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Only 1 Day Until The 2019 Winter #SpringfieldOHBookFair
Chat with local authors and pick up an autographed book for yourself or your special someone.
Saturday, February 9, 2019
Friday, February 8, 2019
COMING SOON TO ALL ONLINE BOOKSELLERS
Was it chance or destiny’s hand behind a man and a woman’s curious
encounter at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas? The cards fold, their hearts open,
and a match strikes, flames that sizzle their hearts and souls. Can they have
the moon and the stars, too? Or is she too dangerous? Is he? Can their love
withstand betrayal?! Can it endure murder?! Amid the seductions of Las Vegas, Nevada and an idyllic coffee plantation on Hawai’i’s Big Island, a sextet of opposites converge within a shared fate: a glamorous movie-star courting distractions from her troubled past; her shell-shocked bodyguards clutching handholds out of their hardscrabble lives; a dropout Hawaiian nuclear physicist gambling his way back home; a Navajo rancher seeking cleansing for harming “Mother Earth;” and from its lofty perch, the Hawaiian’s guardian spirit conjured as his pet raven, conducting this symphony of soul odysseys.
Columbus, Ohio,
USA, and multi-award-winning author, Linda Lee Greene has authored and published four books. All of
them are available worldwide in eBook and soft cover at online booksellers. Her
latest novel, CRADLE OF THE SERPENT (goo.gl/i3UkAV) was designated as a finalist in the 2018 American
Fiction Awards Competition. It was also awarded a 5 Star Review by Readers’
Favorites. In addition, she was the winner of the 2018 Peter Hills Memorial Writing
Competition. Scheduled for release in early 2019 is her novel, A CHANCE AT THE
MOON. It will be available in soft cover and eBook on all online booksellers. An extensive exhibition of Greene’s artwork can be viewed
at www.gallery-llgreene.com.
Sunday, February 3, 2019
ON THE STREET WHERE I LIVED©
ON THE STREET
WHERE I LIVED©
By Linda Lee
Greene, February 3, 2019
On
West Second Avenue between Oregon and Perry Streets in Columbus, Ohio where I
lived as a kid, many of its people were still connected closely to their
immigrant roots. They wore their forebears like an extra coat of skin. It was
undeniable in their eyes, their hair, their body movements, and in their language.
While the broken English of their first-generation immigrant ancestors had been
replaced with second- and third-generation, Americanized English, still there
remained a not-quite-faded-away influence of their old country’s native tongue,
especially in their usage of colloquialisms and idioms characteristic of their
foreign origins.
“Mama
Mia,” sailed almost hourly through the open summer windows from the house on
the corner of the alley across the way from us. Like ours, it was a tall,
white, multi-storied, frame house, but unlike ours, it was bursting at the
seams with three generations of beautiful olive-skinned and brunette persons of
Italian lineage. Immediately following his high school graduation, the oldest
male-child of the family disappeared one day into a Catholic seminary to study
for the priesthood. My naïve Protestant eyes watched agog from my bedroom
window that overlooked the roof of our front porch when on some weekends he was
home to visit in his crisp, black clerical-garb and newly-acquired bent-headed
air.
“Jesus,
Mary, and Joseph!” was more commonly heard on the nimble lips of our Irish
neighbors. In them I saw fragments of my mother and much of her kin: red hair,
pale skin, rugged individualism. Not only did our Italian and our Irish friends
share the same religion, but they also increased the city’s population year
upon year upon year. Rather than outdoor chairs and tables like those on our
front porch, theirs overflowed with baby carriages and strollers that bloomed seasonally
like flowers in a perennial garden. Saint Francis of Assisi Catholic Church, a
comfortable walk from us, was their anchor to our neighborhood. Its religious services
still draw worshippers to it from both near and far. Those people with their strong
sense of family and connection to their church left a profound mark on me, one
that shapes me to this day.
An
enormous brick monstrosity on the corner of my street one block west of us housed
a beer bottling operation and was a mooring of the German people among us, those
historical brewers of beer who in large part had created Columbus. We were
reminded of just how oppressive living in the air-space of a brewery can be as
minute-by-minute it spewed its noxious fumes into the atmosphere. The sound I
most identify with my German friends-of-old is the “Oom pah pah,” of their folk
music that pumped aggressively through the airwaves of our neighborhood. When I
hear that sound now, I want to jump to my feet and dance, as I did back then on
the sidewalks fronting their houses.
Across
the back alley from us lived a family in which the mother and father were deaf
and therefore unable to speak, while all of their many children had perfect
hearing and speech. That phenomenon of biology fascinated me, and bewildered me
at the same time. I just couldn’t reconcile in my mind how offspring could
emerge so unlike their parents. While their life was underpinned by silence in
many ways, they were a joyous and yes, a chatty group, their quick fingers
flicking noisily in the parent’s mysterious sign language.
On
the street where I lived, mystery abounded in the diversity of its people.
There was always some intrigue to unravel, a weird and wonderful culture to
experience, a fascinating tradition to appreciate, and never was there
discrimination of any kind among us. We were just people living among people,
and it was a good thing!
Columbus, Oho,
USA, and multi-award-winning author, Linda Lee Greene has authored and published four books. All of
them are available worldwide in eBook and soft cover at online booksellers. Her
latest novel, CRADLE OF THE SERPENT (goo.gl/i3UkAV) was designated as a finalist in the 2018 American
Fiction Awards Competition. It was also awarded a 5 Star Review by Readers’
Favorites. In addition, she was the winner of the 2018 Peter Hills Memorial Writing
Competition. Scheduled for release in early 2019 is her novel, A CHANCE AT THE
MOON. It will be available in soft cover and eBook at Amazon.com. An extensive exhibition of Greene’s artwork can be viewed
at www.gallery-llgreene.com.
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