Publisher: Winedale Publishing

Pages: 216

Pub Date: March 1st, 2021

Categories: Short Stories / Literary Fiction

 

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Author Babette Fraser Hale discusses landscapes.

 

I’ve been told that the landscape is a character in my stories. Certainly, the way each character responds to the landscape tells us something important about the person and their point of view.

Marta, in Motes, notices mainly the thorny, pain-inducing plants as she walks.

In Cicadas, Lily senses threat within the odd noontime silence along a country road.

The stunned countryside in Drouth can’t be separated from the apprehension Ro feels about Cam’s mental state.

The flow of the creek where Hattie fishes, in Fireflies, makes her “go all satiny” inside, giving her rare respite from a harsh life.

Eric’s flirtation with danger in Silences becomes far more real than the perils he imagines on a moonlit night in the woods.

And so on.

What occupies the hidden recesses of our minds influences what we see, in terms of landscape, and what we perceive about people, ourselves and others.

In A WALL OF BRIGHT DEAD FEATHERS, we observe the characters in each of the twelve stories as they react to their place, its land and people, across seasons.

I have lived in the area I’m writing about off and on for thirty years, watching the changes—and no doubt making some, mostly unintentional.

I’ve watched the effects of drouth and flood, the death of trees, the planting of other trees, the erasure of houses and the construction of other houses. Barns are moved into town where they become shops. A small high quality antique show years ago morphs into three weeks of antiques and “junque” along a ten mile stretch of roadway.

The characters in my stories who effect these changes and are changed by them bring this world to life. It is not an exact depiction by any means. It’s the place I live in and love, seen “slant”—through the eyes of invented people. The gift of fiction.

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