I’m pleased to announce that my new novel, Only Yesterday, is now available in print at Amazon.

Only Yesterday, published by Adelaide Books, is a novel about passion, remembrance, and acceptance. In the last few days of his life, Pete Cameron (Cam) engages in a final struggle with self-doubt as he deals with memories of his past. The story takes place in the Midwest between 1961 and 2003, moving back and forth in time as Cam looks back on his life, his love for Maggie, and the choices he made.

Both print and ebook editions will be available soon through your local bookstores and at online sites.

Here’s to good health, good spirits, and lots of creative energy after our 16-month (and still counting) pandemic experience.

I am so very pleased to announce that my third novel, A Windless Place, has been published and is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

A Windless Place is about the often difficult transition between childhood and adulthood. Maggie Lowin is just fourteen years old when she meets Gina, her new next-door neighbor. Vividly attractive and wildly unpredictable, Gina seems to embody everything that Maggie most admires and wants to become.

But it’s also a story about disillusionment and loss of faith. During the next two years, Maggie discovers that her new neighbor’s erratic behavior is a threat to Maggie’s values, and to her own family.

Eventually, as happens so often when we face life head-on, Maggie must make some very difficult choices.

“We read to know we’re not alone.”

That’s a line from the movie Shadowlands, based on the life of C. S. Lewis. I think about this line often because one of my goals as a writer is to invite the reader inside the mind and heart of my characters–to create that wonderful feeling of empathy.

It’s empathy that allows you, as a reader, to enter the world of A Windless Place, to recognize that–oh, yes–I’ve felt that way, I’ve done that awkward, stupid, misguided thing. I’ve known that type of person. I’ve been sucked in by that surface layer of charm and personality. I’ve risked losing my own values in order to please that person.

Empathy is what attracts us to one another. It’s what we have in common, what we share. As readers of fiction, we penetrate beneath the surface that most of us present to the world. We are able to see clearly into the souls of people like us–people who make mistakes but usually manage to get back on track–even if it’s another track altogether.

In A Windless Place, I invite you, as a reader, into the mind and heart of Maggie Lowin as she grows up and, as they say, “wises up.” I hope you enjoy Maggie’s journey toward adulthood. I know I enjoyed putting it into words.

I’ve seen it and it does exist—almost. A Windless Place is almost ready to make its publication debut!

I’m proofing the inside pages, and gearing up to launch my third novel. A Windless Place is scheduled to be published by Adelaide Books in August.

It’s exciting to have a book “out there” in the world, and the excitement never dulls.

One Who Loves was my last-to-be-finished and first-to-be-published novel. It’s set in Ann Arbor and follows two young couples as they grapple with the often conflicting pull of love and loyalty, and make their way through the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

The Second Mrs. Price begins in a small midwestern town on a glorious spring day in 1999. It’s about obsession, and the desire to be both securely rooted and absolutely free to follow one’s passions.

A Windless Place is set in the heart of the 1950s. It was a transitional decade during which we laid to rest many of our so-called “traditional” post-World War II values and stepped eagerly into the rock ’n’ roll era that would culminate in the culture-changing 60s.

Maggie Lowin is growing up in this era, ready to leap into adulthood but not sure how to do it within the confines of her conventional family. Along comes Gina, her new next-door neighbor and an electrifying presence in that staid small-town environment.

Only a decade or so older than Maggie’s fourteen years, Gina is everything Maggie would like to be: attractive, confident, lively, outspoken, unconventional.

Gina has a husband who isn’t around much and a three-year-old daughter, Ellie, but she has maintained her independent spirit. Maggie is enthralled. She becomes Ellie’s babysitter and Gina’s confidante, while Gina guides her through the perils and pitfalls of high school. All goes well until . . . .

Well, I hope you’ll get yourself a copy and follow Maggie’s journey as she encounters both disillusionment and tragedy. It’s all in A Windless Place—coming soon to an online or independent bookstore near you!

My recent post, “Why novelists should read (and write) poetry,” has been published as a guest blog on the official Dylan Thomas website, hosted by Hannah Ellis, granddaughter of Dylan Thomas and Creative Director of the Dylan Thomas Literary Estate. The post explores the poem, “Fern Hill,” and its relevance to a key scene in my novel, THE SECOND MRS. PRICE.

For a long period of my adult life, I paid little attention to poetry. Yes, it was a part of my growing up. My father loved to read and recite poetry. Yes, I studied it in college and grad school, as my degrees were in English literature. Yes, I taught English composition; therefore, I read and reflected on poetry during those chapters in my life. Other than those periods, however, poetry remained in the background of my reading and my consciousness for many years.

When I moved to Los Angeles, some years ago, I was accepted into a local writing workshop. The moderator and some of the participants were poets. We met once a week. Every fourth week, we had a poetry hour, during which we read and discussed poems we had chosen from among the world’s poetry, old and new—poems that were as near as my bookshelf, my computer devices, my library and bookstore.

It was while preparing for and participating in the monthly poetry hour, as well as listening to workshop members discuss their own poetry, that I rediscovered poetry.

Inevitably, I gave in to the urge to write a few poems of my own. Most of my attempts were crudely crafted, but I got help and encouragement from the workshop. I was urged to rethink, revise, go farther, go deeper. The outcome I hadn’t foreseen was that, because of my exposure to and attempts at writing poetry, I became a more disciplined, a more thoughtful, a more insightful novelist.

In my novel, The Second Mrs. Price, there is a scene in which the Price family gather together one evening and read aloud, in round-robin style, “Fern Hill” by Dylan Thomas.** The poem itself is a favorite of mine. It is a celebration of youth, and a nod to the inevitability of losing that youth. It is about the timelessness of that brief, often idyllic, season when we were “happy as the grass was green.”

Dylan Thomas has been described as “a modern exponent of the Romantic tradition.” *** In a style reminiscent of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thomas takes daring leaps as he bends and shapes language to fit his vision, his voice, his unique consciousness.

When I linger over the fluid, tantalizing lines in “Fern Hill,” I am beguiled by the potential of language freed from the restraints of formality, convention, grammar, even logic. I ask myself: How many ways can a story be told? How close can I get to my character’s thought processes? How honest can I be, especially in portraying flawed, sometimes unsympathetic, characters? How can I put into words the ephemeral moments that make up our lives?

In The Second Mrs. Price, I attempt to answer those questions and test those boundaries, just as, in “Fern Hill,” Thomas is testing the boundaries of language.

Bernard, the patriarch of the Price family, is in his late 80s. It seems natural and appropriate that “Fern Hill” is one of Bernard’s favorite poems. I see him as the embodiment of time and timelessness, perennial youth and death, as he remembers “the sun that is young once only.”

Even as he approaches the end of his life, Bernard is in love—with youth, with beauty, with nature, with the small comforts of each day, with the memory of his late wife, Anna. Just as Dylan Thomas is aware of the intertwining of life and death in all of creation, Bernard understands that, from his earliest youth, “Time held me green and dying/Though I sang in my chains like the sea.”

Selene, the flawed heroine of The Second Mrs. Price, takes a daring leap into the unknown in her quest for a fulfillment that is, perhaps, beyond her reach. She is attuned to Bernard, but she is living her “green and golden” moment, rather than reflecting back on it. Her obsession for Griff is disturbing but, hopefully, the reader comes to relate to her—to the pulse of her attraction, to the often self-imposed stranglehold of security, to her longing for freedom.

“Poetry,” Dylan Thomas is quoted as saying, “is what in a poem … makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own.” ****

In much the same way, the novel allows us to enter the mind, the consciousness–the very soul–of the characters. The emotional divide that separates us as individuals can be bridged through storytelling and the imaginative use of language.

For more about Dylan Thomas, his life and his work, visit discoverdylanthomas.com, the official website hosted by Hannah Ellis, granddaughter of Dylan Thomas and Creative Director of the Dylan Thomas Literary Estate.

*See my January 27 post, The Novel (Part 1): Inside the mind of “The Second Mrs. Price,” at tonifuhrman.com.

**“Fern Hill” was published in 1945. Born in Swansea, Wales, in 1914, Dylan Thomas died in 1953 while on tour in New York. He was 39 years old.

***https://vinhanley.com/2016/02/23/the-poetry-of-dylan-thomas/

**** https://izquotes.com/author/dylan-thomas/6