September 10, 2012
As part of the hoopla and fun surrounding Stacy Juba’s new release, 25 Years In the Rearview Mirror: 52 Authors Look Back, I’ll be featuring a number of the authors who appear in this book along with myself.
Today, it’s Vicki Delany in the hot seat, talking about her new book, More than Sorrow.
Ready? Here’s the song that makes Vicki think about her book:
What Wonderful World sung by Louis Armstrong. I love this song because of the contrast with the tune and the lyrics. It’s actually very sad, as he sings about the wonderful world. In More than Sorrow, the protagonist, Hannah Manning, is recovering from a Traumatic Brain Injury caused when she was in an IED explosion in Afghanistan (where she was working as a journalist). Hannah has come to her sister’s organic vegetable farm to recover.
Like in the song, as I interpret it, Hannah is surrounded by peace and beauty of the countryside in the height of summer. But she has not been able to find peace and she is largely immune to the beauty of the farm. She wants to get her old life back, not to be dependent on others. She spends much of her time in the atic of the 18th centry house, looking through old letters, letters full of sorrow and she thinks to herself:
Life was more than sorrow.
It had to be more than sorrow.
Yes, I’d agree. Life has to be more than sorrow.
Here’s the blurb:
Once, Hannah Manning was an internationally-renowned journalist and war correspondent. Today, she’s a woman suffering from a traumatic brain injury. Unable to read, unable to concentrate, full of pain, lost and confused, haunted by her memories, Hannah goes to her sister’s small-scale vegetable farm in Prince Edward County, Ontario to recover.
As summer settles on the farm, she finds comfort in the soft rolling hills and neat fields as well as friendship in the company of Hila Popalzai, an Afghan woman also traumatized by war.
Unable to read the printed word, Hannah retreats into the attic and boxes of mouldy letters that have accumulated for more than two centuries. As she learns about the original settlers of this land, Loyalist refugees fleeing the United States in 1784, she is increasingly drawn to the space beneath the old house. More than carrots and potatoes, soups and jams, are down in the dark damp root cellar.
Hannah experiences visions of a woman, emerging from the icy cold mist. Is the woman real? Or the product of a severely damaged brain?
Which would be worse?
Then Hila disappears. When Hannah cannot account for her time, not even to herself, old enemies begin to circle.
In this modern Gothic novel of heart-wrenching suspense, past and present merge into a terrifying threat to the only thing Hannah still holds dear – her ten-year-old niece, Lily.
Buy it!
Contact Vicki at vicki@vickidelany.com. Her website is Vicki Delany.com. She blogs about the writing life at One Woman Crime Wave, and you can catch her at Facebook, and twitter
