Earth’s
Imagined Corners
The
Round Earth Series
Book
1
Tamara
Linse
Genre:
Historical Fiction
Publisher:
Willow Words
Date
of Publication: January 31, 2015
ISBN:
978-0-9909533-1-9
ASIN:
B00T18RRNK
Number
of pages: 472
Word
Count: 130,000
Book
Description:
In
1885 Iowa, Sara Moore is a dutiful daughter, but when her father
tries to force her to marry his younger partner, she must choose
between the partner—a man who treats her like property—and James
Youngblood—a kind man she hardly knows who has a troubled past.
When
she confronts her father, he beats her and turns her out of the
house, breaking all ties, so she decides to elope with James to
Kansas City with hardly a penny to their names.
In
the tradition of Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! and Zora Neale
Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Earth’s Imagined Corners
is a novel that comprehends the great kindnesses and violences we do
to each other.
Available
at Amazon
Excerpt:
Anamosa,
Iowa, 1885
Sara
Moore should have nothing to fear this week. She had been meticulous
in her entering into the ledger the amounts that Minnie the cook
requested she spend on groceries. She had remembered, just, to
include her brother Ed’s purchase of materials to mend sister
Maisie’s doll house and to subtract the pickling salt that she had
purchased for sister Esther but for which Esther’s husband Gerald
had reimbursed her. She stood at her father’s shoulder as he went
over the weekly household accounts, and even though her father owned
Moore Grocer & Sundries from which she ordered the family’s
groceries, he still insisted she account for the full price in the
ledger. “No daughter of mine,” he often said, though sometimes he
would finish the thought and sometimes his neatly trimmed eyebrows
would merely bristle.
Despite
the buttressing of her corset, Sara hunched forward, somewhat
reducing her tall frame. She intertwined her fingers so that she
would not fiddle with the gathers of soft navy wool in her overskirt,
and she tried not to breathe too loudly, so as not to bother him, nor
to breathe too deeply, in order to take in little of the cigar smoke
curling up from his elephant-ivory ashtray on the hulking plantation
desk.
As
always, the heavy brocade curtains armored Colonel Moore’s study
against the Iowa day, so the coal oil lamps flickered in their
brackets. Per instructions, Sipsy the maid lit them early every
morning, snuffed them when he left for the grocery, lit them again in
anticipation of his return at seven, and then snuffed them again
after he retired. It was an expense, surely, but one that Sara knew
better than to question. The walls of the study were lined with
volumes of military history and maps of Virginia and Georgia covered
in lines, symbols, and labels carefully inked in Colonel Moore’s
hand. In its glass case on the bureau rested Colonel Moore’s 1851,
an intricately engraved pistol awarded to him during the War of
Northern Aggression. Sipsy dusted daily, under stern directive that
not a speck should gather upon any surface in the room.
Sara’s
father let out a sound between an outlet of breath and a groan. This
was not good. He was not pleased. Sara straightened her shoulders and
took a breath and held it but let her shoulders slump forward once
more.
“My
dear,” he said, his drawl at a minimum, “your figures, once
again, are disproportionate top to bottom. And there is too much
slant, as always, in their curvatures. I urge you to practice your
penmanship.” His tone was one of indulgence.
Inaudibly,
Sara let out her breath. If he was criticizing her chirography, then
he had found nothing amiss in the numbers. The accounts were sound
for another week. Later, when he checked the numbers against the
accounts at the grocery, there was less of a chance that she had
missed something.
He
closed the ledger, turned his chair, and with both hands held the
ledger out to her. She received it palms up and said, “I will do
better, Father.”
“You
would not want to disappoint to your mother.” His drawl was more
pronounced.
So
he had regretted his indulgence and was not satisfied to let her go
unchecked. His wife, Sara’s mother, had been dead these five years,
and since then Sara had grown to take her place, running the
household, directing the servants, and caring for six year-old
Maisie. Ed needed little looking after, as he was older than Sara,
though unmarried, and Esther, the oldest, was married with two
daughters and farm of her own.
Sara
straightened her shoulders again and hugged the ledger to her chest.
“Yes, Father,” she said and turned and left the room, trying to
keep her pace tranquil and unhurried. She went to the kitchen, where
Minnie had a cup of coffee doused with cream and sugar awaiting her.
Minnie gave her an encouraging smile, and though Sara did not
acknowledge what went unsaid between them—one must shun familiarity
with the servants—she lifted her shoulders slightly and said,
“Thank you, Minnie.” Minnie, with the round figure and dark eyes
of a Bohemian, understood English well, though she still talked with
a pronounced accent, and Sara had only heard her speak the round
vowels and chipped consonants of her native tongue once, when a
delivery man indigenous to her country of origin walked into the
kitchen with mud on his boots. Sara tucked the ledger in its place on
a high shelf and then allowed herself five minutes of sipping coffee
amid the wonderful smells of Minnie’s pompion tart. Then she rose,
rinsed her cup, and applied herself to her day.
The
driver had Father’s horse and gig waiting, as always, at twenty
minutes to nine. As Father stretched his fingers into his gloves,
pulling them tight by the wrist leather, he told Sara, “When you
come at noon, I have something unusual to show you.”
“Yes,
Father,” she said.
It
seemed odd that he would concern her with anything to do with
business. He left her to the household. He had long tried to coerce
Ed into the business, but Ed’s abilities trended more toward the
physical. He was a skilled carpenter, though Father kept a close rein
on where he took jobs and whom he worked for. All talk of renaming
the business Moore & Son had been dropped when Father had
recently promoted the young man who was his assistant, Chester
O’Hanlin, to partner. Mr. O’Hanlin had droopy red muttonchops and
a body so long and thin he looked a hand-span taller than he really
was, which was actually a bit shorter than Sara. Mr. O’Hanlin
didn’t talk much, either, and he seemed always to be listening. He
held himself oddly, cocking his head to one side, first one way and
then the other, his small dark eyes focusing off to the left or right
of the speaker. His nose, long and wedge-shaped, seemed to take up
half his face. “Chester, the Chinaman,” Maisie called him outside
of his presence because of the way he stooped and bobbed whenever
their father entered the room.
About
the Author:
Tamara
Linse jokes that she was raised in the 1880s, and so it was natural
for her to set a book there. She is the author of the short story
collection How to Be a Man and the novel Deep Down Things and earned
her master’s in English from the University of Wyoming, where she
taught writing. Her work appears in the Georgetown Review, South
Dakota Review, and Talking River, among others, and she was a
finalist for an Arts & Letters and Glimmer Train contests, as
well as the Black Lawrence Press Hudson Prize for a book of short
stories. She works as an editor for a foundation and a freelancer.
Find
her online at www.tamaralinse.com
and her blog Writer, Cogitator, Recovering Ranch Girl at
www.tamara-linse.blogspot.com
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/tlinse
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ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading the excerpt. I will totally be adding this book to my "to-read" list.
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