On The Scarecrow's Head

About the Book

On a Scarecrow’s Head and other stories is a collection of related stories about modern folk characters; human beings seeking normalcy through education, marriage or career, expressed in American society by means of personal reality and often recognizably sustained through elitism. However, there is that fraction of man’s nature which sacrifices or even dies literally when so high a price is paid on behalf of superiority as in (Love, Luck Money or On a Scarecrow’s Head) and metaphorically (Kin to Prisoner and Etienne and Sabine). In the instance where someone else dies or loses at the expense of others, everyone forfeits something of value even when it begins merely as the loss of innocence. (Reunion) These narrations are simple, often humorously conceived linked observations of stories about human frailty regardless of race, color, creed, county or state. Many characters do sustain the top notes, the elitism in American society at whatever cost. The prose and poems in On a Scarecrow’s Head are ultimately about balance or the lack thereof when carrying on life whether in the drawing room or wild blue yonder. The characters and events in this book are fully imagined and do not necessarily reflect upon the author’s personal beliefs as such, nor are they roman a clef. The work is purely for the sake of entertainment through reading fiction, defined as an invented story.

About the Author

V.L. Lyle was born near Roanoke, Virginia and graduated from Union College, Schenectady New York in 1974 among the university’s first group of women, where she majored in English literature and drama studying with professors from the Yale School of Drama; additionally studying Spanish at Vassar and anthropology at Harvard under Robert Gardner, writer, filmmaker and head of the Carpenter Center there. One of her strengths as a storyteller is from having taught English, Spanish and drama in urban Georgia and the rural south while committed to active involvement in civil rights; then, now, and in future endeavor. Henceforth, her priority remains giving over the majority of energy to storytelling and poetry depicting oral tradition and folklore in modern American society with an anthropological bent. Her other works include three children’s books, and two full-length novels.