By Beth Ann Fennelly

Tommy’s par­ents wave from the porch as our mini­van pulls up. His dad smiles, and that’s when I see he’s miss­ing about half of his teeth.

Before retir­ing a few years back, Ger­ald had been a mechan­ic. Dur­ing high school, he’d appren­ticed at his uncle’s garage, then ser­viced army vehi­cles while sta­tioned in Ger­many. When he final­ly returned home he kept fix­ing cars. Worked “from can to can’t,” worked Sat­ur­days, feed­ing himself

into the maw of bust­ed trucks in unair­con­di­tioned Alaba­ma, feed­ing a wife and three kids. Even­tu­al­ly he’d own his own shop, Franklin Auto­mo­tive. In addi­tion to repairs, he had a line on “totals,” wrecks the insur­ance com­pa­ny didn’t con­sid­er worth fix­ing. Ger­ald con­sid­ered oth­er­wise. He’d buy two or three of the same mod­el at sal­vage auc­tion and Franken­stein them togeth­er. Tech­ni­cal­ly he wasn’t allowed to sell them – “brand­ed title” and all that – but he fig­ured there was no harm in it as long as the cus­tomer knew. He loved to nego­ti­ate, and that man could sell an ice­box to an Eskimo.

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By Michaela Keck

Cape Cod has been on my list of trav­el des­ti­na­tions for quite some time. What con­nects me to the Cape’s out­er­most beach­es of Mass­a­chu­setts are Hen­ry David Thoreau’s walk­ing activ­i­ties between 1849 and 1857, which he pub­lished in his book Cape Cod. Anoth­er Cape Cod mem­o­ry I cher­ish are the breath­tak­ing paint­ings of the lumin­ists Fitz Hugh Lane, Mar­tin John­son Heade, or John Fred­er­ick Kensett, some of whose works can be seen in the Boston Muse­um of Fine Arts. This March, I rent­ed a small and cozy cot­tage in North Truro for almost a week, antic­i­pat­ing to final­ly sub­sti­tute my men­tal and imag­i­nary rumi­na­tions with actu­al walks along the beach­es of the Cape. The sec­ond day, a snow­storm hit the coast so that in spite of the many lay­ers of wind­proof cloth­ing, I soon retreat­ed to the warmth of the cot­tage, curled up in a com­fy chair, and watched the snowflakes dance out­side the windows.

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By Maike Newman

Even if I am not able to remem­ber the pit­ter-pat­ter of my lit­tle feet on the rug-cov­ered hard­wood floor any­more, I still recall this com­fort­able feel­ing I had sleep­ing over at my grand­par­ents. The times I woke up in the morn­ing in my room, climbed out of my bed, sneaked across the hall­way to my grand­par­ents’ room, and came to a stop right in front of my grandmother’s bed. I looked straight at her face, her eyes still closed. It nev­er took more than a minute before she opened them, smiled at me, and said, “Good morn­ing, my lit­tle dar­ling.”  Read more »

By Sabrina Völz

In the sec­ond half of the inter­view, we turn our atten­tion to Salo­ma Miller Furlong’s Bon­net Strings: An Amish Woman’s Ties to Two World (2014), the suc­ceed­ing install­ment to her ex-Amish mem­oir Why I Left the Amish (2011). Both books depict and reflect on the strug­gles to put the past behind and embrace an unknown future. In Bon­net Strings, how­ev­er, before being able to seize the chance to find true hap­pi­ness and love in the world beyond the Amish, Fur­long feels com­pelled to return to her for­mer com­mu­ni­ty after com­ing face-to-face with a van­load of rel­a­tives and Amish com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers in Ver­mont. Once in her old sur­round­ings, she tries yet again to “wear Amish” and rec­on­cile her rebel­lious nature with the Amish mindset.

In con­trast to the auto­bi­og­ra­phy and its ‘one shot’ at a self-ref­er­en­tial non-fic­tion­al nar­ra­tive, ser­i­al mem­oir affords the writer the oppor­tu­ni­ty to revis­it some of the same mem­o­ries or reflec­tions dis­cussed in an ear­ly work from a lat­er per­spec­tive or expe­ri­ence. Bon­net Strings opens with just such commentary.

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By Sabrina Völz

Salo­ma Miller Fur­long is author of the ex-Amish ser­i­al mem­oirs, Why I Left the Amish (2011) and Bon­net Strings: An Amish Woman’s Ties to Two Worlds (2014). She has also been fea­tured on PBS Amer­i­can Expe­ri­ence doc­u­men­taries, The Amish and The Amish: Shunned. Furlong’s debut mem­oir opens with a med­i­ta­tion on death in Amish soci­ety as she strug­gles to come to terms with her own father’s pass­ing. Return­ing for the funer­al stirs up mem­o­ries of her child­hood, trou­bled teenage years, and abuse. The com­plex inter­play between age, class, gen­der, tra­di­tion, and her father’s men­tal ill­ness serve as obsta­cles to her recov­ery. After years of being pushed to the mar­gins of Amish soci­ety, the young woman hits rock bot­tom. Ulti­mate­ly, how­ev­er, she takes charge of her life and makes the impos­si­ble deci­sion to put the Amish world behind her. Why I Left the Amish is an uncom­fort­able sto­ry, but – at the same time – one of empow­er­ment. In this first seg­ment of her inter­view, Fur­long dis­cuss­es the writ­ing process as well as the heal­ing pow­er of both nature and human dia­logue. Read more »

By Christopher Rieckmann

Dust. The first thing he noticed was the hot, dry air and the dust creep­ing through the tiny slit between his mask and pali scarf. He felt dizzy, and he didn’t know where he was, almost like wak­ing up after a long, deep dream. He stood still try­ing to calm his breath, but the heat remained unre­lent­ing. It was dark where he was. He found him­self under a shel­ter, a bridge of sorts with bright sun­light on both sides. He felt sweat run­ning from his fore­head along his mask down his nose and tast­ed the salty liq­uid on his lips. It dripped from his neck all the way down to his boots. A water­fall of sweat. He want­ed to move, get out of this heat, out of his clothes, but some­thing made him freeze. He looked down and noticed black boots, pants, a jack­et, a pro­tec­tion vest, and gloves as he van­ished into the shad­ows. Only then did he real­ize that he was not alone. Read more »