People ask me about my memoir that I hope to publish. Here's something that sounds as if it
might be jacket copy on the back of the book. Just to whet your appetite . . .

The Last Storyteller

The Last Storyteller is a literary memoir of my life in a West Virginia family of working class. I was
an only child and a silent witness in a family of storytellers. They repeated their stories
throughout my life until the words and dialogue became a part of me, learned by heart like the
lines of a play. The universal themes of heritage, culture, and identity play their way out against
the backdrop of the last decades of the twentieth century, a time when the fading echoes of
agrarian life transitioned to life in the postwar industrial boom. We are in transition now. How did
we manage life's trials before? We can search earlier stories, looking for clues and patterns.
  “Night on Cheat Mountain” is a legendary tale of my father and grandfather who cheated death
one night on a cold, dark mountain. “Riding on Comets,” is a story of my father’s alcoholic life, of
missed opportunities and lost potential. In “The Sighs of Heaven,” my mother battles
depression, including electro-shock therapy. She conveys tremendous courage as she
addresses her struggles. “Collateral Damage” presages the Iraqi War issues and the struggles
of ethics, character, and relationships during Viet Nam. My family includes me in the occasional
adventure, such as the story of “Big Earl’s,” when I was five and my grandfather takes me to the
bootlegger's. Two brief chapters, “Shelter” and “Fall,” are prose poems, evocative of time and
place.  It is all here: addiction, loss, the patterns of life choices.
  As the tales unfold, the wonder comes when humor meets sadness or suffering or surprise.
The souls of the tellers are retained in their rhythmic vernacular. For me, the more I listened,
the more their stories became poetry.
  I gather my listeners close, asking them to float on the rhythm of language, to imagine the flash
of color in ordinary lives. I hope they lean in, tightening to the tension as I begin this true story:
“It snowed so deep no car could make it to our home, and I was turning blue, dying . . .” Back