Connections

About the Book

Connections deals with secrets, reminiscence, guilt, and control.  Hazel is an elderly woman, recovering from a stroke, and living with her daughter, Laura, and son-in-law, Bill. With the visit of an expatriate daughter, Kate, interaction between generations emerges. As Kate discloses some of the difficulties she has encountered during her divorce, Hazel realizes that it gives Kate some relief to talk about them. She dwells once more on her own secret and the way she is reliving moments in her life, some painful and some happy, but most of them relating to that secret. Can she find resolution by sharing her past with her children?

As a young person, Hazel is given every advantage.  Her parents believe she has above average talent as a musician, as a pianist, and encourage her to practice constantly.  They are caring and loving and shelter her as their cherished daughter.  But Hazel finds the hours at the piano too constraining, and although she does become an accomplished performer, she feels stifled and longs to escape from her parents’ too caring ways. She meets a young man, James, through a friend and marries him.  She thinks this will be the answer, but over the years she finds otherwise.  There is tension from  marital conflict and control, and woven between the lines are the complex questions of courage, infidelity, bitterness and warmth. Overall, there is  Hazel’s lifelong fear of discovery.

What is the secret that has haunted Hazel all her life?  Unknown to her daughters, Laura and Kate, she has lived a lie; now  snatches of vivid memories trouble her old age--memories of James, her husband, who holds her secret like a weapon to dominate her, and of Clara, his niece, who acts sometimes as a friend and sometimes as an enemy.  The pony and trap appear frequently, yet never seem to have any meaning.

Kate finds signs in her mother's occasional comments that remind her of a course that she teaches in America.  It includes unresolved problems that arise in the elderly. She believes this may hold an answer for Hazel, if only she  will talk about her memories, which keep her torn between happiness and fear.

Laura knows something is wrong, and with Kate’s arrival she admits this.  The sisters try to guess what dark or bizarre form it takes.  

Persuaded to make a journey to the scenes of her childhood, Hazel fears exposure: she is not ready.   Does the long forgotten letter hold the key?  These questions without answers linger until she decides to share her secret.   Years of oppression and suppression, actual and imagined, have left her unable to trust even her daughters, until now.  

Hazel’s fear was not unusual in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when she was young. She learned the morals of the Victorian age, and although she knew life had changed drastically, she could not rid herself of the guilt she believed she carried.

The story is set in the 1970s, when Hazel is 81, and her memories take us through pre and post WWII.  Family connections become a mysterious and important need, against a fascinating background of English rituals, mores, and countryside.

In this novel connections lead to lifelong torment, and yet offer release.

About the Author

After raising five daughters, the author earned her PhD. She has been in Higher Education at colleges in northeast NY, and is now Director of a program for adults at Union College. Dr. French team-teaches an interdisciplinary (literature and psychology) course once a year at SUNY, Empire State College with a colleague who shares her love for writing. She belongs to a poetry writing group, but has only had some “rather dull” non-fiction published as part of her career. She much preferred writing Connections, the result of many years work. She has several short stories she is considering integrating into a book.