Village of Sycamore: A Novel - Softcover

Rihte, Maria

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1440195463 ISBN 13: 9781440195464

Verlag: iUniverse, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

When thirty-two-year-old woodworker and designer Jacqueline Callaghan arrives in the small village of Sycamore on a windswept island, she has just sold her apartment in the city, lost her job, left her boyfriend, and buried her grandmother. She’s ready to begin a new life in her grandmother’s old cottage in this picturesque village of lush gardens and wild waterfront. Jackie opens her own studio and gallery and finds that life is perfect — except for the bills. In a desperate attempt to save the life she now loves, Jackie organizes a studio tour, rallying together the island’s many artists and crafts people, in hopes of bringing more visitors to the island. The idea is popular, but Jackie is almost defeated. How to persuade these fiercely independent artists to work together without disrupting the delicate balance of their daily lives? The whole village falls into chaos as artistic personalities clash and long-hidden skeletons come out of the closet. Secret trysts, nude portraits, love and inconsolable broken hearts, mistaken death, and resurrection slowly unravel Jackie’s carefully crafted tour plans.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Maria Rihte was born in Helsinki, Finland. She has been an actor, artist, and a glass blower. She has traveled widely in Canada, the United States, and Europe and has hiked in Africa. At the moment she lives in Paris, France with her husband, daughter, and the family dog Lizzie. This is her debut novel.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Village of Sycamore

A NovelBy Maria Rihte

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2009 Maria Rihte
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4401-9546-4

Contents

1 Coming Home...................................12 Bankers and Bills.............................153 The Birth of an Idea..........................324 Herding Cats..................................425 Tea, Ice and Muffins..........................596 The Meeting...................................767 You Can't Go Home.............................998 Sponsors......................................1079 Something Brewing.............................12610 One Dark Night...............................13411 Signs and Signs..............................14712 Recovery and Restoration.....................16513 Lazarus......................................17414 Oil and Water................................19015 The City.....................................21016 Brochure!....................................23917 In The News..................................26118 Hot Thomas...................................27819 Signs of Things to Come......................29320 Show Time....................................30521 Hot Thomas, Again............................31922 Hot Sales....................................33223 Closing Time.................................34524 Tour, Day Two................................35825 Done.........................................37326 Rose Calls It................................381

Chapter One

Coming Home

We are all forced to go through a doubtful period or two in our lives, when we try anxiously to find an answer to our own uncertainties; what if I would have, what if I had or maybe had not, should have, ought to, and all those other self analyzing questions that haunt our existence like ghosts that hover above our sad bent heads. These often repeated questions don't help at all, but they make the extra drink or the extra piece of chocolate seem so right for the occasion.

Those were the exact feelings of Jacqueline Callaghan when she stepped into her late grandmother's cottage on a cold windswept, sparsely populated island. Doubtful, miserable, guilty, uncertain but, perhaps, slightly optimistic in a very tentative, reserved kind of way.

'I'm trying to like my mother, but I'm failing miserably,' thought Jackie as she dropped her bag onto the dusty floor. It fell heavily, bending the old, creaky floorboards. A dense cloud of dust rose into the air and it made Jackie sneeze. She waved her hands in front of her, trying to clear the air.

'I can hear her voice right now,' she thought anxiously. "'Why would you go back to that tiny house which I left as a young girl for a better life in the city?'" Her mother's sharp voice echoed in her mind as she coughed out the last stubborn particles of old dirt.

'Well beats me,' Jackie said to herself, more cheerfully than she felt. She wiped off the gritty dust, which covered her face and draped her eyelashes, while trying to shake off the guilty feeling and her mother's words clinging to her skin like the dust-unwanted but nevertheless present.

It took awhile for her eyes to adjust to the darkness of the room. She stood in the ray of light coming in from the wide open front door, listening to the chirping birds in the garden and watching the specks of dust dance in the bright midday light. The shapes of the furniture slowly took form. It was an old house, an old room, filled with old furniture. The house smelled of must and forgotten ground coffee beans.

Jackie could see a yellowing lace cloth on the three-legged table; in the middle sat a vase of plastic flowers. The chairs still had the fabric arm covers and the sofa had a set of crocheted pillows placed neatly against the armrests. It all looked so familiar, bringing back memories from long gone summers when the most important thing on her mind had been to get to the table on time for lunch, and then run out again as soon possible without seeming to be completely without manners. She could almost feel the sun, the soaking wet bathing suit and the itching mosquito bites on her legs. The memory made her scratch her calves. She hated the mosquitoes with a passion. Her friend Jill called them the last living remnants of the vampire empire.

Jackie began walking toward the kitchen, fighting back the increasing sense of panic. She remembered her mother's sharp voice, engaged in normal conversation with the neighbour, penetrating the walls and travelling upstairs to the room where Jackie sat by her school desk.

'That girl has a mind of her own. What can I do?' Her mother would say without waiting for the polite dismissive response from the confused neighbour. 'When she has something on her mind, she'll fight for it. She never thinks of anybody else except herself.'

Jackie shrugged her shoulders. The guilt left her for a moment, soon replaced by a slight resentment. She opened the door to the kitchen. The hinges cried with a deep shriek and orange rust flakes rubbed off onto the floor of the narrow hallway. Bright light flooded the room from the big windows that looked onto the garden. The uneven wooden floor groaned as Jackie walked into the middle of the kitchen. It looked just like it had every summer of her life when she had visited her grandmother during her holidays. Jackie felt grief take hold of her as her eyes wandered around, taking in all those objects from her childhood: the tea kettle, dented pots and pans and the Formica table with a wobbly leg that had been evened out with a folded piece of cardboard stuck under it, waiting to be fixed someday when there would be more time. She opened the cupboard; there were all the lovely teacups in blue landscape pattern with sheep and girls in beautiful dresses. She had always loved the one with a girl swinging, the hem of her skirt flying high. She remembered trying to create the same romantic atmosphere by dressing up in her grandmother's old underskirts and how the pub owner's son had laughed when he had seen her patterned underwear peaking through the layers of elegant lace. They ended up in a big fight-a far cry from romantic.

She started looking for that one particular cup when she heard the front door open.

'Hello!' A strong woman's voice called. 'Anybody home?' The voice continued while its owner and her heavy footsteps approached the kitchen. Where else could a person be if there was nobody in the garden, and the car was parked in front of the house? It was part of the island's customs: one light knock on the open front door was enough to let yourself in. No separate invitation needed. The footsteps seemed to follow an old familiar pattern.

'Over here in the kitchen,' Jackie answered tentatively, her words echoing in the room. She stood facing the door and waited for the owner of the voice to enter.

A big, robust, cheerful woman walked, or rather stomped, into the kitchen. Her hugeness was not created by her being overweight; she simply was a very, very big person. She had a lovely broad face and the presence of a man. Her hands were large and adorned with many gold rings that seemed to be several sizes too small. Her voice was loud and warm and without effort filled the air. It was the kind of voice you hear in 1940s films when there is a scene in a school room. The busty headmistress stomps into the classroom wearing a dress with the buttons on the front stretched to their utmost limit and the happy voices of the children die down, and yes, you could hear a pin drop.

Right now it was so quiet...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: iUniverse
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2010
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1440195463
• ISBN 13: 9781440195464
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 400
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland