Bøger af Cynthia Lang

Why leave Manhattan for a town in Maine "where no one goes and nothing ever happens"? Confused, bereft, but following a hunch, Lee Baldwin moves to Limmington Mills to revel in solitude and brood about her missing husband. Life has other plans. While never forgetting about her Charlie, Lee is pulled into the daily dramas of her imaginative, flighty landlady Dolly and Dolly's brother, a taciturn welder at Bath Iron Works. Befriended by Maxine, store proprietor (and de facto town manager), she meets a trio of boys running wild and their mother, who may or may not have heard a saint speak. Most of all, Lee benefits from Hazel's fierce grace, the elderly woman whose grip on life breathes energy into Lee's own. Evoking the lives of northern New Englanders who struggle in the shadow side of prosperity, Preservation explores the isolation-and possibilities-of a time before electronics linked us nonstop through the cloud.

In a voice of stark reality and sincere intrigue, Cynthia Lang builds upon a personal legacy left to her in nine spectacular journeys. A legacy may be handed on as a fortune or formidable debt, baseball cards, antique autos, or vermeil coffee spoons. In her collection of short stories it becomes apparent: a legacy is not always so tangible. "Devoid of weight, of volume, some [legacies] take up no room at all. On a journey, for instance, nothing may change hands but tickets. On the other hand..." Traveling through the lives of intriguing and oftentimes enlightening characters, Lang spins a wonderfully interconnected world for the reader to consider: nine characters, each inheriting a legacy and collectively handing one on to the reader, composed of remnants from past lives, a natural history that has the power to reveal current truths and predict future realities. "Having known what such adversity is, I can appreciate the distress you are in," begins Sarah Carlisle's own legacy, written in the 1800s--what will be yours?

Lee Baldwin moves to Maine to revel in a tide of solitude and brood about her missing husband. Instead she’s pulled into the daily dramas of Dolly, her flighty landlady; Maxine, the small town’s store proprietor; a welder at Bath Iron works; a trio of boys running wild; and their mother, who may or may not have heard a saint speak. Lee feels especially the fierce grace of Hazel, an elderly woman whose grip on life breathes energy into her own. Evoking the lives of northern New Englanders who struggle in the shadow side of prosperity, Preservation explores the isolation—and possibilities—of a time before electronics linked us nonstop through the cloud. Cynthia Lang graduated from Smith College, won a Vogue Prix de Paris, and worked as a staff writer on Glamour. After free-lancing (Parents, Mademoiselle, Vogue Children, New York Times Magazine), she was co-author with Jerome Kagan of Psychology and Education: An Introduction (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), and with Harry Levinson, Executive (Harvard University Press), and Senior Associate at Education Development Center, Inc.  About Sarah Carlisle’s River and Other Stories“With rare perspicacity, Cynthia Lang explores the reality of human relationships and the complexity of circumstance.”  --Rufus Collinson, Poet Laureate, Gloucester, Massachusetts.“It’s the vocal textures: nimble sentences, sometimes buoyant, sometimes poignant, always with the sense that the momentum is the story. Lang writes of aspiration, chagrin, fleeting contentment. These stories open themselves across 200 years, two continents and the Caribbean.”--Virginia Euwer Wolff, winner of the 2001 National Book Award, Young People’s Literature for True Believer (Simon & Schuster/Atheneum)