Showing results by narrator "Katherine Conklin" in All Categories

On Christmas Eve, 85-year-old Miriam Caravasios steps onto the ice that surrounds her seaside estate on Maine's Mount Desert Island. As a younger woman, she used to steal out on winter nights to meet her lover, walking across the frozen reach to their secret meeting place. She knows the way—but not the year. Miriam, her mind clouded by dementia, doesn’t hear the snap of thin ice until it’s too late.

A collection of stories depicting life in a small Virginia town in the 1940s—the happiness, heartbreak, and humor that saw America through the turbulent years of World War II and its challenging aftermath. In Johns' fictional Marshallville, a small but proud college anchors the community alongside family businesses handed down from one generation to the next. Here, with the truth that fiction offers, is a glimpse into a pivotal era with all its faults and foibles, seen through the lens of fond remembrance.