Down Rivers of Windfall Night

About the Book

The story of several generations of a family, as seen through the wonderings and wanderings of it youngest daughter; uses dreams, stories, trips, journals, and letters to trace the power of commitments and consciousness, memory and forgetting, reality and dream, mythology and religion, and mental illness and vision. As the Arthur family gathers to hold a vigil beside the dying father, James, their voices drift in and out over 80 years and two continents to recall their individual lives, as Yvonne, the narrator, discovers her final role.

About the Author

Frances Garrett Connell is a former Peace Corps volunteer. She did her doctoral dissertation at Columbia University on the Afhgan village of Tashkurghan and its uses of literacy, The Authoring of Selves: Literacy and its Indigenous Forms in a Traditional Afghan Village. She has published a volume of poetry, (The Rest is Silence) and a novel (Down Rivers of Windfall Night) with Xlibris, as well as four books as part of her own oral history press, ARS (A Reminiscence Sing.), several dozen pieces in ssmall magazines and association publications. She has never returned to Afghanistan, but three sons and a husband keep her memories alive, teach her the meaning of time and of love, and nurture her desire to hear, heed and pass on the stories.