International Wee Lamb Rescue

In a manner of speaking, we had been in the company of ghosts all day, and were still looking for more.

The rain was falling soft and steady on the green hills of Ireland’s County Meath as we strode up the steep ridged slopes of earth known as the Hill of Tara.  After first touring the 12^th century Malahide Castle near Dublin, and then the 5,000 year old Neolithic stone passage tomb known as Newgrange earlier in the day, we were closing out our day’s ramblings steeped in the mythology of ancient Ireland and the Seat of Kings.

I was traveling with my son, Robert, and my daughter-in-law, Hannah, and we had the entire “heritage site” to ourselves now that visiting hours were long over.  The only exception was a flock of sheep that now inhabited the site where kingship rituals had been performed thousands of years earlier.  The Stone of Destiny stood atop one of the two sets of concentric circles that formed the site, and nearby, entirely wreathed by fencing and with a tarp over the entrance, stood a small Neolithic tomb known as the Mound of the Hostages.  The lush, emerald countryside fell away from the hills in all directions, and we breathed in the damp air, conjuring earlier times in our imaginations.  The only sound was the occasional bleating of the sheep, and the smoosh-ing sounds our feet made in the soft, lumpy grass.

Our curiosity finally sated and our clothes quite wet from the rain, we slowly started to make our way back across the fields to where we had parked the car. As we walked by the Mound of the Hostages, we noticed a small lamb, pure white from tip to tail, stranded inside the fence around the mound. His mother hovered nearby, clearly distressed, and both lamb and ewe kept the whole baa baa sheep conversation going. The entire mound was encircled by a high metal fence, and the opening was locked. On the far side of the mound, the bottom of the fence cleared the grass with a few gaps large enough for the lamb to have wriggled inside. However, both “lambkin” and his mother were on the other side of the enclosure.

A couple approached from the far side of the mound, clearly tourists as ourselves. The man was tall, and wore a classic Irish “driving hat.” His female companion was shorter, and carried an umbrella. The pair examined the fence, and the man finally found a spot to pull the fence apart and enter the enclosure. He clearly had his mind set on capturing the lamb and reuniting him with his mother. The lamb, of course, knew nothing of those benign intentions, and scampered away like he had springs for hooves. 

I called to Robert, and suggested that he get in there as well to help. Nice idea…but the lamb was still too quick.  Finally Hannah got in there as well, and with the three of them working in concert, the tall man in the driving hat finally grabbed the lamb from behind and quickly hustled him through the gap in the fence as his companion held it open.

Lamb and ewe fled the scene together, and with a few words of congratulations, we all scattered as well. Judging by our accents, the man in the cap sounded Polish, his lady-friend sounded English, and of course, we were “the Americans.” Really, of the thousands of tourists who must tread across the Hill of Tara, how many can say that they were part of a rescue operation that involved a Pole, a Brit, and three Yanks rescuing an Irish sheep?

The rescue adventure behind us, we turned back toward the car, and pondered on the pressing need of two of us to use a “ladies room” before we set out to drive another couple of hours in the rain back to Galway. We walked past the site’s visitor center—once a charming little church devoted to St. Patrick—but the center was long locked up.  Farther down the hill stood a gift shop/tea room that looked like it was deserted as well. A strand of lights strung from the eaves of the tea room beckoned like the lights of Brigadoon, though, and Hannah and I decided to check the place out anyway. As we approached the tea room, we could see that it was entirely dark.  Slightly daunted…but still somewhat desperate…we walked on a little further. Lo and behold, there were doors to the facilities for ladies and gents! But…they were locked.   With dispirited shrugs, we pressed on to the main door of the shop, from which a little light shone. It STILL looked deserted, but when Hannah pushed on the door, it opened!

Glory Halleluiah! We stepped inside the little gift shop, and a young man finally stepped out from behind the scenes. We sketched out our basic needs, which included a fancy coffee for me.  He explained that we’d have to get our drinks “takeaway,” since there would be no room to seat us.  Could he throw some whipped cream on top of my “mocha” coffee?  Of course, he said.  Could he make a hot chocolate, Hannah asked hopefully.  “Only with marshmallows,” he replied with a smile. Ah, bliss!

We paid for our drinks, and finally left the shop just as the private wedding party that was the cause of the restaurant being open at this hour began to arrive.  Settled back into the car, we turned our attention to the task of finding our way back to Galway, as the lights on the restaurant receded in the rear view mirror.

All in all, it had been an extraordinary day. A medieval castle, prehistoric tombs, a wee lamb rescue, a fortuitous pit stop entirely off its regular schedule, and the most delicious fancy coffee that I had in Ireland. As I drove through the rain and night fell upon us, I couldn’t stop thinking of magic, and ghosts, and luck, and Brigadoon…

"Wilde" Irish!

In Galway, Ireland, summoning international literary relations across time and across borders! Between Oscar Wilde (Irish writer and author of "The Picture of Dorian Grey" and "The Importance of Being Earnest") and Eduard Vilde (Estonian writer and diplomat). The original of the sculpture resides in Tartu, Estonia, outside the "Wilde Irish Pub" there.

The Last Emperors

I would be lying to myself if I didn’t admit to approaching my last official, scheduled tour of my solo Italian vacation with ambivalence and even trepidation.  After returning from Pompeii, Sorrento, and the Blue Grotto of Capri, a three-hour tour of the Vatican loomed on the horizon like a plume of black smoke from Vesuvius' crater.

A little background music. I was born Catholic, and raised Catholic, married Catholic in a Gothic cathedral with soaring arches and achingly beautiful stained glass windows, and had my children baptized in the Catholic faith. But… over the years I have also turned into what is politely referred to as a “lapsed” Catholic.

I suppose that part of my disaffection stems from developing an independence of spirit as I grew up. Part, no doubt, came from looking at an all-male, ostensibly celibate church hierarchy pronouncing much about families and reproduction, and thinking, “really?” Part came from just wondering in my heart of hearts where all religions came from, and suspecting that most if not all the creation myths stemmed from groups of men sitting around campfires under starlit skies and trying to put an understandable face on the mysterious universe, while the womenfolk were back in the cave tending the children and stirring the mastodon stew.

But if I had to carbon date the first crack in the belief system of my ancestors, it came when I was only fifteen, and standing inside the Vatican. At the time, I was a product of a Catholic grade school and a Catholic all-girls high school, familiar with obedience, duty, morality, and myriad plaid school uniforms. My godmother, a high-school history teacher, had footed the bill for me to go on a summer study trip to Europe with a group of girls from my high school (Immaculata in Chicago) and two nuns as chaperones and teachers.

At some point in the Italian leg of the trip, we ended up at the Vatican. And as I stood there in St. Peter’s Basilica, I remember looking around at the incredible art and opulence, the sculptures and the gilt and the polished marble, and wondered “if Jesus Christ was standing here next to me, what on earth would be say when he saw this?”  I didn’t think it would be “good job, guys!”

I went back to Chicago and kept dutifully following the rules set by church and family, but that small seed of disaffection stayed and grew quietly. Years later, when an exhibit of Vatican treasures went on display at museums around the world, my godmother and I went to see them in Milwaukee. And again, I felt that familiar disconnect between churchly admonitions to be meek and obedient, unquestioning and good, and the lavishness and opulent excess that characterized the vestments and chalices and various totems of the papacy.  As we left the exhibit, there a guest book for visitors to sign and leave a short impression of the works of art. Amidst the “gorgeous” and “magnificent” and “inspiring” comments, I left one more surly and sardonic: “sell half and feed the hungry.” I then quickly stepped away from the book, looking over my shoulder, imagining an Opus Dei assassin straight from the novel “The DaVinci Code” to be lurking there to quash my rebellion.

Fast forward to my Italian vacation and my final guided tour. Sitting in the lobby of the Hotel Diana at six in the morning, waiting to be picked up for the tour, I promised myself that if my sense of moral outrage over came my thirst for staring at great art, I would detach myself from the group and exit stage left, taking the Metro to Nero’s Golden Palace or the Baths of Diocletian and indulging in some more delicious gelato along the way. The irony didn’t escape me that while I might be steadfastly non-religious on a daily basis, I can still recite the Rosary to get to sleep…and fervently repeat the prayers from my childhood in times of deep fear and crisis.

Jenna and Matt—a young married couple from Vancouver on their honeymoon—shared the lobby with me, and we struck up a conversation as we traveled. The Vatican Museum was the first leg of the tour. Our tour guide was a lively woman who came up to perhaps my shoulder. Despite the fact that she occasionally held a yellow umbrella above her head so that we could locate her in a crowd, the crowds were dense and she often vanished from sight. With no other familiar faces in our group, the young Canadians and I served as each other’s lifelines as various guided tours spilled across each other like cross-currents, and exquisite sculptures held a siren’s lure for the unwary laggard.

Despite my earlier misgivings, I could have spent a month in the Vatican Museum, a week gazing and drooling in the antique sculpture gallery alone. The gallery stretched as far as the eye could see, rows upon rows of Roman and Greek busts and statues. I had not realized before this how Roman statuary focused on the individual rather than the ideal. Despite the cold marble, the carved faces were unique and full of personality. This man looked like he had a sense of humor! This woman looked exactly like Agnes Moorehead’s disapproving grandmother in “Bewitched.” I was captivated. I was mesmerized. I felt a touching, human connection that spanned millennia. I was also nagged by the question of what early Christians would think of a modern Church that acquired and preserved so many artifacts of the Empire that had persecuted and martyred them.  Hmmm…. That thought stayed with me.

The Canadians and I tag-teamed throughout the rest of the morning, waving to each other over the heads of the teeming throngs in the map gallery, and the tapestry gallery, the Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter’s Basilica. And once again, in St. Peter’s Basilica, I was struck by the magnificence and radiance of the devotional art…and the lavishness of the adornment. 

And this time I wondered, if a first-century Christian martyr had been standing beside me, taking it all in, would he think “Ha. And I let my family get eaten by lions for this?”

By the time the tour guide pointed out a long, marble staircase at the Vatican made with wide, shallow steps for the Pope to ride his horse upon, I thought about the ancient Roman artifacts of an earlier empire that surrounded us and underlay the modern, and suspected that in the centuries after the fall of Rome and the ensuing Dark Ages, a new, powerful empire in its own right had simply and naturally emerged to replace the old.

The mixed wonders of the Vatican tour finally behind us, I took Jenna and Matt (about as old as my youngest kids!) under my wing and offered to show them how to return to the hotel via the Metro. We stopped for gelato on the way, of course, at the same shop I had visited on my first day in Italy and discovered that heavenly rum-infused chocolate tartufo.

We retired to a bench on a busy square while we ate, grateful for a chance to get off our feet and watching traffic and pigeons and pedestrians vie for space and safety as the traffic patterns changed with the lights. Then, after negotiating our way to the proper Metro stop for the hotel, I gave them a quick tutorial on how to reach the Coliseum from there as well. It felt so good to do a little of “the mom stuff” again!

We parted company, and I returned to the Hotel Diana to regroup and change into a different pair of shoes. Then I was off again, determined to see as much of ancient Rome as I could in the remaining afternoon. By the time I had walked the outskirts of Nero’s Golden Palace (closed for restoration), and toured the basilica next door to the Baths of Diocletian and St. Maria Maggiore’s cathedral, I was toast. I gravitated back to the rooftop garden at the hotel. A waiter passed by. Would I care for a drink? Why the hell not.

I packed, slept, and awoke before dawn. I returned to the rooftop garden once more before checking out, enjoying a cup of hot chocolate in splendid solitude.

In the early light, I saw Rome in all its modern sprawl and splendor…and magnificent remnants of its ancient splendor as well. I can’t wait to come back to explore it again.

28 Hours in D.C.

What a trip! I think this was the tightest turnaround I’ve ever had for a visit to Washington D.C.  And I swear, I was feeling so stressed the day before I left that if I’d managed to buy “trip insurance” when I booked my flights, I might have just canceled.

But I hadn’t, so I didn’t, and there I was, aloft on Tuesday morning. And it was absolutely glorious!

What officially drew me there this time was the opportunity to watch an oral argument at the United States Supreme Court. The case on the docket was Missouri vs. McNeely, and it centered on the question of whether police should have to get a warrant before forcing a blood draw for evidence in a drunk driving case.  A little more than eight years earlier, I’d argued exactly the same issue before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and the Wisconsin court ruled that the fact that alcohol is constantly disappearing from the driver’s bloodstream during the investigation and arrest creates an exception to the general requirement for a warrant. The Missouri Supreme Court reached the exact opposite conclusion last year, and so SCOTUS took up the case to finally settle the issue for the entire country. I was just there to claim a front seat at the table of history while the pivotal arguments were going on. When else would I ever have anything like a reason to show up in that courtroom?

(Okay here I will confess that I actually had been inside the courtroom itself once before, but not for actual court. My dearly departed godmother had taken me along several years ago as her traveling companion to watch a historical case reenactment presided over by her conservative jurist hero, Antonin Scalia. I don't remember what case was argued, but there were drinks and hors d'ouevres afterward, and I got photos of both my aunt and myself with Justice Scalia. Hers turned out to be the worst picture she'd ever taken. Mine, with me all dolled up in a lace blouse and blue-rimmed glasses on the other hand, was charming, and made it look like I was on a blind date with Danny DeVito.)

 

But the fun, and the prep, all started two days before, when I got home from work and finally got down to packing. This will sound incredibly politically incorrect…but really, when it comes to packing for a trip, men have it so much easier. Flat shoes, shaving kit, a change of clothes. Into my little carry-on bag for a single overnight stay, on the other hand, went…a pair of spike heels, a little black dress and a blazer to wear to court; another knit dress, a long sweater and a pair of high-heeled boots to wear to dinner with my college roommate who works in D.C.; jewelry; makeup; hairspray and Static Guard; curling iron; cashmere cardigan for under the blazer in case the weather was colder than the sixty degree forecast; a long raincoat; and three books for reading on the plane.

After checking the D.C. weather report, I nervously threw caution to the wind and left the calf-length down coat, mukluk boots and winter gloves behind. This was no small point. Just before Christmas, a blizzard had left me without power at my house for forty hours, and dumped fifteen inches of snow in the front yard.

 

I needn’t have worried. The plane touched down at one in the afternoon, and the sun was shining. There was not a snowflake in sight.

After following my friend Kathy’s excellent directions for the Washington Metro and emerging from the subway only a block and a half from my hotel, I was awestruck to notice purple pansies in profusion lining the sidewalk as I walked by. I snapped pictures like the tourist that I was. Then, as I turned the corner, I saw that the pansies were part of the luscious landscaping at my new digs for the night, the St. Regis Hotel. I silently gave heartfelt thanks to the folks at Expedia.com and their “book your flight + hotel and save!” feature. 

 

Given that one of the last motel rooms I stayed in was at a Red Roof Inn my son Michael and I found in the dead of night in rural Pennsylvania during our road trip to Philadelphia a few months earlier (and truly a great value for the money!), the qualities of “posh” and “sumptuous” in this absolutely gorgeous hotel only two blocks from the White House were total balm to my senses.

Once I was settled in, I still had hours to go before meeting Kathy for dinner, so I scored a map of D.C. from the front desk and went out for a walk.

 

The area around the White House was alive with the construction of temporary bleachers and structural accommodations for the upcoming inauguration. I spied a young man taking a picture of the White House with his phone and offered my usual friendly swap—I’ll get a photo of you with your camera if you’ll do the same for me! His accent placed him somewhere from Down Under—Australia or New Zealand I guessed though I didn’t ask—and a few minutes later we both walked away with photographic proof that each of us had actually been in Washington.

 

I meandered farther toward the Washington Monument, but finally ran out of steam before I got there and just sat on the base of the First Division Monument for a little while, soaking in the warm sunshine and reveling in the fact that while the trees were leafless, the grass was still mostly green and it felt like late spring to me, not the dead of winter I’d left behind. And I snapped a photo for two young men admiring the monument commemorating those who died while serving in the First Infantry Division of the U.S. Army.

I stopped at the Renwick Gallery on the way back, and took in a current exhibition of crafts by young artists, as well as the portrait gallery on the upper floor. As I finally walked back to the hotel, I couldn’t help but notice that the sidewalks in these corridors of power seemed overwhelmingly occupied by guys in dark suits and well-tailored overcoats, striding purposefully toward…what, I had no idea. Whatever their agendas, they seemed to involve a lot of texting. Texting while walking, texting while waiting for the light to change at street corners, texting while riding subway escalators.

 

Kathy and I finally met for dinner at a contemporary Italian restaurant near the hotel, Siroc.  I had misjudged the side of the broad boulevard that it was on, and had to cut across a swath of park to get there. As I passed by a man sleeping, and—by all evidence—apparently living temporarily on a park bench, I got a crash reminder in just how far the drastic divide between the fortunate and unfortunate can be in this world, and how starkly the two worlds can exist just a few feet apart from each other in a town like this. I wondered whether that thought occurred to many of those guys in the pin-striped suits that I’d seen earlier, covering the pavement with such ambition and animation. Maybe they just didn’t walk through that park all that often.

Over delectable dinners, Kathy and I caught up on about four years of life and family and work, and then it was finally time for me to call it a night. It was going to be a long and thrilling day ahead! The next morning I was up long before the sun was even a low gleam on the horizon.  Breakfast was a chunk of cold salmon and caramelized onions left over from dinner the night before, in between showering and packing. After checking out and parking my suitcase at the hotel, I cabbed it over to the Supreme Court building an hour before it opened to the public. I wasn’t taking any chances at not getting in!

 

 

Because of another case a few years ago in which I’d filed a “petition for certiorari” with the high court, I was actually a member of the Supreme Court Bar and had learned in planning the trip that I was entitled to special seating in the “bar member section.” Exactly what that entailed, I had no idea, but when I got there I found I was just the second person in the “bar members” line and so getting in would be no problem. I spent the next hour chatting with a couple of defense lawyers who were also connected somehow with the case I was there to watch. Then, after our identities were at last confirmed against the roster of bar members, we were escorted first to a coat check and locker room, and then to the courtroom itself. All cell phones, cameras, coats and assorted bags had to be left behind.

Oh, what I would have given to be able to have a camera in my hand for a few minutes!  We were seated nearly an hour before court started, and as the stately and beautiful room started to fill with spectators and participants and staff and security guards, the energy and anxiety were palpable. There were lawyers, old and young, who were going to be formally admitted to the Supreme Court Bar before the cases were called, and their proud sponsors who would each personally ask the court to do so.  The participants in the morning’s cases readied themselves at their seats at the front of the courtroom, doing last-minute cramming as if for law school exams. There was glad-handing, and introductions, and jostling around, and wishes of “good luck” from various quarters. And then, finally, some of the individual justices’ clerks emerged from behind the tall scarlet drapes with coffee cups to be placed at the bench, and then all the justices emerged to take their seats. New bar members were sworn in, and then what is literally the Super Bowl of law in the U.S. began.

As the arguments started…and even before…I realized that I literally had ended up with the best seat in the house!! Somehow, fortune had smiled on me and I was seated in the front row of the bar member section, at the very edge of the center aisle, directly facing Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice John Roberts. Going back to the Super Bowl analogy, a seat like that would be on the fifty yard line, just behind the coach and players. Wow. And as a few of my girlfriends from law school had predicted, and being that close to the action, I nearly had to sit on my hands to keep from raising one and offering, “Yes, I know the answer to that question!”

It will be months before a decision is reached in the case, changing the way one half or the other of the country processes drunk driving arrests. After the hour of argument in the McNeely case was finished, there was a mass exodus from the room as the players and spectators for the second case of the morning filed in. I managed to get a photo on the steps of the courthouse with the Missouri prosecutor who had convinced the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the issue, and then took inventory of the rest of the day.

 

 

My plane would lift off at five in the afternoon, but I still had enough time to walk over to the U.S. Capitol building across the street and take a guided tour. And as I was checking my rain coat, an exceedingly friendly and generous Capitol guide even volunteered to get me a pass to see the chambers of the House of Representatives. (There were no representatives there that day, but it was easy, sitting high above in the visitor’s gallery, to look down at the floor and imagine 435 adults behaving like five-year-olds in a large sandbox. Sigh…)

 

 

 

Finally, it was time to find another Metro station and take the subway back to the hotel to claim my suitcase and swap my courtroom duds for traveling clothes. Yet another subway ride later and I was back at the airport, going through my fourth metal detector of the day. And just twenty-eight hours after I had landed in Washington, I was up in the air again, chasing the setting sun into a landscape still covered with a blanket of white.

First December Snow

    

The Next Big Thing Blog Hop

I first heard about “The Next Big Thing Blog Hop” on a Facebook post from the Florida Writers Association page, when a young writer I’d recently met, Bitten Twice, asked if anyone was interested in participating. I hadn’t heard of it before, but it sounded like fun! Basically, it amounts to an Independent Authors game of tag, where authors who have recently published books or have “works in progress” answer questions about their projects and then link back to other authors who are talking about THEIR latest projects.

One author posts a blog, linking back to the writer who first extended the invitation, and then asks five other authors to participate, who each link their blog posts to the person who invited THEM to play. It reminds me a bit of the “chain letters” we used to get as kids. Back when mail actually came in envelopes and was written on paper…

At any rate, I’d like to thank fellow author Bitten Twice for “tagging” me to participate and have this much fun.  You can click on these links to find Bitten Twice’s blog, website, and books.

In this particular “hop” my fellow authors and I, each in our respective blogs, have answered 10 questions where you get to learn about our current “works in progress.”  We hope you’ll enjoy the romp!  Please feel free to leave a comment and share your thoughts.

HERE ARE THE QUESTIONS

1: What is the working title of your book?

The working title in my head is “Quantum of Evidence.”  I think of it as that tipping point, that “eureka moment,” when the jumble of information that seems disconnected and random finally sparks and flares into that moment of truth that you can't deny.  

2.  Where did the idea come  from for the book?

It first started bobbing to the surface when I went to a writers’ retreat held at The Clearing on Lake Michigan in Wisconsin’s Door County.  I took a few steps out of my usual routine as a prosecutor and a mother to be surrounded by nature’s splendor and fresh air and sunshine for an entire week. And then I realized I had some dynamite elements for a suspense novel involving a prosecutor and mother who didn’t know that her stepson would have a dangerous link to a murder.

3.  What genre does your book fall under?

This would definitely come under the heading of “suspense fiction.”

4.  Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Well, for this particular book I’d pick the actress Stana Katic from the TV series Castle for the lead character, and Josh Lucas  as her detective/love interest.  Stana brings a brilliant competency to her detective role in the TV series, as well as an emotional distance that sometimes breaks, and that’s the complexity that I’m looking for here.

BUT speaking of movies…every once in a while I send out a wish list to the Fates, and hope that someone will pick up my first non-fiction book, Running with Stilettos, fictionalize it and turn it into a movie.  I would just love to see Patricia Arquette play a younger, better looking version of me.  And for the even younger boyfriend with the Harley and the black leather pants? Well, either Hugh Jackman or Aaron Eckhart would be perfect!  Aaron did an absolutely splendid job as the pony-tailed biker/friend in the movie  Erin Brockovich.

5.  What is the one-sentence synopsis for your book? 

After a runaway teenager is found buried in a shallow grave, prosecutor, single mom and former juvenile delinquent Maggie Delahunt discovers a link to her troubled stepson and the dangerous lengths that reinvention will take us.

6.  Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I’m pretty sure I’m going to self-publish this one too. I have no patience for the length of time it takes for words to make it into print through traditional publishing channels. Had I waited for a traditional publisher to agree to pick up my first three books, Running with Stilettos, Heck on Heels, or Fabulous in Flats, I’d be short more than a dozen writing awards and an incredible amount of fun by now!

7.  How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I’m embarrassed to admit that I started this book about six years ago…and then wrote the other three books instead.  When asked why, I usually just explain that “life got in the way.”  A lot of things were going on in my life for a few years that interfered with keeping a complicated train of thought going. So I’ve got my shoulder to the wheel again, and hope to have this book finished by the end of April, 2013.

8.  What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I’m going to be so bold as to draw a tiny comparison to author William Kent Krueger’s first Cork O’Connor book, Iron Lake. Not because I plan to have my characters running around in the north woods and Indian reservations of Minnesota, but because his main character is so layered, and flawed, and still good to the core despite massive past mistakes.

9.  Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Well, I love suspense fiction. A story has to have a puzzle to solve, and a villain to discover, in order to keep my interest to the final page. So it was a foregone conclusion that I would want to write a book like that. Further, though, I wanted to create a character with the complexities and nuance and contradictions that define us in real life.

10.  What else about your book might pique your readers’ interest?

It was Leo Tolstoy who wrote that “happy families are all alike,” and everybody knows that unhappy families can be mined for an endless supply of screwed-up character development. Maggie, on the other hand, had that “happy family” thing going for her until her parents were killed by a drunk driver when she was thirteen.  I wanted to explore how somebody who got thrown off the rails like that with no warning would deal with it and reinvent herself, and how it would affect her choices and relationships.  As an adult, she’s obviously got a few parts missing on the “human connection” scale. On the other hand, she’s got a steel-trap mind, and a simmering impatience for incompetence and unfinished business.

St. Simons Island

The shore always exerts a primordial, visceral pull on me, and during my recent trip to St. Simons Island, Georgia, it was hard to tear myself away from the water's edge. The ocean felt like bathwater around my ankles, and every wave marks a clean slate and a fresh beginning...