Jamieson Wolf
Number-one bestselling author
The Secret of Orchard Cottage by Alex Brown – A Book Review
April Wilson has lost herself.
After her husband Graham passed away from Motor neurone disease, a disease that attacked his body from the inside out and took his zest for life from him, April is at wits end. She spent so long taking care of him that she forgot to take care of herself.
He died eighteen months ago and she is still grieving. She’s unable to move on with her life without Graham in it. Too often, she will curl up with one of Graham’s shirts, watching their wedding video.
It’s her step-daughter, twenty-two-year-old Nancy, that gives April the push she needs to live her life again. When April receives a birthday card from her great aunt Edie, Nancy tells April that she should go and visit her aunt in the picture perfect village of Tindledale and her home Orchard Cottage. April has fond memories of the orchard and Edie from her youth, so April encourages her to go and see her aunt.
When she arrives, it’s to find the cottage in disrepair and her aunt Edie keeps referring to her as Winnie. April soon learns that this is Edie’s sister. The gossip around Tindledale is that Winnie ran off during the Second World War and had a baby with a married man. She was an officer with the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, or FANY.
April can’t help but think there is more to Winnie than the gossip around town. She turns to other villagers around Tindledale to help her dig through the mystery that is part of her history. One of those villagers happens to be Matt, a local farrier and single father. April can’t deny her growing attraction to Matt either.
With the help of the other villagers and her step-daughter Nancy and Matt, she hopes to put the final pieces of the puzzle together and solve the mystery of Orchard Cottage…
I flat out loved this book. If ever there was a book that you wanted to hug, this one was it. Alex Brown continues to surprise and impress me. This isn’t your normal chick lit. It deals with subjects that normally aren’t covered in the genre: death and disease, aging and Alzheimer’s, World War and the affects that it had on families during the time, step families, life after love and secrets brought to the grave. It goes beyond the genre of chick lit and instead becomes something else all its own.
For all of that, The Secret of Orchard Cottage succeeds because it has so much heart. Every subject the book touches on is done with grace and beauty and this comes through in the pages. This is helped along by the fact that the characters are so real, so lifelike, that hey live off the page and in our hearts.
After three books at Tindledale, it feels like home. Though it’s a postcard perfect town, there are always stories to be told. Alex Brown tells those stories so well, I feel like I know them. Sonny and Cher, Hettie, Sybs and Ben, Meg and Dan. Getting to read another Tindledale book is like going out to the pub with all my best mates.
April’s character really spoke to me. Reading her journey as she grew from this woman who could only mourn what she had had into a woman who chose to live her life and learn to love again was amazing and so emotional for me. This book held a lot of emotional triggers for me (living with a disease, finding love again, loving myself again). It shows the brilliance of Alex Brown’s writing that she was able to evoke all of that within me.
I can’t wait to read the next adventure and to go home to Tindledale once more!
The Light of Glass – A Poem
I’m waling in a landscape
filled with glass. It glitters
like diamonds on the ground,
the sparkle from it like wishes
given form. They are blinding,
but still I look. While I gaze
into the light, I see a land
that I know well, see
a terrain that I’ve travelled.
It moves and shifts, the ground
never staying still for long,
the sky seeming to rush down
upon it like a turbulent sea.
“Don’t look too long upon that, now.”
A voice says. I look up and see a man,
his hair matted and dulled with soot,
smiling at me. He motions to the
glass upon the ground that holds
the familiar path, the one I know.
“It’s best not to dwell on where you’ve been. Only where you’re going.”
I look at him and try to
detect some sort of malice but
there is only kindness coming
from him. I motion towards the glass shards,
containing the ground that will not
remain in the same place.
It is a terrain that I know well.
“How do you know what is inside the light?”
He looks at me, his green eyes flashing
like two emeralds and holds his arms wide.
“I can tell from the way you are standing. You do not look like a happy man. Looking upon the light should fill you with joy, not despair.”
I walk closer to him and smell peppermint
and the scent of wild oranges.
“I’ve tried, I continue to try. But I trip, I fall, I get up again. I know the ground so well.”
“Ah!” He says. “But you get back up again.”
“Yes, so?”
He bends and picks up
a handful of the diamond sand.
“That is your own light shining through. Your will is strong. Leave this place now. It is for the lost. You belong somewhere else.”
I find myself nodding in agreement,
wondering how he could see
inside of me so deeply.
“Who are you?”
He let out a laugh that sounded
like joy released and smiled at me.
“Does it matter? Do not dwell on what has been and what was. You are not the man you were. Focus instead on your own light and moving forward.”
The light from the glass
began to increase so that
it was brighter than the sun.
“It’s so beautiful.”
He laughed again and motioned at me.
“That is not the light from the glass. That is the light coming from inside of you.”
I looked down at myself and saw
that there were several points
along my body that were
aflame with light. That light
poured out of me and shone
brighter than the sun.
I let the glass shards fall
with a tinkle and placed my hand
over the light coming form where
my heart was. It was warm and there
was a vibration coming from it
that was like its own music.
The light grew brighter still
until it was all I could see.
“Walk forward and keep walking. Shine bright and keep shining. That is all there is to it.”
Then there was only whiteness and
the gorgeous hum of light
that came from within me.
The Wild Word – A Poem
He was reading
one of my
poems, flipping casually
through the book.
“Do you ever write this out in linear form? Like a short story?”
I shook my
head at him.
“No. This wanted to come out as a poem.”
“Well then it certainly has a flow to it.”
“Yes, it does.”
He looked down
at the book
again, somewhat confused.
“I’ve never seen poetry with dialogue. Yours don’t even rhyme.”
“Nope. It’s how they want to come out.”
“You let the poem tell you how to write? You’re the writer. Aren’t you in control of your own words?”
I thought of
that statement. How
many times had
I sat down
in front of
my computer and
went to write
one thing, yet
something else came
out instead? How
many times have
I plotted a
story, only to
have the characters
do what they
wanted to do
anyways? I looked
back at him.
“Well, it’s kind of like this.”
I said softly.
“I want you to picture it with me.”
“Okay.”
He said. I
picked up another
copy of my
book and opened
it. Words began
to slide out
of the book,
flowing from the
page like water.
“Inside of every writer, there is a body of water. If you can swim in it, you’ll see the most amazing things…”
Water began to
rise around us,
but the water
was black like
the ink from
the page. He
watched, his eyes
full of shock.
Soon, we were
floating in it,
held by its
warm comforting embrace.
“You’ll see beasts of every kind of some defying description.”
Something flew overhead
and we could
see its shadow
slide along the
water. Other animals
materialized when a
bank of land
rose out of
the black water.
There were some
beasts that I
could name, others
had no name
of any kind
as they existed
only within me.
depths and there
There were people
on the bank
of land and
we watched as
trees began to
grow to offer
them shade from
a glaring sun
made of words.
“You’ll meet the most amazing characters, all of them so real, even more so as you come to know them.”
We watched the
people wave to
us as if
welcoming us home.
“You’ll witness all the ups and downs of these people.”
One of the
people that was
on the bank
of land fell
as if hurt,
a few of the
others ran to
help. Blood began
to drip from
the person, it
looked like a
man, and into
the cool water,
staining it red.
Another person, a
woman this time,
went to the
one that had
fallen and pressed
her hands to
the person’s chest.
We watched light
flow from one
to the other
until light and
stars changed the
blood that ran
through the water
into something beautiful.
“My job is to help them know what their story is. My job as a writer is to tell the story the way it wants to be told. It’s really that simple and that complex.”
When I closed
the book, the
water began to
slide back into
the ground, the
people began to
fade, letters in
the water began
to slip back
into my book.
“Every writer has access to their own well of water. If you fight the story, the well will dry up. All you have to do is have faith in yourself.”
I pointed down
at the ground.
A few letters
from my book
remained there. The
letters spelled only
one simple word:
BELIEVE.
He looked at
me with new
respect in his
eyes and said:
“How much for a copy of one of your books?”
Prose in the Park!
I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve been invited to take part in Prose in the Park. They are having a poetry evening on June 3rd from 6:30pm to 10pm and I’m so honoured to be included.
Prose in the Park is a literary festival like no other. It features writers of all kinds from all over Ottawa.
If you’re in Ottawa, you should totally check it out! It’s free to the public! Here’s what you need to know:
PROSE IN THE PARK LITERARY FESTIVAL
JUNE 4, 2016 IN THE PARKDALE PARK
WITH A POETIC PRELUDE ON JUNE 3 AT ORIGIN STUDIO, 57 LYNDALE AVENUE
AMAZING! 68 panelists, moderators and poets are now on the Prose in the Park Literary Festival program and 110 authors and publishers participating in the PiP book fair.
How cool is that?
I’ll be reading my poems along with thirteen other poets on June 3rd:
http://www.proseinthepark.com/#!2016-programme/c1km9
It’ll be the first time I’ve read some of my poems in public so this is quite an event for me.
On June 4th, I’ll be taking part in the book fair and selling my books! I’ll have copies of Talking to the Sky, Walking on the Earth and my newest poetry collection, Dancing with the Flame.
The best part? It’s all free! So come out and see me and other talented authors read their work and come out to see us at the book fair!
So excited and I can’t wait to see you all there!
The Written Girl – A Poem
I stare at
a blank page
and wait for
it to speak
to me. It
remains quiet for
a moment, waiting
for me to
put my fingers
on the keys.
When I do,
the white cloud
in front of
me begins to
ripple. I watch
as words form
on the page
and those words
begin to make
a shape, that
of a young
girl. She gazes
out at me,
her skin made
from words that
I have yet
to write. Her
eyes look at
me pleadingly and
she opens her
mouth. I do
not expect to
hear her voice.
“Why haven’t you written my story yet?”
She says. Her
voice is a
soft lilt, like
music or the
song of birds
in flight.
“I don’t know who you are.”
I tell her.
None of my
current works in
progress feature a
young girl. I
have a few
on the go
and there isn’t
a girl in
any of them.
“That’s because you haven’t written my story yet. You have to give me a voice if I’m to live.”
I shake my
head, trying to
find the words.
“You aren’t real. You’ll just be something I made up.”
She laughs and
I hear the
sound of bells
ringing. She looks
at me sternly.
“Doesn’t every writer put some of themselves into the characters they create? Don’t they say that to know a writer, you have to read what they’ve written?”
I’m nodding at
my computer screen.
I don’t expect
her to react,
thinking that this
is all in
my head. She
puts her hands
on her hips
and tosses her
hair. I look
closely and read
the words that
make up her
hair. I see
the words Queen,
magic, betrayed, lightning,
Lavender Man, familiar,
the last Witch.
I wonder if
her hair reflects
her story. Her
dark eyes look
into mine, beseechingly.
“Can you please tell my story? I’ve been waiting ever so long.”
I nod and
then say one word:
“Soon.”
She sighs with
contentment and I
watch as the
words and letters
that make up
her body begin
to drift across
the page, unwriting
her. She looked
at me again.
“Don’t forget. Don’t forget me, okay?”
“I won’t. I promise.”
I tell her.
She gives me
one final smile
and then the
final letters that
make up her
mouth and eyes
slip away across
the page until
it is blank
once more.
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Jamieson Wolf has written a compelling story about navigating multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy. His story will touch your heart, make you cry, then laugh, and inspire you. A touching memoir with a bit of magic…and tarot! ~ Theresa Reed, author of The Tarot Coloring Book
Jamieson Wolf 