Here you will find some previously published and some new shorter works in three categories: Family & Prison & Miscellaneous & .
Dad nailed blankets over the sheer curtains on the living room and kitchen windows for my third birthday party so men in Japanese planes wouldn’t see the candles on my cake. Mom, who’d recorded little in my “Baby’s First Five Years” book, wrote “December 8, 1941–Janet’s third birthday . . . our country declared war upon Japan today . . . I’m pleased we can celebrate for we might not be together a year from now.” Read More
A friend who is an avid reader urged me to dust off some of my prison stories, especially anecdotal ones, and reprint them, since crime and punishment (or lack of punishment in some cases) so often tops the daily news. She believes our culture continues to find such stories fascinating. At her suggestion I opened a copy of my prison teacher’s memoir, Dancing to the Concertina’s Tune, published by Northeastern University Press in 2004. The book is out of print but offenders’ stories remain much the same. My students were women and men who had murdered; raped; assaulted; pillaged; bought, sold and used drugs; and committed unimaginable offenses against those purported to love.” Read More
I stood at the classroom window inside McNeil Island Corrections Center in south Puget Sound and watched the sea darken from azure to indigo. The trees across the Sound looked black even before the light left them. Had it been a clear day, Mount Rainier would have been fading from view in the darkening night.Read More
Carolyn walks with her head lowered against the cold wind whistling down Hemlock Lane, her thoughts testing solutions to the Joanie problem. She usually avoids Hemlock on her walks from cabin to river, and wonders what drew her on this late afternoon. The street is narrow, tunneled by overhanging fir bows, chilly even in summer, almost eerie in November. Read More