32 Linden Avenue

About the Book

32 Linden Avenue is perched high up on a hill overlooking a small town in western Pennsylvania and is the heart of this evocative journey through the author's fragmented memories of Appalachia. The murmuring of the women, the love and everyday lives of those living in the hard hill country and then the drenching of those memories in the deep hushed and hovering Protestant faith of that time and that place is woven into a spell drenched in the detailed memories of everyday life. A child, temporarily separated from her father and mother and brother by fate, found magic and succor, and most of all enduring love.

The young mother sees the same magic through older eyes and in the midst of the pain of her mothers final illness and bitter frustrated life is, as when a child, comforted by her family from the hill. Haunted throughout her life, the author sees all this from even older eyes and vows that her children, and now grandchildren, shall not be deprived of the chance to seize meaning and beauty and, thus, comfort from these remembrances.

About the Author

Joan H Parks lives in Chicago, IL, and after a career in clinical research refreshed her life by becoming a fiction writer. She published two books in 2012: Thutmose and The Book Club Chronicles. Her undergraduate degree was from the University of Rochester in Non-Western Civilizations, her MBA from the University of Chicago. She studies poetry, including Yeats and the Canterbury Tales (in Middle English); has an interest in the ancient world which she has gratified by studying at the Oriental Institute of The University of Chicago; is an aficionado of The Tales of Genji, which she rereads every year or so. Her family regards these activities with amusement, for she also listens to Willie Nelson and Dierks Bentley. She can be contacted at j-parks@sbcglobal.net.