Category: Memoir Publisher: Zillah, Inc.
ISBN-10: 0961988401
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 272
Copyright: Jan 3, 2006
The Transparent Feather...and other gifts from Berry
Berry Morgan, a prize-winning author living out her days in a nursing home, works out a unique partnership with an aspiring writer. BJ Appelgren will transcribe Berry’s memoirs, and in return Berry will help develop BJ’s writing. The unanticipated friendship at a critical time in both women’s lives surprises them. While working on her memoirs, Berry creates a unique course in writing that causes BJ to re-examine the inner turmoil of her baffling perceptions regarding death and the mystery of after-life.
The elder’s optimistic influence does not end with her death. Unexpected events conspire to bring The Transparent Feather to a life-affirming conclusion, and BJ, herself, to a belated coming-of-age. This book speaks to anyone who has had an intuitive experience but whose rational outlook may have gotten in the way of appreciating the true meaning.
Excerpt from The Transparent Feather...
“Officially I’m allowed my sherry only in the evening, but the pain is getting worse. Would you pour me just half a cup?” she asked, pointing to the plastic water cups on the sink.
I paused to think about giving her the sherry, finally saying, “But you’re not supposed to have it.”
“Oh, is this like my swallowing the mouthwash?” she snapped. “You fussing over the rules of my superb medical treatment? Take a look at me. Are we talking about preserving my good health?”
Professional Reviews
Verbal Album: Snapshots of Inner Life of 2 Women
The Winchester Star
Winchester, Virginia
Thursday, March 9, 2006
By Val Van Meter
Can you spell amanuensis? Serendipitous? Words
and their meanings and life and its meanings are
the warp and woof of a relationship that has
brought Barbara June “BJ” Appelgren to a new
phase of her life.
The Charles Town, W.Va. resident will be signing copies of her first book, “The Transparent Feather,” from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at the Winchester Book Gallery on the Loudoun Street Mall.
“We have worked with her through the Healing Arts Council,” said the gallery’s co-owner, Allison Major of Appelgren. “She’s a neat woman and an entertaining woman. We like to support our local authors,” Major added. “We think this will be an inspiring story.”
Barbara June “BJ” Appelgren will sign copies of her book, “The Transparent Feather,” from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at the Winchester Book Gallery.
Serendipitous might be the best way to describe the unexpected meeting and friendship between Appelgren and Berry Morgan, a Mississippi native whose short stories appeared regularly in The New Yorker magazine for 22 years.
Appelgren confided to Morgan that she had four stories, very special events in her life, that
(Photo by Rick Foster)
she had always wanted to put down on paper.
“I take them out and work with them, and they just get worse,” she told her new friend.
Confined to a nursing home, Morgan became Appelgren’s writing mentor, while Appelgren took dictation (amanuensis) of memories Morgan wanted to pass on to her children.
From their 18-month exploration of words, Appelgren’s four short stories have become a verbal album full of snapshots of the inner life of two women.
“I could tell Berry everything, and she would not be critical, except of my grammar.”
Six months after Morgan, 83, died in 2002, Appelgren started her book.
“I thought it was about me and the stories I brought to her,” she said. But Morgan’s tutelage, and her own stories, twist through the pages as Appelgren unfolds her own life.
“It all hinges on the relationship,” she explained.
Alluding to the recent scandal over author James Frye’s “exaggerated” memoirs, Appelgren noted, “I try to be as honest as possible,” but Morgan showed her “how hard it was to tell the truth, 10 years later, you don’t experience it the same way any more.”
Appelgren, an artist with a degree in social work, is a life-long advocate of complementary medicine.
“I’ve done way too many things in my life,” she adds with a smile. “It’s taken 60 years to find out my heart’s desire.”
Writing, she said, had always attracted her, and she had put out a number of newsletters and written articles on alternative health, but these were all expository writing, she said.
“I’d never written dialogue. Berry was really patient. I was so inexperienced.”
Morgan, lying back in her bed, eyes focused on the ceiling as if reading script there, would offer Appelgren “bits and pieces of images,” then send her home to write some more.
“I remember the first time I was able to write pages,” without getting stuck for words. “I was so excited.”
She learned that writing is a constant weighing of words, of images, of detail, to convey things for which, perhaps, there are no words.
For instance, the book’s title, “The Transparent Feather,” comes from a real feather Appelgren found.
“If you focused on the feather, you could see the little stripes in it.” But holding it up, it was transparent, she said.
“It was a metaphor for life.”
Focusing on the details of the feather, you don’t see the wide horizon beyond it.
“Everybody has had similar experiences,” she added.
Unleashing her literary potential has taken Appelgren into more new careers.
“Now,” she said, “I’m learning about marketing.”
“The Transparent Feather” is available at The Book Shelf in Winchester, Berryville Old and Used Books and Four Seasons in Shepherdstown, W.Va., in addition to the Winchester Book Gallery or it can be ordered for $14.95, plus $4 shipping and handling, from Zillah Inc., P. O. Box 887, Charles Town, W.Va., 25414
For speaking engagements, contact the author through the website:
http://www.transparentfeather.com
or phone 800.915.9335
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