MONDIAL"Your source for unusual and rare
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MONDIAL |
"Your source for unusual and rare
books."
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Approaching old age, Silas Harmon closes his San Francisco bookshop to retire to the summer cottage in Kentucky where he spent his youth. There he encounters - for the first time in fifty-five years - the lonely Polish refugee with whom he had a love affair when he was sixteen and she was thirty-two. Together they must now confront how that forbidden alliance influenced both their lives and how it will influence the few years ahead of them... |
Bruce Kellner has published books on such celebrated figures as Ralph Barton, Charles Demuth, Gertrude Stein, Carl Van Vechten and Donald Windham. A scholar of the Harlem Renaissance during the Jazz Age, Kellner compiled the first encyclopedia covering that period in American history. A Professor Emeritus of English at Millersville University, he lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Bruce Kellner is the author of the novel The Prettiest Girls in Euphoria, Kansas (Mondial, New York, 2010) and The Honesties of Love (Mondial, 2012). |
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Mature love story explores the power of memory, music and enduring love Kellner’s novel is an autumnal departure for the noted scholar and author of a dozen books on 20th century arts and letters, as well as a landmark study of the Harlem Renaissance during the Jazz Age. With “Winter Ridge,” Kellner at last turns his discerning eye to matters of the heart. "We are always the same age inside ourselves," says Izabela Shandover, a World War II Polish refugee living at Winter Ridge, an isolated compound outside Louisville, Kentucky. For over a century, Winter Ridge has remained apart from ordinary time, firm in its traditions and reluctant to embrace change. Into this tranquil community comes Silas Harmon, who in retirement has returned to the summer cottage of his youth. At a distance from himself and others, Silas is a lifetime loner still haunted by the memory of his secret love affair with Izabela when he was sixteen and she was thirty-two. Now, long after they were wrenched apart without warning, Silas and Izabela are drawn together–once again through the healing power of music–to confront the dark mystery of their past and a future that is far from certain. Silas also rediscovers several colorful characters from his youth, including his boyhood friend Hosea Garvey, the descendant of the African American family of caretakers at Winter Ridge, and Andrew McMurtry, the wryly observant homosexual bookseller who introduced Silas to the wonder of literature. Silas rediscovers himself as well, as he and Izabela must come to terms with the people they grew up to be and to consider how they will spend the rest of their lives. Filled with unforgettable characters and written in a burnished, quiet prose, “Winter Ridge” is above all a hopeful love story of renewal and reward, an autumnal paean to both the memory of the past and the possibilities of the future. |
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Bruce
Kellner