When the indomitable, though introverted, Honora Gorman moves to New York City to pursue the writer’s path, she is both awed and overwhelmed by the city’s beauty and energy. Yet she’s convinced that this is the place where her true self will finally emerge. Her beloved notebooks will chronicle her at-long-last journey.
Over the course of several decades, her path often veers and detours as she stumbles over the obstacles of jobs, love, places to live, growing older, and the sense that time is running out. Yet pushing her ever forward is the exuberant persistence of storytelling—her “conversation with life”—and her do-or-die determination to stay true to her dreams. Will she triumph in the end? Are such dreams attainable?
The result is the fanciful story of Honora’s writing life woven together with fairytales, whimsy, and wonder.
Linda Mahkovec is the author of fiction that celebrates the seasons, love, family, and home. Her main character is often a female with an artistic sensibility—a painter, a gardener, or simply someone who lives creatively and seeks out a life of beauty and meaning. Another thread in Mahkovec’s work, no doubt rooted in her Midwestern sensibility, is the celebration of the seasons: the thrill of the first flowers of spring, barefoot summer nights, the nostalgic beauty of fall, and delight in the first snowfall. Mahkovec was born and raised in a small town in Illinois. She then spent several years in the San Francisco Bay area and Seattle, and for the past thirty years has lived in New York City. She has a PhD in English, specializing in Victorian literature.