Winedale Publishing

Winedale Press

WWW.WINEDALEBOOKS.COM

See You on Down the Road

A Retirement Journal Leon Hale

978-0-9752727-1-8 paperback $19.00

A Wall of Bright Dead Feathers

Stories Babette Fraser Hale

978-0-9657468-9-2 paperback $16.00

“. . . like sett ling in with a box of bourbon candy. It’s hard to stop with just a few.”—Kirkus

“His voice as a writer is the voice of the man himself. Colloquial, wise, caring . . . and wrily and powerfully humorous.”—John Graves, author of Goodbye to a River

Th e habits of a lifetime ebb slowly, and so we have this honest, moving and amusing account of a retirement that began, in 2014, when beloved Texas writer Leon Hale was 93.

In his inimitable voice, Hale reveals his personal joys and regrets as he traverses the territory of old age, travelling through time and place from his spot on the old front porch at Winedale.

We’re with him at the dinner party where he told an 11 PM story at 8:30; we learn why he doesn’t like the ocean, but loves the shore. For the fi rst time, he shares the World War II experience that haunts him still; and relates the sad drama of his fi rst divorce. We watch turf batt les between blue birds and chickadees, and observe his mother’s long eff ort to teach a parakeet her favorite Bible verse.

For everyone who has wondered what it’s like to approach their hundredth birthday, here is one inspiring and truthful answer, told with the special sheen of wit and human feeling that we have come to expect from this fi ne writer. “Hale’s lovely prose shows a keen eye for detail . . . [as she] explores . . . the book’s recurring theme of desire—for freedom, for clarity, for autonomy, and for personal fulfi llment . . . When women are alone, unencumbered, and unbeholden to anyone, they engage in intense internal refl ection and show reverence for nature—and during these scenes, Hale’s language is luminescent.”—Kirkus Reviews

Each of the fl awed, fully human characters we meet in these twelve stories faces a moment of life-altering transformation. Most are newcomers to the scenic, rolling countryside of central Texas whose charms they romanticize, even as the troubles they hoped to leave behind persist.

A young pianist struggles to keep her emotionally fragile boyfriend alive; a displaced New Yorker’s ambivalence with guns results in two fractured families; an oil man gambles on his estranged daughter’s integrity. Th e complicated history of this German-Czech region, where the stories are set, anchors the experience of two young artists who make a costly decision in 1862.

In graceful and precise, oft en lyrical, prose, Fraser Hale immerses us in lives whose superfi cial privilege provides no real protection against the unexpected.