Bloodlines
by
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Cock-A-Doodle-Do
I knew them in
I knew them again in Phoenix where the family, diminished in size from seven to five, lived in several apartments before Ross and Vera finally managed to buy their first and only house on the west side of Arizona which was quite different in the Seventies than now. (Rose, the firstborn, continued to visit on a more-or-less regular schedule after Jana, the second daughter, had relocated to the southwest before parents and the other three siblings followed.)
From childhood through edge-of-city adolescence, I became a full-grown adult home in the desert. I am the window into their lives if not their souls. My eyes have seen joy and sorrow at varied gatherings and myriad holidays over the years.
I try not to pass judgment on what I’ve heard in this large four-bedroom abode, but sometimes I think I’m more human than my inhabitants imagine. Without a doubt, the family has been dysfunctional; but what family isn’t these days or in the past?
Like a fortuneteller I’ve read palms and bloodlines that reveal certain tendencies of varied individuals as well as the lies that evolve when people deny or choose not to be responsible to their heritage.
They are all touched by father’s fractured mind
that wounded them in spite of denial
or acceptance of invisible scars
as victims in the war that never ends.
Vera, the mother, became husband’s nurse
while five crippled siblings limped without crutch
along the broken path of yesterday.
They’ve become a clan splintered by madness--
Rose, Jana, Ross, Jr., Tim,
st
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About the Book
Bloodli(n)es is a multi-character novel that illuminates one dysfunctional family in contemporary society where “the norm” remains, undoubtedly, mostly in the minds of idealists still rooted in the conservative Fifties.
The
As heirs to the mental disorder of their dead father, four of the five siblings have scattered to different states in
Beth’s debut poetry book, Through the Mirror, serves symbolically to reignite sibling liaisons in conflict with the youngest daughter’s blatant characterization of an abnormal family (based on her own personal experience and memories.)
Epiphanies and transformations occur, although few and far between, in this realistic rendering of a broken family unit that also includes the voice of Ross, Sr., the ghost, and the House communicate emotions, opinions and sentiments heretofore unverbalized.
Bloodlines are Blood Lies until family members face the truth of responsibility at the heart of their bonds.
About the Author
First ranked among the top 3% of
Born in
Anais Nin titled her “the Queen of Creativity” in a personal letter, because Rochelle was a dancer, painter, letterpress publisher and sculptor of stone for successive decades, a constant inspiration to her writing as well as her fans.
Rochelle has lived in