Head on Backwards, Chest Full of Sand
Teetering on the edge of womanhood, clinging to the first love of her life, 17 year-old Livvy is torn between suppressing herself or claiming her identity and independence.
When Livvy, lovesick and artistic, spends the summer with the aunt she adores, she crosses paths with a cast of memorable characters in the coastal community of Margaree, Cape Breton Island.
While Livvy’s cousins torment her, house renovations disturb her, an annoying young islander tries to befriend and teach Livvy to disco dance, Livvy prepares for the much anticipated arrival of her boyfriend, Kane.
This deep dive into the dire and agonizing crannies of a love-obsessed young woman establishes Head on Backwards, Chest Full of Sand as a memorable coming of age story.
For fans of The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing, Lives of Girls and Women, and The Bell Jar, Head on Backwards, Chest Full of Sand immerses the reader in the world of a troubled young woman coming slowly to terms with love, life, and all its messy relationships.
She didn’t expect to miss them…
…but with a cat the kids left behind as her only companion, a divorced woman is blindsided and overwhelmed by empty nest syndrome.
That is why escaping from her cramped, messy apartment in the city sounds like a welcome change.
But can moving to the family cottage with her middle-aged sisters really be a good idea?
As she battles encroaching woodland creatures and noisy vacationers, her resilience wobbles. Can she grapple with the ghosts of her messed-up past? Will she drown in a sea of old relationships? Can she find tranquility in this season of turbulence?
This fearless portrayal of life beyond the empty nest will make you laugh in recognition. Poignant and mesmerizing prose, for lovers of short fiction for women, An Empty Nest: A Summer of Stories is an ideal read for a summer’s afternoon.
Chatterbox is a collection of one hundred and ten poems, tiny tellings written during a year of marriage disintegration. The poems explore a world of bewildering emotions ranging from sadness and terror to anger and enlightenment. The reader enters a world conjured from fairytales and dolls, the Garden of Eden, and the Wizard of Oz; the pages abound with moths and mice, dogs and horses, roosters and crows, oranges and apples, the moon and the sun.
A creative force, exploding after decades of silence, inspires the Chatterbox poems. The poet struggles to attend to a Muse that wakes her each morning, urging her to capture a spirit igniting inside her. The poet observes her own life as it falls apart and fragments then miraculously turns her outward toward others.
Whose heart hasn’t cracked and broken open? Do any of us withstand the pain and transcend to the other side? Can we leave betrayal and abandonment behind without bitterness and resentment? Can we move on and find our true soaring spirits? Chatterbox answers these questions with a resounding, yes!
Fred Sadler has just died of old age. It’s 1986, seventy years after he marched off to WWI, and the ghost of Fred Sadler hovers near the ceiling of the nursing home. To Fred’s dismay, the arrangement of his funeral falls to his prudish sister-in-law, Viola. As she dominates the remembrance of Fred, he agonizes over his inability to set the record straight.
Was old Uncle Fred really suffering from shell shock? Why was he locked up most of his life in the Whitby Hospital for the Insane? Could his family not have done more for him?
Fred’s memories of his life as a child, his family’s hotel, the War, and the mental hospital, clash with Viola’s version of events as the family gathers on a rainy October night to pay their respects.
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photo by Tony Hicks
Sandy Day is a Canadian writer. . . read more
