D-Day Girls

I read too, and since I’m writing about the Great Depression, World War II, and it’s aftermath, I focus a lot on historical fiction from that period. Here’s one book that will help me put together my next novel. The truth gives me context and makes my books for realistic.

D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II by Sarah Rose reads like a thriller while revealing long-ignored contribution women made to the Allies during World War II. Finally giving credit where credit is due, D-Day Girls follows a few of the women who joined their male colleagues in leading a guerilla army of French resistance fighters to defeat the Nazi occupation. More than 450 agents, supported by special operations in Britain, “were counted as worth fifteen divisions in France, or about 200,000 troops.” Faced like their male counterparts with betrayal, torture, and death, the women stood up to the worst the Nazis had to offer, with courage and perseverance. I enjoyed reading about women who had such agency in their own times.https://www.amazon.com/D-Day-Girls-Resistance-Sabotaged-Helped/dp/0451495098

Categories: Non-fiction

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Restoration

This bit is modified and excerpted from my novel The Reluctant Canary Sings in response to the Girlie On The Edge six sentence blog challenge. It turned out that a minor plot device surprised me by becoming the turning for an important relationship in the book. (See previous post for the watch’s significance to the dad.)

It was the only thing he had to show he came from people.

“I’m so ashamed of what I’ve done, and I know I can’t make it so none of that happened to you—but at least I can pay you back.”

“Where’d you get this,” I snarled, “you didn’t win it at the track, did you?”

He looked into my eyes, “I sold the watch, Bobbi.”

“That watch means so much to you—get it back.”

“It’s gone, Bobbi, and you mean more to me than that watch anyway. Would you consider giving me a chance to be your dad again?”

Categories: Families Fiction

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Keepsake

The following six-sentence blog post is excerpted from my novel, The Reluctant Canary Sings. It’s posted in response to the GirlieOnTheEdge weekly challenge.

Sometimes that one item is your only connection to your identity.

In my family, Ollie’s watch lacked a crystal because she couldn’t see.

A storm flashed across Cleveland as Mom and I talked about Dad’s watch, and why he was so darned attached to it when he could pawn it to buy food.

“The sisters gave it to him when he left the orphanage—said they found it in the box with him. An apple box on the steps. He says that watch is the only proof he has that he came from real people. Otherwise, he says, he’d have to think he hatched out of a dragon’s egg.”

The thunder, when it came, was a low, guttering growl, rolling away like a dragon seeking Its egg.

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Categories: Families Fiction

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Final Resting Place?

Here is another of those 99-word shorts. Inspired by the Carrot Ranch Literary Comminity‘s blog challenge, I’ve excerpted a tiny paragraph from my second novel, See Willy See.

In wartime, sometimes the sides get blurred.

Starving and sick, the enemy shivered. Connor sat and pulled the dying man’s head into his lap. “Remember, the man who’s trying to kill you is a human being too,” his mom had said. There in the jungle dusk, he held the soldier until his breathing stopped. He walked on, leaving the jungle to consume the remains. He heard his rifle clips clattering. Gotta stop that noise. That was his last thought before he collapsed, curling up and shivering. Must be losing my mind. Is this what it feels like to die? He closed his eyes and drifted off.

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Categories: Communities Families Fiction

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Glorious Mud

Below is a response to this week’s Carrot Ranch Literary Community blog challenge. Here in 99 words, no more, no less, is a “flash story” about mud.

When my sister and I were young, we spent every day it was fit to be outside investigating the farm our family owned. Spring was best when the seasonal creek ran under the bridge. We waded in warm, squishy almost-liquid. Soft, viscous ooze squeezed between our wriggling toes and little creatures tickled our legs. Mom gave us a flour sifter to filter whatever lurked hidden in that murky fluid. Imagine our delight when the sieve came out swarming with tiny creatures. We put them in jars where we could see them and watch them grow into toads.

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Categories: Curiosities Non-fiction

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Escape

This is my contribution—late—to the Carrot Ranch Literary Community blog challenge. As always, it’s 99 words, no more no less. The challenge is to write an escape. I’m trying to condense my novel-in-progress into 99 words. Let’s see how it goes.

Analog Recording System Broke Down. Now All Digital

She sat, shredding tissue in her lap, waiting for a counselor. Once he’d passed out, she’d tied her husband, spread-eagled, to their four-poster bed using two pairs of thigh-hi nylons. Then she beat him with his own belt—the buckle end. Bruises and abrasions on her own body still throbbed. The old ones made her skin a rainbow. He was a lawyer. Every time she’d tried to leave, he’d found a way to block her. If she could make them believe she was a danger to him, maybe they would check her in and save her life—and his.

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Categories: Families Fiction

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Cream Puffs

What follows is a Carrot Ranch Literary Community 99-word blog challenge. The challenge this time is the idea of a deep wish.

My mom before she was my mom.

Frigid wind blowing off Lake Erie.

Door blows open; tinkles shut.

Warm smells of baking—golden loaves, croissants

Sweet scent of cookies, cakes, cream puffs.

Crisp crust flakes; filling fills senses

Warm vanilla pudding envelopes the tongue

Eyes widen; an ecstatic surprise.

Me, only three, shy in my Shirley

Temple curls, little fur hat and muff.

We left in winter, ran from open skies, silence.

I remember almost nothing, except

This bakery with a tinkling bell and cream puffs.

Later, we returned to Dad and stayed together,

But I long to buy Mom one more cream puff.

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Categories: Families

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Corona Virus Mania

You may have noticed if you drilled down (only two posts) that I essentially repeated the same post with one of the same photos. Can you believe, only a few days apart, that I forgot the first when I wrote the second? YIKES!! I need to get out of the house. So here’s what I’m looking forward to in the same area.

Bluewing Teal on Sandhills marsh

Categories: Our Prairie Habitat

Frigid Covid Journey

This is a Girlie-on-the-Edge six sentence blog challenge post. The prompt word is journey.

Gudmundsen Ranch Road, February 2021

Martin Bay, Lake McConaughy, February 2021
  1. Covid fatigue; cabin fever; can’t stand it anymore.
  2. Photo excursion into the Sandhills
  3. Wind chill minus thirty; twelve inches of show; too cold to get out and walk; wheelbase too low to drive off road.
  4. North into the teeth of the wind, looking for road kills; photos out the car windows—open of course with wind pouring in.
  5. Trees clumps of naked grey sticks on a field of white—white earth, white sky.
  6. Then sun; on Gudmundsen Ranch Road north of Whitman; sunset on Martin Bay—frozen lake stretching as far as the I can see.
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Categories: Non-fiction Our Prairie Habitat

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Fire on Ice

This is a Carrot Ranch 99-word Nature Challenge Story

Afflicted with cabin fever, I drove north into the Sandhills—wind chill -30o with a foot of snow. All photos road kills—too cold to walk far, wheelbase too low to drive off-road. Lonely tree skeletons rode the choppy waves of Nebraska’s grass frozen sand sea. The ranch road north of Whitman curled up and down hill contours. My wide 285-mile loop ended at Martin Bay next to acres and miles of frozen Lake McConaughy. Driving the tall dam with little in the way of markers induced adrenaline in the frozen dusk, sunset a band of fire on ice.

Categories: Non-fiction Our Prairie Habitat

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