Never Retreat

ArtsMart

BOOKS, ART, TRAVEL AND MORE


Take a minute to scroll through the delightful offerings in ArtsMart, and you’ll find fascinating books on every subject, for every taste, and from every genre--poetry, memoirs, history and biography, children’s books, essays, mysteries, fiction both speculative and historical. You’ll also find writing workshops and retreats, note cards, prints and paintings, even grownup coloring books - something for each and every taste and hour and mood.



Persimmon Tree is an Amazon and Bookshop.org associate, which means our journal receives a small royalty every time you make a purchase by clicking through to Amazon or Bookshop.org. The price to you is no higher, but your purchase helps Persimmon Tree continue its vital work.

A History of Kindness

A History of Kindness
Poems by Linda Hogan

Poems from Linda Hogan explore new and old ways of experiencing the vagaries of the body and existing in harmony with earth’s living beings. Throughout this clear-eyed collection, Hogan tenderly excavates how history instructs the present, and envisions a future alive with hope for a healthy and sustainable world that now wavers between loss and survival.

“Hogan remains awed and humble in this sweetly embracing, plangent book of grateful, sorrowful, tender poems wed to the scarred body and ravaged Earth.”
—BOOKLIST

“In an age as acrimonious as ours, Linda Hogan’s new poetry collection, A History of Kindness, sounds especially poignant.”
—THE WASHINGTON POST

“There is no one like Linda Hogan. I read her poetry to both calm and ignite my heart. A History of Kindness is a series of oracles rising from the page born out of a life of listening, feeling, responding.”
—TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS, author of Erosion

Available from Torrey House Press and Bookshop.org

Little Soul and the Selves

Little Soul and the Selves
Poetry by Leslie Ullman

How does a spirit new to the world, baffled by the family domain and its customs, but above all curious, come to discover its essence?  What does any child carry into the present from ancestors whose histories have been assimilated and long forgotten? These are the questions poet Leslie Ullman explores in her sixth collection.

In the process, what at first appears to be a chronicle of a mid-century childhood becomes an interrogation of the very nature of the soul—its origins, its purpose, its evolution in a given lifetime. Sometimes humorous and gently satirical in their depictions of a middle-class America whose values once seemed unassailable, these poems reconstruct a personal history as they mull over the universal burdens of self-doubt, ambition, and inevitable relinquishments, and then taste the pleasures of traveling light.

In her poetic sequence, Little Soul and the Selves, Leslie Ullman offers a rich and rewarding commentary on the multiplicity of roles life demands of us and the undefinable, but felt, unity of consciousness that underlies them. … Playfully side-stepping the perils of direct philosophical inquiry, Ullman avoids the weighty “I” of confession and turns autobiography into a series of adventures, a profound questioning of human identity and the forces that tear at it. These are supple, athletic poems, full of the thisness of the world, touching lightly and with elegance on the larger questions.
                                                            —Jean Nordhaus, Memos from the Broken World

Available from 3: A Taos Press and Amazon.

Close Calls

Close Calls
by Rachel Cann

Rachel Cann, born in 1942, has lived an extraordinary life. She is a courageous prolific writer with over 60 published stories in literary magazines and she received a full fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center. In this unforgettable collection you will find her style funny, clever, heart-wrenching, and inspirational. Rachel knows how to move a plot forward, so there is never a dull moment. She leaves just enough space for the reader to use their imagination to fill in the rest. You won’t find long winding descriptions of what a chair looks like.

Rachel shares with us her most intimate real-life experiences of being kidnapped and taken cross country, two years of homelessness, her brush with death during childbirth, her affair with a Mafia Don, and many more.

Welcome to Rachel’s world. Strap in and enjoy the ride!

— Karina Ann Francis Holosko, founder and publisher of Rebel Anthologies

Available from Amazon

Countermelodies: A Memoir in Sonata Form

Countermelodies: A Memoir in Sonata Form

by Ernestine Whitman

Winner of the 2024 NYC Big Book Award for memoir, Countermelodies: A Memoir in Sonata Form describes a young woman’s journey toward her goal of being a professional flutist. Her beloved mentor is the first of several men who threaten to destroy her dream by betraying her in heartbreaking ways.

“A disturbing and compelling tale of resilience, determination, and musical passion.”
— Kirkus Reviews

Ernestine Whitman joined the Atlanta Symphony at age twenty. Her passion for teaching brought her to Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, where she was professor of flute for thirty-three years.

Available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Bookshop.

When Life Speaks Listen

When Life Speaks Listen
by Linda Piotrowski

 
 
Our lives are filled with moments so fleeting that it can be easy to miss the great impact they may have on us. That is, unless we learn to listen when life speaks, even if only in a whisper.

Author Linda F. Piotrowski is a master of listening and learning from all life has to offer. She is a retired board certified chaplain with a master’s degree in theological studies as well as advanced study in palliative care and being with the dying. She ministered as a chaplain for over 40 years. In her retirement she serves as a Stephen Minister.

Always an avid reader she loves reflecting on the rich gifts of ordinary life. She lives in Green Valley, Arizona with her Maine Coon cat, O’Malley. This is her first book. Through reflections,  beautiful photographs, questions for reflection, and suggestions for journaling Linda unpacks many of life’s lessons, as learned through events from childhood through the adult years, and shows you how to do the same.

You will start with learning to honor your origins, teasing out the minute day-to-day moments as well as major events that have shaped you.From there you will explore what makes you all you are today—your little rituals, what feeds your soul, what makes you ache, and who or what guides you. Finally, you will explore what will move you forward and ready you for what lies ahead in your life. Learn to embrace what serves you, and release the rest.

As Piotrowski says, this book will guide you to, “Find your way to the ‘holy and hidden’ heart of your life.”

Available from Amazon.

In Any Given Room

Stories Never More Timely, A Perfect Gift for the Holidays
In Any Given Room
Stories on the Indian Experience
by I. D. Kapur


“Indra Kapur’s writing is illuminating, entertaining, and perceptive, gracing each topic with beauty and wit that leaves you both completely satisfied and wanting more.” Katherine Longshore, author of the Gilt series

“Indra Kapur’s courage in embracing and committing her life to another culture is clear. Her stories delight, break our hearts, and show us an India most of us have never seen before.” Ann Saxton Reh, author of the David Markam mysteries.

“These stories deftly capture the nuances and contradictions of their well-drawn characters, many from India, in a range of intriguing and dramatic situations.” Jack Adler, author of The Tides of Faith and other novels.

Available on Amazon and from you independent book store.

A Year Without Men

Stories Never More Timely, A Perfect Gift for the Holidays
A Year Without Men
Stories of Experience and Imagination.
by I.D. Kapur

It’s 2054 A.D., and the world needs a rest from men. Women have developed a novel solution, and the men can’t wait to leave. When my taxi driver tells me he has bullet wounds from the Russian police, speaks five languages, and is teaching at Harvard, I start taking notes. After the funeral, a widow loses all her married friends. Then karma sends flowers.

“Indra Kapur writes with clear insight and an acute sense of humor. The stories in A Year Without Men are varied, clever, and often delightfully surprising! Cue me rubbing my hands together with glee.” — Katherine Longshore, author of the Gilt series.

“The stories in A Year Without Men create a powerful sense of place with rich sensory and emotional detail. Characters are appealing in their humor and the compassion they inspire. I want to meet these people and be there with them! Some endings surprise us, and others give us a satisfying sense of the inevitable playing out. The stories have a depth of reality that makes them unforgettable.” — Ann Saxton Reh, author of the David Markam Mysteries

“Mickee Voodoo is a very entertaining parody of a “hardboiled” detective story in the mode of Chandler, Hammett, and, more recently, Robert B. Parker…witty banter ensues with the detective cracking wise in a colorful idiom both in dialogue and narrative…delights in wordplay…very clever, and is quite funny…Kapur is a talented and skillful fiction writer.” — John DeChancie, author of The Skyway Trilogy and The Castle Perilous series.

Available from Amazon or on order from your independent bookstore.

A Tree with My Name on It

A Tree with My Name on It
by Victress Hitchcock

As the 20th century careened towards the finish line, author Victress Hitchcock moved with her husband from their familiar urban world to a remote 160-acre ranch in the mountains of Colorado. Within months, their lives unraveled, and out of the wreckage a new path opened to a radically new way to be in the world. She was broken hearted but ready to meet whatever was to come with insight, horse sense, and humor.

A Tree with My Name on It is not a handbook on healing trauma. It is a living, breathing, messy story, filled with joy and sorrow, of one woman trying her hardest to free her wounded heart and uncover her true self.

It is a story that will resonate with anyone who has reached a moment in their lives when they are ready to tear off the bandage and take a deep look at the fears that have held them hostage for too long.

“It is rare to find a memoir that entwines elements of Buddhist wisdom with psychological insights…with the grace and metaphorical prowess of an author who wields poetic description and psychological reflection with equal strength. A Tree with My Name on It deserves a prominent place in libraries, recommendable as a book club or women’s reading group choice.”
— D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

Visit Victress’ Website for more information.

Available from Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, and your local bookstore.

Call Me Carmela

Call Me Carmela
by Ellen Kirschman

Police psychologist Dot Meyerhoff’s caseload is usually filled with cops—which is why she’s hesitant to help an adopted teenager locate her birth parents. But the teen’s godmother is Dot’s dear friend Fran and a police widow to boot. How could Dot possibly say no? Once Dot starts digging into the case, though, she’s drawn into a murky world of illegal adoptions and the choices a young pregnant woman might make as a last resort. Soon there’s only one thing Dot knows for sure: the painful truth of what happened all those years ago might heal one family—but it’s certain to destroy another.

Ellen Kirschman is an award-winning police and public safety psychologist who finds writing fiction to be therapeutic because she gets to take potshots at nasty cops, incompetent psychologists, and two ex-husbands. Sign up for her newsletter at www.ellenkirschman.com.

Call Me Carmela is like the perfect morning coffee, rich, smooth, and nuanced and leaving you craving another cup.”
— Naomi Hirahara, USA Today bestselling author

“A stunning mystery novel”
Foreword reviews

“Compelling, surprising, and a little bit heartbreaking”
— Samantha Downing, award-winning author of My Lovely Wife

Available from Amazon and Bookshop.

One Small Step

One Small Step
Roberta Schultz


 

One Small Step is the latest recording by Roberta Schultz, who describes herself as a moon-influenced 20th Century singer/songwriter treading lightly on a spiritual soundscape of keys and strings.

Cover artwork is by folk artist Jefferson Ross.

Go to her website, https://robertaschultz.com, to download songs, purchase the album
and to see examples of her other work.

Dear Phebe: The Dickinson Sisters Go West

Dear Phebe: The Dickinson Sisters Go West
by Judy Wells

Dear Phebe is an out-of-the ordinary autobiography, an encounter with the myth (and truth) of Judy Wells’ own origins and destiny. Sorting through family letters, the Berkeley poet hears voices from her ancestors—three Dickinson sisters who went out west in the 1860s to seek their fortunes as pioneer schoolteachers. I loved every twist and turn of this mind-tripping story and laughed with glee when the author finds herself in the after-life with the Dickinson sisters, and then ends up returning her great-grandmother Phebe’s 100-year-overdue book to the San Francisco Public Library.
Bridget Connelly, Forgetting Ireland

With Dear Phebe, poet Judy Wells has produced a cutting-edge work of art that combines family ancestry research with poetic interrogations. Each Dickinson sister she profiles has a unique trajectory to California; all are waylaid by what Jane Austen called “the marriage plot.” Wells sings to them, dances with them (and away from them), challenges them, excavates them from a box of letters into the light of the 2lst-century and a world they could not have imagined. This book is a wholly new form, fusing history and poetry, inspiring both disciplines.
Lauren Cooley, author of California: A Multicultural Documentary History and The Same River Twice

“Go West, young man,” is the famous command, but young women also heeded this advice. Among them were Judy Wells’ great-grandmother Phebe Marsh Dickinson and her two sisters, Delia and Abbie, distant cousins of Emily Dickinson, who came to California from Massachusetts in the late 19th century. In Dear Phebe, Wells chronicles their stories in poetry and prose in narratives that are so compelling I didn’t want the book to end.
Lucille Lang Day, Married at Fourteen: A True Story and Becoming an Ancestor

To Order: Contact Judy Wells directly at jwellspoet@att.net
Website: www.judywellspoet.com

The Secrets of Still Waters Chasm

The Secrets of Still Waters Chasm
by Patricia Crisafulli

The Secrets of Still Waters Chasm by award-winning, bestselling author Patricia Crisafulli is the eagerly awaited second book in the Ohnita Harbor Mystery Series from Woodhall Press.

A hike through pristine wilderness suddenly enters much darker territory…

The Secrets of Still Waters Chasm opens with the discovery of two people on the beach of a secluded lake—one dead, one dying. Gabriela Domenici runs back up the trail for help and returns to find the bodies are gone. Soon, from suspected poisoning deaths to a nefarious development that threatens to destroy the chasm, Gabriela is caught in a web of danger.

If Crisafulli keeps setting her mystery thrillers in Ohnita Harbor (and I hope she will), that fictional little Upstate New York town will not only have as many bodies to bury as Midsomer County, but will be as famous as Louise Penny’s Three Pines or even Agatha Christie’s St. Mary Mead – and justifiably so. – Jean Zorn, Publisher, Persimmon Tree

Available from Amazon, Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble or your favorite independent bookstore.

Coloratura On A Silence Found In Many Expressive Systems

Coloratura On A Silence Found In Many Expressive Systems
by Alice Fulton


Coloratura On A Silence Found In Many Expressive Systems extends tactile mysteries to existential questions of invisible miracles, connection, and faith in the face of silence: “By praying you, I create you,” Fulton informs an elusive God. Reveling in the stunning possibilities of language, she seeks joy to counteract trauma and grief, empathizes with the silent pathos of animals, and finds solace in art, friendship, and the mysterious power of gifts. Without denying suffering, this enthralling volume extends a fervent prayer for gratitude and healing.

Fulton borrows tropes and theories from science, linguistics, visual art, [and] mathematics…It is this kind of sonic and imaginative range—which puts into conversation the music of what is voiced with what is silent, invisible—that makes it almost impossible to talk about the powerful hold of these poems…Perhaps more than any poet writing today, Fulton takes to heart John Keats’s belief that writing poetry is a ‘vale of soul-making.’…‘You have to listen,’ she admonishes, ‘louder than you sing.’ Is there a more attentive listener than Alice Fulton? A more haunted and haunting singer?
— Lisa Russ Spaar, On the Seawall
 

Alice Fulton is the featured poet in the spring 2024 issue of Persimmon Tree.

Available from W.W. Norton, Amazon, or Bookshop.org.

Old Stranger: Poems

Old Stranger: Poems
by Joan Larkin
Poem after poem, Old Stranger unearths moments that shape a woman’s life. The poet’s eye is unflinching as she sees the past folded into the present. Her body is the ground of deep soul hunger. Her language is music.

“To discover the ‘old stranger’ is a knife, not quite, it’s an old piano. No, it’s a book about mortality and the debt of flesh, about love, rot, relationship, smiles that cut like knives through every seeing moment. It’s about painting. It’s a beaut. There’s so much masterpiece here. I mean, wow, this is why one is a poet all their life. To make this.” — Eileen Myles, author of a “Working Life”
 
“Joan Larkin’s much-awaited Old Stranger: Poems is a miracle of compression, mystery, and innuendo. Here is a poet for whom craft is an extension of wisdom. Whether revealing the archetype secreted within an object, or the elemental, persistent grief within a memory, Larkin expertly hones the edges of poems like a luthier shapes a violin.” — Diane Seuss, author of Modern Poetry
 
“Engaging with curiosity and often startled affection, this poet tells of how it feels to be both enamored and shaken with what connections reveal. Quiet and absorbed, one reads this most graceful of books until pow and one is alerted!” — Jody Stewart, author of This Momentary World: Selected Poems

 
 
More about Joan Larkin: www.alicejamesbooks.org/bookstore/old-stranger

Available from Alice James Books, Bookshop, and Amazon.

Modern Women: 21st Century Dance, A Coloring Book – Dec2023

by Julie Lemberger, edited by Elizabeth Zimmer

Women, the largest and yet most unrecognized population of the dance arts community, are spotlighted in renowned dance photographer Julie Lemberger’s Modern Women: 21st Century Dance, a coloring book, edited by Elizabeth Zimmer.

Lemberger, who has been photographing dance for almost two decades, transformed her photographs into illustrations almost ready to color and then added psychedelic, floral and abstract backgrounds for the figures “to dance in.”

The 92 page volume features today’s leading dance innovators and interpreters, and celebrates their diverse genres and perspectives.

Modern Women: 21st Century Dance is a perfect gift for children-of-all-ages including grandparents and grandchildren, especially those who love women, dance and art.

Two options available:
Coloring book for $20

Shipping & handling is $5 each for U.S. addresses. Please contact for International shipping costs.

Available at etsy.com/shop/dancecoloringbook or julielemberger.com

Scribbly

Scribbly
A Gentle Writing Program
by Kim Duke

Imagine calling yourself a writer. Now it’s time to make it real. Let Scribbly help you become the writer you’ve always wanted to be…without the pressure.

My name is Kim Duke and I’m a full-time writer, Amazon best-selling author and my work has been featured on NBC News, the Globe and Mail and other international media.

My mission is simple. To get more women writing with intention, fun and freedom!

My gentle writing program is mailed to your home every 30 days. Each Scribbly is loaded with quirky writing tips, prompts and examples. My team and I devote over 100 hours into each issue. Gorgeous illustrations, research, art, science and writing that reach out from the pages to inspire you. I can’t wait for you to see your Scribbly!

Scribbly is a gentle writing program that encourages your creativity and gets you writing in five minutes. If you want to explore creative nonfiction writing (without pressure) – you’ll love Scribbly! The best part? When you’re a Scribbly member, you get a chance to submit your writing for publication in Scribbly.

Hooray for Snail Mail!

More about the Scribbly Program can be found at www.kimdukewrites.com/Scribbly

Leaving Home at 83

Leaving Home at 83
by Sandra Butler

 
 
Leaving Home at 83 is an intensely personal story yet one shared with thousands of aging women who are wondering whether to move closer to their children and leave their friendships behind or stay in their communities. Readers will see their own questions on these pages and recognize their own fears, insecurities, and uncertainties.

Butler examines the often-unspoken struggle to sustain our autonomy as we age and our conflicted longing for dependency as we become more vulnerable. Both longings are embedded in the desire not to be a burden to those we love.

With its sharp humor and refreshing honesty, this wry account brings a welcome and necessary perspective to the inevitable moment when we end one chapter of our lives and begin whatever comes next.

“…The ensemble of characters is hilarious, jaw-clenching, at times worthy of a Jack Russell Terrier head tilt. Butler’s writing is tender, funny and unequivocally relatable.”
—Karen Lee Erlichman, D.Min, LCSW, psychotherapist, spiritual director, writer and mentor.

Available from Amazon and at www.sandrabutler.net.

You Break It, You Buy It

You Break It, You Buy It (Guernica Editions)
by Lynn Tait

features poems about disconnection, misconnections: the loss of friendships and identity, our voice, our purpose. At its core, it is a collection of elegies railing against and dealing with toxic relationships, from fair-weather friends, controlling mothers to narcissists. These poems invite the reader into personal experiences, public observations and the price we pay, positive and negative for our interactions with the media, our global and local conflicts, environmental challenges, the pandemic, the Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements. She writes about the dark underside of our lives with a sense of danger, humour and of hope for reconnection in the future with our community and our world.



Lynn Tait’s You Break It, You Buy It captures the joy and playfulness that permeate even the “serious” aspects of life, from death and terrible people to MRI machines and snake venom. She, a self-described “hot messy princess” drinks tequila in a cemetery, and curses “Everyday Assholes.” At the same time, Tait is a perceptive observer, asking penetrating questions about our collective mistakes, our addictions, and our family legacies. We quickly trust her disarming voice to cut through the crap and tell us the truth. A terrific debut.
— John Wall Barger, author of Smog Mother

Available at Guernica Editions, Amazon, ThriftBooks, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop and independent bookstores.

Sixty-Something and Flying Solo

Sixty-Something and Flying Solo: A Retiree Sorts It Out in Iowa
by Marian Mathews Clark

 
Sixty-Something and Flying Solo: A Retiree Sorts It Out in Iowa is an edgy, humorous memoir with serious ponderings. An Oregon transplant with no kids and no significant other, the author is someone about whom readers could say, “I wouldn’t want to be in her shoes, but if she can make it, I can, too.” Pieces such as ‘What Not to Say at a Funeral’ and ‘Dusting and Other Insanities’ provide a backdrop for monthly accounts of her fall into retirement’s abyss where she clings to her to-do lists while she alters her diet, her wardrobe and her vow to become more domestic. When she resurfaces a year later, she’s surprised at the landscape and what has saved her.

Marian Mathews Clark grew up among loggers in Mist, Oregon (pop 50), then caught the Union Pacific to Iowa to attend Graceland College. In the ensuing years, she capped perfume bottles on Coty’s assembly line in New York, was stranded on Loveland Pass during a blizzard, ironed costumes for Polynesian dancers at the Calgary Stampede, tried to shear a sheep in Australia, earned an MFA in Fiction from The Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and with co-writer Patricia Stevens was a finalist at O’jai’s Film Festival for their feature script Timber.

Bart Yates, author of The Distance Between Us, said of her memoir, “Clark is a sly writer; she lured me in with…broken garbage disposals and mysteriously disappearing walls; only later did I realize she was…writing about mortality, loss, joy, and love. Great stuff.”

2015 edition available from Amazon, Culicidae Press, and from your local independent bookseller.

Dancing Between the Raindrops: A Daughter’s Reflections on Love and Loss

Dancing Between the Raindrops: A Daughter’s Reflections on Love and Loss
by Lisa Braxton


Dancing Between the Raindrops: A Daughter’s Reflections on Love and Loss, is a powerful meditation on grief, a deeply personal mosaic of a daughter’s remembrances of beautiful, challenging and heartbreaking moments of life with her family. It speaks to anyone who has lost a loved one and is trying to navigate the world without them while coming to terms with complicated emotions.

Lisa Braxton’s parents died within two years of each other—her mother from ovarian cancer, her father from prostate cancer. While caring for her mother she was stunned to find out that she, herself, had a life-threatening illness—breast cancer.

In this intimate, lyrical memoir-in-essays, Lisa Braxton takes us to the core of her loss and extends a lifeline of comfort to anyone who needs to be reminded that in their grief they are not alone.

Dancing Between the Raindrops is a heartfelt homage to Braxton’s parents in the wake of their passing. She touches the soul of every adult child’s mourning in ways poignant, nostalgic, aching, and funny with a clever patchwork of writing styles. A must read!

— E. Dolores Johnson, author of Say I’m Dead, A Family Memoir of Race, Secrets and Love

Available from Amazon and Bookshop.org.

For more information see https://lisabraxton.com/.

Joy Falls

Joy Falls
by Barbara Allen
Published by Crooked Hearts Press

 
 
Crooked Hearts Press publishes forgotten, overlooked, and thus disappeared women writers over the age of 55, alongside veteran writers we recognize for their excellence.

In Barbara Allen’s Joy Falls, the most recent Crooked Hearts Press publication, a traumatized family has an elusive desire for normalcy that is found in lyrical moments and humorous problem-solving. The novel is filled with characters who have the stamina for the chaotic present even as their personal histories invade. Joy Falls helps us, not in a self-help way, but in the way fiction helps through storytelling, interesting characters, and laughter. It is about the profoundness of children, the importance of humor, and what happens when we show up for our own lives.

“Barbara Allen’s gorgeous debut novel, Joy Falls, is a true knockout. Allen has created a vibrating—more than vibrant!—world in this comic-tragedy of family madness and love. That she can be so laugh-out-loud funny and heart-breaking and wise all at once never ceases to amaze me. As soon as I finished the book, I had to read it again. I so look forward to more work from her in the future!” — Elizabeth Evans, As Good As Dead

Go to the Crooked Hearts Press website to purchase Joy Falls and other Crooked Hearts books.

Available from Amazon and Bookshop.org.

Crosswind

Crosswind
by Patricia Boomsma

When Amanda drops out of college to join a religious commune, her mom Susan fears she has lost her forever. Amanda revels in the freedom of university life away from her over-protective, single mom, while Susan feels adrift, trying fruitlessly to fill Amanda’s absence with romance and ambition. Amanda’s attraction to a man living in the commune and to the commune’s charismatic preacher leads her to spurn friends and family. When the commune lays claim to Amanda’s inheritance and increasingly controls Amanda’s choices and contacts, it looks as if Susan’s worst fears are coming true.

“At one level, it’s a mother/daughter tale. At another, it’s a story about decisions: bad ones, good ones, and those made so long ago their value has accumulated meaning beyond categories. These pages are jam-packed with consequences, the real stuff that happens to people who’ve lost their way, who’ve lost a sense of home, who’ve forgotten that our mothers are waiting, every moment, to walk us back from the brink of doom.”
— John Mauk, author of Where All Things Flatten, Field Notes for the Earthbound, and The Rest of Us

Crosswind is a captivating account of a mother-daughter bond under siege.”
— Maxine Swann, author of Flower Children, Serious Girls, and The Foreigners

Available from Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, and your local independent bookstore.

Journey to Everland Bay

Journey to Everland Bay
by Lynne Shaner

 
 
Jemma Avalon is an unconventional mage-in-training, longing to return to Everland Bay, her ancestral homeland, and find a way to join the renowned magical research institute there, like the women in her family before her.

Daughter of a gentle part elf-fae mother and a father with fiery dragon blood, an unusual combination even in the magical world, ten years after her mother’s sudden death, she is working at a major museum in DC, where magic is all but outlawed. Her father wants her to assimilate and live without magic, but Jemma is determined to fully embrace her heritage.

When an ordinary day at the museum takes an extraordinary turn, Jemma is rocketed to an Everland Bay Institute under violent siege, where dark-arts mages threaten everything important to her. She joins forces with her companions, working feverishly to save Everland Bay from crumbling under enemy attack. In so doing, she finds a path to her own strength and mastery, and her heart’s true home

A Heroine’s Journey tale for our times.

“A beautifully engaging fantasy teeming with dragons, fae, magic, and the importance of family and friendship. A joy to read from beginning to end.”
— Julie Boglisch, The Elifer Chronicles

Available from Amazon and Bookshop.org.

SPIRIT CAPTIVE, Jerusalem in Poetry, Prose and Paintings

SPIRIT CAPTIVE, Jerusalem in Poetry, Prose and Paintings
by Helen Bar-Lev

 

Spirit Captive is the impressive collection of poems, short stories, memories and artworks that Helen Bar-Lev presents to us as a declaration of her love for Jerusalem, a city harboring as much pain as pleasure. Through Helen’s eyes, we see contested Jerusalem through the seasons and the hours, a city of exquisite beauty. To appreciate the real spirit of this work we should start from the end: reading the poem Spirit Captive, we can feel the bond that exists between the poet and her chosen city. We can also sense the universality of Jerusalem – the painful, sometimes suffering, beauty that permeates it.

In A Love Poem to Jerusalem, Helen wonders if God created the sweet air of the city just to intoxicate her and if every stone or gate or flower may have been created as a source of inspiration for her paintings. This book is Helen’s masterpiece, where her poems, prose and paintings pay magnificent tribute to Jerusalem.

— from the review by Lidia Chiarelli, President, Immagine & Poesia, Italy

 
Available from BookBaby and Bookshop.org, shipping now.

A Place Like This

A Place Like This
Finding Myself in a Cape Cod Cottage
by Sally W. Buffington
A book for anyone who’s ever loved a house.

When newly engaged Sally Buffington is introduced to Craigville, she meets an expansive Cape Cod cottage that is virtually a family member itself. She quickly finds herself competing for airtime among the talkative, assured band of brothers—and her new mother-in-law, the cottage’s lively and confounding matriarch.

Sally, a Cape Cod local, soon wonders how she’ll ever maintain her independence, let alone her sense of self when the day’s agenda and every detail is already set in stone. But she navigates her new life with quiet persistence and a boundless curiosity that guides her to explore life through the creative lens of her camera and her pen.

Sally writes with a whimsical candor that is both honest and humorous. Through poetic prose and heartfelt reflection, A Place Like This reveals the beauty of Cape Cod and shows us that sometimes the simplest of moments brings us the most lasting joy.

Sally Buffington is a writer and photographer, also a classically trained musician. From her home in southern California, she migrates back to native ground in Massachusetts, especially her spiritual homeland of Cape Cod. Writing lyrically and imaginatively, ever aware of sensory experience and memory, Buffington takes the reader into her thoughts wherever she finds herself.

Buffington can “see things other people don’t see” in everyday scenes and find them beautiful. But her prose is where that ability most shines through. This memoir paints a vivid and lasting memory of a home with as much personality as the family who lived there.

– Book Life

“Punctuated by sensory delights, the author’s prose can prove particularly mouthwatering” …. “An elegantly observant account that transports readers to a beloved place.”

Kirkus

To learn more, and order the book, go to Amazon, Bookshop.org, www.sallybuffington.com, or your local bookstore.

Older Wiser Shorter: The Truth and Humor of Life after 65

Older Wiser Shorter: The Truth and Humor of Life after 65 (Revised)
by Jane Seskin, LCSW

Older Wiser Shorter is an intimate collection of 89 poems from Jane Seskin, a working psychotherapist and author. Seskin, authentic, funny, insightful, quirky and heartfelt, acknowledges the disappointments, physical vulnerability and emotional loss taking place in her senior years. She is able to discover within herself a solid sense of power, resilience and new-found joys through her struggles to acknowledge, accommodate and accept her aging. Seskin’s ability to make the very personal universal, will resonate with readers seeking to discover new ways to honor the past, celebrate the present and welcome the future. A Reading Guide to the poems will inspire further reflection and discussion for book and women’s groups.

Praise for Older Wiser Shorter:

“Even tho I’m not a fan of poetry, I found Jane Seskin’s poems to be a delight. They hit home.”
— Jane Brody, former Personal Health columnist, New York Times

“I sat down to read one poem last night and I ended up reading half the book. I feel as though I know you. You have definitely captured the experience of aging.”
— Mary Pipher, author of Women Running North and My Life in Light

“Candid, funny, and best of all inspiring, the poems in Jane Seskin’s Older Wiser Shorter throw open a window on aging. Suddenly a breeze of resilience sails through. I learned from Seskin’s poems; they became like mentors for the strange adventure of late-life living. Kindness infuses them. The ‘enormous optimism’ of this intrepid book might prove the greatest wisdom of the ages.”
— Molly Peacock, author of The Analyst

Available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Bookshop.

Tears and Trombones

Tears and Trombones
by Nanci Lee Woody

Persimmon Tree readers will recognize and love young Joey’s mother, Ellie, as she navigates through poverty and around a philandering, alcoholic husband to help her boy achieve his dream of becoming a classical musician. She scrimps and saves to take her nine-year-old boy to the San Francisco Symphony to hear Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, though she had never before set foot in a concert hall.

Readers will follow Joey through his childhood with all its real-life pain and watch him use his creativity to “get even” for his dad’s cruelty. Though his relationship with his mother is not without trials, she models for him loyalty, persistence, and hard work, and allows no excuses when times are hard.

In high school, Joey is torn between his love for a curly-haired beauty and pursuing his musical dream. When another girl courts him and offers to help him pay his way through college and music lessons, Joey marries her, thus forming a tormented love triangle.

You will follow Joey as he becomes a successful musician. But, having achieved his musical goals, will Joey ever be able to set right his personal life?

Available on Amazon

Check out Nanci’s website for samples of her writing and art. Nancileewoody.com

And click here to hear the music in Tears and Trombones.

Silent Sisters
Profiles of the Short Lives of Karen Carpenter, Patsy Cline, Cass Elliot, Ruby Elzy, Janis Joplin and Selena Quintanilla-Perez
by Ellen Hunter Ulken

With raging talent and heartfelt bonhomie, these twentieth-century American women sang their way to stardom. All died before the age of 36. Within separate chapters, one for each celebrity, the book reveals their triumphs and tragedies, the details of their final hours, and explores the notion that frantic, constant, touring schedules may have contributed to the anxieties and dramas surrounding their early deaths. Through these illustrated pages, the reader will become familiar with these outstanding singers and their music. Endnotes, bibliography and discography are given for each subject.

Ellen Ulken began writing later in life as a retired person. In 2005, she wrote Beautiful Dreamer, The Life of Stephen Collins Foster. Through Arcadia Publishing, in 2009, along with Rebecca Watts and Clarence Lyons, she contributed to a history with pictures and captions of Peachtree City, Georgia, where she lives with her companion, Jerry Watts, MD. Silent Sisters: Profiles of the Short Lives of Karen Carpenter, Patsy Cline, Cass Elliot, Ruby Elzy, Janis Joplin and Selena Quintanilla Perez was published in 2014.

She and Jerry are members of The Peachtree City Writer’s Circle, The Friends of the Peachtree City Library, The Peachtree City Garden Club, and three historical societies.

Available from Amazon, Bookshop.org, or your independent bookstore.

The Blossoming of Women

The Blossoming of Women
A Workbook on Growing from Older to Elder
by Karen Roberts with Dana Jaffe

Through her search for newfound purpose in her seventies, author Karen Roberts discovered that voices of encouragement were difficult to find among the popular paradigms of aging: decline, withdrawal, and disengagement, among them.

This workbook presents a remarkable opportunity to unlock a fulfilling and purposeful later life stage.

What’s Included:

  • Thought-provoking discussions on aging, gender, and culture
  • Interviews with eight inspiring women who overcame challenges and pursued their passions later in life
  • Engaging questions to help you reflect and grow on your journey.
  • Unique experiences and wisdom that women bring to the later years

Filled with inspirational and educational opportunities, The Blossoming of Women promotes a different vision of elder years and retirement that translates not to retiring from life but entering another phase of efficiency and meaningful thoughts, actions, and choices. Beautiful nature images throughout support the gentle feel and uplifting spirit of these stories. — D. Donovan, Sr. Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

Karen Marie Roberts received an MS degree in human development after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1990. Her interests moved from alternative healing to gerontology and stages of aging. In graduate school, this became a concentration in creative longevity and phenomenology. She attended Wellesley College, UC Berkeley, and Fielding Graduate School.

Available from Amazon, Bookshop.org, and other major retailers.

And now, The Blossoming of Women is also available as an audiobook from Amazon and elsewhere.

For more information, visit https://www.theblossomingofwomen.com

The Holy & Broken Bliss

The Holy & Broken Bliss
Poems by Alicia Ostriker

How can we find meaning in the face of aging, illness, and the inevitability of death? How can we respond to the double plague of a fierce pandemic and a divided society?

The keenly observant and urgent poems of The Holy & Broken Bliss are grounded in daily existence, human tenderness, the rituals of a long marriage, and the poet’s ongoing spiritual quest. In the middle of a world that seems to be breaking down into suffering and anger, the spare and direct lines of these poems, surrounded by silence, offer a kind of healing. The poems ask us to consider what living looks like inside of ongoing misery (misery we often are responsible for making and accept-ing). They call us to ask ourselves how we locate joy and even laughter when despair is ever-present.

The Holy & Broken Bliss contemplates free will, autonomy, self-control, the commodification of ourselves, and our desires for vengeance, satia- tion, rage, and acknowledgment of our collective sicknesses, along with the sacred possibilities of love, communication with nature, the power of art, and the “need to praise.”

“Ostriker confronts the intricate dance between spiritual despair and revelatory beauty in her ethereal 17th collection. … [The Holy & Broken Bliss] resonates long after the final page, reminding readers that even in a fractured, plague-stricken world, there is still a living, breathing force within all things.”
Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Available from Alice James Books, Amazon or Bookshop

Private I

Private I
A Complex Narrative of Love, Betrayal, and Artificial Intelligence
by Ashlei E. Watson, Jill Fain Lehman, and Paul Pangaro

A modern take on classic noir themes, Private I is a mystery thriller rooted in today’s headlines, exploring a world where technology intersects with human morality and where love, betrayal, and trust become as complicated as the machines themselves. It’s the story of a dead body, a society in decay, and the internal monologue of a woman who is still young enough to care and naïve enough to stumble. Here, however, that internal monologue is joined by a second voice that evolves with its partner.

Private I will resonate with readers who are fascinated by technology’s role in society, the complexity of consciousness, and the philosophical and ethical quandaries that are already encroaching upon us. AI may be new, but the role it plays in this story of betrayal and survival is as old as humanity itself.

If you’ve ever wondered what happens when machines think like humans and humans have to trust machines with their lives, this tech noir thriller is for you.

“The main characters of Paloma, the hard-boiled young woman forced to be a detective searching for her grandfather’s killer, and Marlow, her AI that always resides in the cuffs she wears on her ears, were fascinating. I love the callbacks to old detective noir thrillers mixed in with futuristic details and situations. It really is a great and illuminating read.”
— Goodreads review

“This book is a must-read for anyone who dares to peer into the future and question what it means to be human when humanity itself is fragile.”
— Amazon review

Available from Amazon and Bookshop.

Ember Days

Ember Days
by Mary Gilliland

Woolf’s pen runs dry, Tesla holes up, Lincoln emerges in yet another bardo, and the witnesses for peace include soldiers under duress, models transformed to artists, descendants of forced immigrants, survivors of hurricanes.

Ember Days begins with ritual and ends with prayer as the poems tunnel through Wednesday’s jammed boulevards, Friday’s worthless cash, Saturday’s prodigal feet.

“Gilliland is a poet of witness and spirituality, grappling with climate devastation while also interrogating world policies and politics.”
Best American Poetry

“Gilliland waltzes smoothly between the cheeky and conversational and the lyrical.”
LitHub

“I am spellbound by the largesse of vision and the beauty.”
— Cynthia Hogue

Mary Gilliland is the guest poetry editor in the winter 2022 issue of Persimmon Tree.

Order from: https://www.codhill.com/product/ember-days/

Find out more at https://marygilliland.com/

September 12

September 12
by Andrea Carter Brown

 
On 9/11, Andrea Carter Brown was a resident of downtown Manhattan living just a block from the World Trade Center. September 12 chronicles her up close and all too personal experience of the attack, but, even more, the continuing horror and eventual healing of the months and years afterward.

September 12 won the 2022 IPPY Silver Medal in Poetry, the James Dickey Prize from Five Points, the River Styx International Poetry Prize, the Puddinghouse Press Chapbook Competition, The MacGuffin National Poet Hunt, and is cited in the Library of Congress Online Research Guide to the Poetry of 9/11.

“A more haunting memorial to 9/11 than this book will be hard to find. Reading September 12 is a wrenching but restorative experience you won’t soon forget”. 
— Martha Collins, poet, author of Casualty Reports and Blue Front

“… detail by detail, we watch the process of innocence captured by absolutely unpredicted trauma, and how the experience lives on and on, through shock and terror, through the kindness of strangers, through the heart of a beloved, through grief and elegy, through normality that will never again be normal.” 
— Alicia Ostriker, New York State Poet Laureate

“This brave book documents great loss, but also hard-won psychic resilience in poems of astonishing beauty and wisdom. September 12 is necessary poetry.”
— Cynthia Hogue, Poetry Editor, Persimmon Tree

Available from Amazon and Word Works.

RIBBONS AND MOTHS: Poems for Children

RIBBONS AND MOTHS: Poems for Children
by Laura Rodley

2024 Winner of the Moonbeam Children’s Book Award and Children’s Nonfiction International Book Award.

Ribbons and Moths is for children. But it is also for children of all ages.

There is so much pleasure in Laura’s images: llamas, harvest, cats and kittens, the moon, wise dogs and children, … the faith of farmers working in “the crumbly black earth,” … “beds of sparrows,” [and] milkweed pod fluff …. Even the Table of Contents is a poem, a delight … Treasured in these poems are … images full of caring, humor, charm, and joy. Special moments of awareness shine like small windows … such as the pony’s warm thick fur parting along her spine with winter’s icicles dripping down her sides.
—Joan Hopkins Coughlin, artist, owner of Golden Cod Gallery

Pushcart Prize winner Laura Rodley is a septuple Pushcart Prize nominee and quintuple Best of the Net nominee. She edited and published As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology I-VI, and As You Write It Lucky 7, seven collections of memoirs from seniors she taught at the Gill Montague Senior Center. Her latest books are Turn Left at Normal (Big Table Publishing) and Counter Point (Prolific Press), a work in fiction about the real-life Whydah that floundered and sank off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, on April 26, 1717.

Click here to watch the book trailer.

Available from Amazon and through the publisher, Kelsay Books.

For more about the poet, go to www.LauraRodley.com