Description
Book SynopsisMinister, author and activist, Marilyn Sewell, reflects on the everyday, the places we live and work, the thoughts we all have but hardly ever share, though they may carry the most profound of our human concerns. Using a variety of short literary forms - dramatic monologues, vignettes, letters, prose poems, lists, surrealistic tales - Sewell presents quirky, ironic and compassionate slices of life that will bring laughter and at the same time take you deeper into the mysteries of existence. Sewell pushes for the thin, startling light beneath the confusion and chaos of our daily living: a woman worries that her cat loves her partner more than her; a man and a woman talk past each other in a therapy session; a lonely woman is distressed because her plant has stopped blooming. Together these short, compelling readings shine a light on the cultural incongruities and inanities which crowd our existence. We love, we lose, we die and through it all, we ask, "What's it all about?"
Trade Review“Through the spaces between people in these beguiling fictions, love wanders like a ghost, offering whispered hints of solace against a backdrop of isolating divisions. In the spirit of the enigmatic stories of Lydia Davis, Isak Dinesen, Yasunari Kawabata, and other masters of the ironic parable, Sewell offers companionship for readers longing to navigate a world of faltering connections.” —Kim Stafford, Oregon Poet Laureate and author of 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared
“Love is the thread running through the myriad stories Marilyn Sewell offers in this compelling volume—stories teeming with endearingly off-center characters and scenarios that illuminate what it means to live and love in our many varieties of unsettled existence.” —Tom Krattenmaker, author of Confessions of a Secular Jesus Follower
“Wise, humane, and engaging. These stories hold a mirror to our lives.” —Paul Loeb, author of Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in Challenging Times
“Only someone with a ‘servant’s heart,’ a heart devoted to compassionate service, could write these vivid tesserae and then arrange them to create the glowing mosaic we find in Marilyn Sewell’s In Time’s Shadow.” —Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita and author of One Small Sun
“In Time’s Shadow is both a serious and quirky, intimate and universal exploration of what it means to be human in our hurried, conflicted world. Sewell illuminates the daily lives of human beings struggling to come to terms with their bodily and spiritual existences in a culture of ‘the lost.’” —John Sibley Williams, author of As One Fire Consumes Another
“Sparkling with imaginative compassion, these stories become irregular, gem-like beads on a string of very human prayers. In an age when our attention wanders and our patience frays, they bear re-reading until almost recited like a rosary.” —John A. Buehrens, author of Conflagration: How the Transcendentalists Sparked the American Struggle for Racial, Gender, and Social Justice
“In Time’s Shadow shines a light on the nature of impermanence and is a tremendous hope for humanity.” —Yangsi Rinpoche, President and founder of Maitripa College
“Marilyn Sewell’s courage in navigating life, death, and meaning makes it easier for the rest of us to think about what lies before us and how we might want to live in the meantime. A sharp sense of humor and abiding humility run through Sewell’s work and coax her readers to keep turning the page.” —Nancy Haught, author of Sacred Strangers: What the Bible’s Outsiders Can Teach Christians
“Reading Marilyn Sewell’s short fiction is like pulling back the curtain to a hidden room and peering into the private, intimate lives of the characters. In the spirit of Lydia Davis and Franz Kafka, readers are given access to the thoughts and hearts of people who, like us, struggle to make sense of an often confusing and troubling world.” —Jennifer Springsteen, author of Wallace Farm
“In this collection of short tales and poems, grounded in the beauties and fractures of ordinary life, the reader will find a compelling weave of wry humor, sorrow, grief, fear, and joy. Again, and reliably, Marilyn Sewell brings to this new collection both the lyricism of the poet and the wisdom gleaned from her life of service as a parish minister.” —Dianne Stepp, author of Sweet Mercies
“In Time’s Shadow is a most welcome collection of brief, engaging, and meaningful narratives written by a writer who, with wisdom and humor, exposes us to characters who could well be ourselves. These narratives—in the forms of vignettes, fables, letters, and poems—emphasize the uselessness of regret and the importance of love in all its embodiments.” —Andrea Hollander, author of Blue Mistaken for Sky
“Acclaimed minister and author Marilyn Sewell takes us on a journey that weaves together numerous engaging tales of mortality. Her humane musings help us come to terms with the fleeting nature of our existence in a manner that leads us to cherish every moment and relationship ever more deeply.” —Paul Louis Metzger, author of Evangelical Zen: A Christian’s Spiritual Travels with a Buddhist Friend
“Reading Marilyn Sewell’s In Time’s Shadow, I found myself taken by laughter here, by sadness there, and by recognition of the folly and integrity of human life. Suffused with mercy and love, this is a rare book that is both a fun and meaningful read.” —Philip Kenney, author of The Writer’s Crucible: Meditations on Emotion, Being, and Creativity
“Slipping into the pages of In Time’s Shadow is like settling into a seat on a train for a long-anticipated trip to an unknown destination. As the cadence of the storyteller’s voice transports the reader over landscapes both familiar and unexpected, each chapter flashes by, a brief glimpse out the window, a conversation overheard, what happened before and might unfold next left to the imagination, all of us passengers on the ephemeral journey of life.” —Holly Pruett, Founder, Death Talk Project
“Marilyn Sewell’s writing ministers to the human heart that looks for meaning and redemption in our troubled world. And though these brief narratives may stand in the shadow of time and death, they have all the vividness and immediacy of life itself.” —John Brehm, author of Help Is on the Way
Table of ContentsPreface
REACHING OUT FOR LOVE
Mourning Becomes Electra
My Movie
A Shared Silence
The Nature of the Beast
Why I Like Going to the Dentist
Cover Your Heart, Reach Out Again
The Past Is Not Even Past
RESISTANCE TO CHANGE
Becoming Clear
Blooming
Serial Killer
To Be Held, and to Hold
Breaking Up Is Hard to Do
Holding On
Fly Away
DENIAL OF DEATH
Death in Springtime
Letter to Delta Airlines Customer Service
Mammogram
Memorial Fidelity
Dreaming Lola
Right on Time
For Some Time I Thought There Was Time
Not Afraid
LOSS BRINGS ANGER. GRIEF, REGRET
Melissa
The Way of All Flesh
The Fly God
The Day My Books Fell
Urban Lesson
What We Say When There’s Nothing Left to Say
Visit to Father at the State Hospital
THOSE WHO HOLD US, THEN AND NOW
The Doll
Unimportant Things I Remember
How Love Stays
The Nightgown
How I Got Saved
The Wind Under My Wings
The Unguarded Face of Love
DEATH CATCHES UP WITH US
Ways I Don’t Want to Die
The Visitor
A History of Her (Very Short) Sex Life
Not the Kind of Man
Mercy and Truth Have Met Together
THE MEANING OF LIFE
What We Have Left
Things They Will Not Say about Me in My Obituary but I Wish They Would
Love Letters from God
The Exorcist
Eclipse
Why I Don’t Tidy
Poesy
What Is the Question?
How We Remember Them
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
