Pat Conroy

I rarely buy hardcover fiction. But I couldn’t wait for Pat Conroy’s South of Broad to come out in paperback. When listing favorite books on social network sites, I list his name along with individual titles from other authors. I can't limit my praise of him to one or two books though. Not one of his books has ever disappointed me; from the haunting beauty of The Prince of Tides, through the sorrow filled love of Beach Music, to the rollicking determination of My Losing Season, each is spellbinding, lyrical, and so full of honest emotion you feel all of the sweat, all of the brokenness, all of the beauty . He writes like a fresh young fighter full of testosterone jolted cockiness that is the armor for the fast beating heart that fears failure ~ no holds barred. His way with words makes me ashamed to call myself a writer.

This is on page one of the prologue;

“I carry the delicate porcelain beauty of Charleston like the hinged shell of some soft-tissued mollusk. My soul is peninsula shaped and sun-hardened and river-swollen. The high tides of the city flood my consciousness every day, subject to the whims and harmonies of full moons rising out of the Atlantic. I grow calm when I see the ranks of palmetto trees pulling guard duty on the banks of Colonial Lake or hear the bells of St. Michael’s calling cadence in the cicada-filled trees along Meeting Street…I consider it a high privilege to be a native of one of the loveliest American cities, not a high-kicking, glossy, or lipsticked city, not a city with bells on its fingers or brightly colored toenails, but a ruffled, low-slung city, understated and tolerant of nothing mismade or ostentatious.”

And on page four you are hit with a sucker punch, ripping you from the sweet beauty of the city. It is here we first learn of our characters ~ of a father who "treated the stars as though they were love songs written to him by God", and a mother who "once wrote a citique of Richard Ellman's biography of James Joyce for the New York Review of Books", an older brother who "had a natural way about him that appealed to the higher instincts of adults" and of the main character who "could always feel a flinty, unconquerable spirit staring out of the mangroves and the inpenetrable rain forests inside me, a spirit who waited with a mineral patience for that day I was to claim myself back because of my own fierce need of survival."

I am captivated by page six, and I am reluctant to allow myself to go further today, beyond the prologue, because I don't think I'd have the strength to put the book down before it was finished, and I don't want to lose it so soon. I want to allow myself the luxury of savoring each page, each word.

Because of Pat Controy's words, Charleston is on my radar for this fall. If you have never read his books, you are missing some of America's treasures.

With blessings,

Melinda

Richard Bach, Author/Barnstormer

Nothing by Chance

“If we are alert, with minds and eyes opens, we will see meaning in the commonplace; we will see very real purposes in situations which we might otherwise shrug off and call ‘chance’.” ~ from a lecture by Roland Bach

When I was in high school I discovered the writing of Richard Bach. He took me into a world of wonder in the realm above the earth, where the air was silver, sharp and cold, where the bold left the comfort of their couches and took to the sky, trusting their lives to the double wings and single engine of a biplane. There is a passage in the book, Nothing by Chance, that captivated the essence of my lifelong belief that there is something more beyond the horizon of my life...a passage that brings me a longing sigh today exactly as it did thirty years ago.

“There was a certain wistfulness in the room, as though we had something that these people wanted, that they might have had a distant wish to say good-bye to everything in Palmyra and fly away into the sunset with The Great American Flying Circus...And I thought; if they want to do something like this, why do they wait? Why don’t they just do it, and be happy?”

Last Summer I got a taste of that sharp cold air, I felt the rush of the silver air against my face, my hands, I left behind the comfort of solid ground and my soul was touched by flight. Rising into the air I longed to raise my hands in triumph. We made steep turns, the right wings pointed heavenward, as we circled a corn maze; we dipped low, skimmed the river like a hell-bent mallard; we flew so the wheels breezed inches above corn stalks, the engine roaring, as we sped towards the trees edging the field, pulling up ina steep climb, the nose skyward, before certain doom, my head titled back as I laughed at the sky.

But the biplane ride was more than a dream come true, it was a tangible reminder of Richard Bach's idea that nothing happens by chance. On the second page of the book that gave me that first love of biplanes and the world of barnstorming thirty years ago, is this passage, “Silent and trusting, Stuart Sandy MacPherson, age nineteen, peered over the edge of the cockpit in front of my own, looking down through his amber jumping goggles to the bottom of an ocean of crystal air...once in a while now, looking down through the wind, he smiled to himself, ever so faintly.”

My pilot last Summer? Stuart “Cap’n Mac” MacPherson, who began his flying career over 35 years ago as a pilot/parachute jumper in Richard Bach’s Great American Flying Circus. Coincidence? Something tells me it’s not.

So, if I am to believe that this one event did not happen by chance, then I also have to believe that the other events in my life do not happen by chance. I cannot pick and choose when to trust that God knows what He is doing with my life. And so, when I start to worry over unanswered questions, and doubt that everything has happened, and is happening for a reason, I just need to remember that it took thirty years for a certain 16 year old girl’s dream of the freedom of a biplane flight to come true, and to do as a dear friend recently reminded me and, “Just believe. That’s it.”

With Blessings and Boldness,

Melinda

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Hebrews 11:1

“When you realize how perfect everything is, you will tilt back your head and laugh at the sky."—Attributed to the Buddha