Author Lisa Lynn Biggar, a writer, flower farmer, and folk singer, will read from her debut collection of short stories, Garden of Motherless Children, in Chestertown on October 14.
Her reading and signing will be held in the Sultana Educational Foundation’s Holt Center at 200 South Cross Street from 6 pm – 7:30 pm. Capacity is limited to 70 seats and attendees are encouraged to RSVP to The Bookplate in Chestertown at contact@thebookplate.net or tel:410-778-4167.
In Biggar’s haunting and lyrical prose, come-here’s and from-here’s on the rural Upper Shore intermingle in surprising ways, sometimes finding unexpected fulfillment, but just as often slipping through each other’s grasp right when hope reaches its zenith.
In “May Day,” a middle-age divorceé who works at a small college falls inappropriately in love with a graduating senior. Will the biggest obstacle prove to be her daughter or his mother?
In “Can You Show Me the Way?”, an influencer couple who are gaining renown on the Internet for their artistic renovation of an old church are suddenly confronted with the vast creative differences they’ve been papering over.
And in the title story, “Garden of Motherless Children,” a well-meaning pastor struggles with a dawning sense of his own ineffectuality as he tries to salvage the life of a homeless veteran of the forever wars.
Twelve more stories round out the cycle in imaginative and surprising ways. For example: A grieving father and War of 1812 reenactor is confronted with a somewhat disorienting chance to reenact his own life. A would-be novelist is given the luxury of unlimited time to write by an enigmatic woman who turns him into a kept man. And an inconstant husband in a marriage he is suddenly eager to preserve finds the perfect piece of jewelry for his wife at a local auction. But can he afford it?
“These are big, intelligent, brave stories. Lisa Lynn Biggar doesn’t duck the hard moments, the awkward and the inappropriate; she is willing to let her characters, and her readers, squirm a bit,” says Christopher Tilghman, author of Mason’s Retreat and On the Tobacco Coast.
Adds Jen Grow, author of My Life as a Mermaid: “Deeply rooted in the landscape, these gorgeous and tender stories follow well-meaning, misunderstood characters yearning to transcend loneliness to find hope.”
Biggar is an MFA graduate of Vermont College. She is the author of a novella-in-flash, Unpasteurized, from Alien Buddha Press, and her short stories have been widely published in literary journals. She and her husband, Don Biggar, own a cut-flower and herb farm in Galena, Maryland. The two of them have also been writing and performing as a folk music duo named Yarrow for more than 30 years.