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Dear Reader,
I especially enjoyed today's guest column, written by author Kathryn Craft, because I feel one of my "jobs" here on earth is to create memories to leave behind for my children and grandchildren. The memories we leave behind, continue to nurture the ones we love.
Please welcome author Kathryn Craft to the book club. What a treat to have her stop by. Kathryn's excited to talk to readers, so be sure to say hello, and she's giving away three copies of her book, The Art of Falling to readers. Email: kathryn@kathryncraft.com
A Little Bit About Kathryn Craft:
Kathryn's novel, The Art of Falling, is about a young woman who blames her imperfect body for derailing the dance career of her dreams. But when her miraculous survival after a fourteen-story fall is credited to that same body, her attempt to reconnect to the movement she loves becomes the fight of her creative life.
Kathryn drew on her nineteen-year career as a dance critic as well as her earlier background as a dancer and choreographer. She speaks often on the art and craft of literature. She is a contributing editor at The Blood-Red Pencil blog and a monthly guest at Writers in the Storm with her series Turning Whine into Gold.
Welcome Kathryn Craft...
What We Leave Behind
While I have lived many places, the home of my heart is a lakeside cottage in northern New York State. It holds generations of memories: a staff of woodland creatures carved by my father, the furniture his brother antiqued during his "blue" period. The bow and arrow their father used for hunting.
All three of these men are gone, and forever lost are the names of the children in knee-length bathing costumes that look out at me from the curling edges of their black-and-white photos. Yet when I am there I feel plugged in to the enduring legacy of family.
As the camp passed its one-hundred-twentieth birthday, a storm forced us to face facts: with all our existing pots and pans spread about catching drips, we either had to purchase more cookware or replace the roof.
Renovation, however, is never quite that easy.
The roof was only one problem in a rotting structure pieced together through the decades by weekend carpenters armed with enough brawn to swing a hammer and enough paint to hide faults. What began in the late 1800s as a hunting shanty gradually became a two-story camp with a roofline that looked like so many crumpled hoods after a multi-vehicle accident.
It was time for the camp to come down.
Change would not be easy. The place had personality that could not be replicated. Like the way the door at the bottom of the second floor dresser opened on its own when your foot hit the spongy floorboard. Or the way the bottom stairs were sawn off and movable because they obstructed a doorway. My grandchild would never sit in the open stairwell to watch me bake bread in the kitchen as I had sat watching my own grandmother.
Of course my bread would not be seasoned with the grit that little bare feet left on the stairs, either...
We took a deep breath--and then, the bulldozer. The chimney crumbled brick by brick, and the rest of the camp slid easily from a foundation made from a beam lying across two sawn-off tree stumps. Traditions lay splintered as our camp went from the oldest on the lake to the newest.
The pain of our decision-making faded as quickly as the smell of mildew we'd once equated with summer.
New spaces inspired new uses: I now host writing retreats for women. Within walls that will stand long after we're gone, we seek to extend our legacy through the stories we'll leave behind.
--Kathryn Craft
kathryn@kathryncraft.com
**You can still enter this month's Chocolate Chip Cookie Giveaway. Do you prefer milk chocolate or dark chocolate? This month you get to choose which kind of chocolate chips you'd like in your cookies. Enter this month's Chocolate Chip Cookie Giveaway today. Go to: http://www.emailbookclub.com/photo/Cookie-101513.html
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com
* This month's Penguin Classics book is BUTTERFIELD 8 by John O'Hara. Start reading now and enter to win a Penguin bookbag.
http://www.supportlibrary.com/bc/v.cfm?L=drclassqqxqN1AFE3FA7A11&c=CLASSICS
AUTHORBUZZ: THE ART OF FALLING (Fiction) by Kathryn Craft
The body Penelope Sparrow has blamed for ruining her dream dance career has miraculously saved her life after a fourteen-story fall. As she struggles to regain the movement she loves, she must face what happened on that ledge--and decide what she'll do with this remarkable second chance.
Go to: http://authorbuzz.com/dearreader click on THE ART OF FALLING to find out more about the book and the author, Kathryn Craft. Send her an email, she'd love to hear from you.
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