Nannie does not want to move in with her children just because she is old now. She does the best she can to fend off their forceful invitations, but she knows that sooner or later she will become her worst fear: a burden on her family.
Cat was in the garden. She called him Cat because that’s what he was. She didn’t hold with giving animals people-names. Nannie could hear him squalling at the birds who so deftly avoided his clawless front paws. Chuckling softly, Nannie tied an apron around her ample waist and began setting out the ingredients to make a stack cake. She guarded the recipe jealously; it had been her grandmother’s and not an easy one to replicate. She had kept it only in her memory until her memory started to go, then she wrote it down and put it in her coffee canister. She prayed every night she wouldn’t forget where she’d hidden it. She looked around her sunny yellow kitchen and breathed a prayer of thanks that she could still find it when she needed it.
Her children, scattered out over the state, didn’t like her living alone now, and they strenuously objected to her cooking; they were afraid she’d forget the stove was on and burn the house down around her. She got one meal a day from Meals on Wheels, but the rest of the time they wanted her to eat cereal for breakfast every morning, and a sandwich of some kind each evening for supper. She was not willing to give up cooking for herself, but she taped up notes all over the kitchen saying, “Check the stove” to pacify them.
As deafness, illness, and demonic forces close in around him, Ludwig van Beethoven must summon his faith and genius to complete the Missa Solemnis—a sacred masterpiece he believes could bring divine light into a darkening world.
I Made My Boy Out of Poetry is a powerful literary vision of rare scope, beauty and emotional intensity composed of stories and poems that flow in and out of each other like the most lucid and articulate of dreams. These are portraits and studies of
Determined to confront the hazy memories of his troubled youth, Oliver Matthews, a retired detective and confirmed bachelor, returns to the picturesque town of Henley-on-Thames for the first time in years.
