Supper was a bowl of leftover casserole, crusty bread with butter, a cup of tea for me and cocoa for Dawn. We ate off trays by the hearth warming ourselves outside and in.
               Before I knew it, it’s past 8 o’clock. “Bedtime kiddo.
               “No. I don’t want to go to bed. I’m not sleepy.
               “I know you don’t want to go, but it’s bedtime just the same. Let’s go.”
               “Well, I won’t sleep. I won’t; I’ll scream; I want to stay up. I want...I want...I want...” and so it began. Same song, one thousandth verse.
               “No, Dawn, it’s late Dawn. You know the rules, Dawn. We talked about them with Dr. Wilson. Time out Dawn, you must go to your room.” I tried hard to follow the psychologist’s suggestions. I schooled my voice and made it even and calm. “Come on Dawn. I’ll tuck you in and read you a story.”
               She broke away, ran to her room and slammed the door. I could hear each glass figurine as it shattered against the wall. I can’t go in. The psychologist said her room is hers, and so I stay outside and listen. In the past I paddled, took privileges, yelled, and physically held her still, all to no avail. His way is no better, but no worse except for the mess I will have to clean up sooner or later.
               I’d like to leave and go for a walk or a drive, but I cannot because she cannot. I would like to run away, but I must stay. Gentle bonds like bands of steel bar my way.
               I sit by the fire and meditate on the flames. I focus on them and nothing else - clear my mind - block out the sounds - nothing exists but the flames. It’s so late and I am so weary. Every day it is the same with no end in sight. She is only 5 years old.
               Suddenly, I become aware again - startled by the silence. It’s so quiet, now. God, the time - it’s 11:30. I tiptoe to her room and quietly open the door. What a mess. All her little glass menagerie lies shattered, shards of glass are everywhere. Not a single thing is left hanging on the walls or in the closet. And there in the middle of it all, curled into a little ball, one unbroken porcelain doll - my Dawn.
               “Dear God, please explain this to me. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. Don’t you see? There’s been a mistake. Please, God, do you hear me?”
               They’re right I guess. She doesn’t seem to be getting any better no matter what I try. I must do something before sanity leaves me. But she’s so small, nearly six, all arms and legs and copper curls. How can I send her away? She’s too little to have to leave her Mom. I’m all she has. “Dear God, what did I do wrong? I tried so hard to do everything right?
               “No one’s to blame - some kids are just that way,” they say. “It’s a nice place - she’ll be okay,” they say. “There are cottages to live in and house parents and everything,” they say.
               “House parents? I’m her parent. What can they do that I can’t do?”
               “But, they’ll help her,” they say, “they’re professionals.
               They told me many things more: that I’m too close to her to help her and I only hinder her by doing too much; that I have to work and I can see her every weekend and holidays, too. Deep down inside, I know they’re right, but still I fight.
               I dropped her off today, bag and baggage, holly hobby doll and all, teddy bear, and roller skates and more. I climbed back into my car and drove away – alone now, don’t have to rush home now. For so long there were so many had to’s. Now there are none. I don’t have to anymore. Odd feeling inside, kind of empty. I’ve no rudder anymore. I drove for hours and walked in the mall more hours still. Odd, no child to lose now, I’ve already lost her.
               Finally, I arrive home. Home? It’s so quiet. I can’t remember it ever being so quiet.
               It’s so cold. I start a fire on the hearth - it’s still cold. I put some coffee on and pour a glass of cognac and sit by the window. The dusk gray is suddenly lit like day. The silence is rent by a clap of thunder. There’s the rain, without and within. She looks back at me from the gilt frame on the mantel. I see those dark bright eyes and impish smile, and I remember another rainy day and her words echo in my mind. “Mom, it’s a warm rain.”..and poetry comes with the rain.