Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered [Paperback]

Carolyn Howard-Johnson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 9, 2002

Harkening is a collection that tells about a charming, dysfunctional, and loving family with enough peccadilloes among them to keep the story roaring along. A heartwarming thread embroiders each story, stitching them into a satisfying whole. It is a lovely piece that bonds memory to identity, mind to soul.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A skilled word painter, the author does a fine job of recording her family's stories..." -- From Word on Romance, Reviewer Lina Mae Baldwin

"Howard-Johnson has written a most extraordinary book..." -- From The Copperfield Review, Reviewer Rolf Gompertz

"If I could describe Harkening in one word, it would be 'captivating!'" -- The Midwest Review, Reviewer David Leonhardt

Reviewer David Leonhardt said: "If I could describe Harkening in one word, it would be 'captivating!'" -- The Midest Review

From the Publisher

"Harkening" has been awarded three times since its release in November of 2002. One of the stories was given the Red Sky Press Award. This is awarded by a panel of judges at the University of Akron headed by Rose A. O. Kleidon, Professor Emeritus of English. It also took Word Thunder's most prestigious award for 2001, The Award of Excellence, and was just voted Top Ten Novels of 2001 by the Readers' Poll at Preditor and Editors.

Product Details

• Paperback: 141 pages
• Publisher: PublishAmerica (September 9, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591295505
• ISBN-13: 978-1591295501
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,244,064 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Hi.
I am best known as The Frugal Book Promoter, but I want to be known as a literary writer, poet, and all round smart and giving marketer. You can see I have a problem with branding, not because I don't know how to brand but because my career is so diverse. Ha!

As a college freshman, I was the youngest person ever hired as a staff writer for the Salt Lake Tribune--"A Great Pulitzer Prize Winning Newspaper"--where I wrote features for the society page and a column under the name Debra Paige.

Later, in New York, I was an editorial assistant at Good Housekeeping Magazine. I also handled accounts for famous fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert. She was the one who developed the first "10 Best Dressed List," and it was my fun job to write releases for celebrity designers of the time including Pauline Trigere, Rudy Gernreich, and Christian Dior.

I have also been a consultant for the Oak Park Press in the Chicago area.

In my many former lives I have also written columns and reviews for The Pasadena Star News, Home Decor Buyer, and the Glendale News-Press. I write a "Back to Literature" column for www.Myshelf.com where I also give an annual Noble (Not Nobel!) Prize.

I studied at the University of Utah, graduated from USC (University of Southern California) and have done postgraduate work in writing at UCLA. I loved the UCLA and San Diego State Writers' Conferences I attended and I'm now an instructor for UCLA Extension Writers' Program. You can find all their classes at www.UCLAExtension.edu.

I adored studying writing at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom; Herzen University in St. Petersburg, Russia; and Charles University in Prague.

My first novel, "This Is The Place," and my book of creative nonfiction, "Harkening," are both multi award-winners. A chapbook of my poetry, published by Finishing Line Press was named a Ten Best Reads by the Compulsive Reader (www.compulsivereader.com) and the Military Writers Society of America honored it with a silver medal for excellence. I have also partnered with Magdalena Ball for the Celebration Series of poetry chapbooks including "She Wore Emerald Then," "Cherished Pulse," "Imagining the Future" "Blooming Red," and "Deeper Into the Pond," a chapbook with a feminist theme. I also wrote a screenplay, "The Killing Ground."

My stories and poems have appeared in anthologies like: "Pass/Fail," edited by Rose A. O. Kleidon, PhD; and in journals like Pear Noir, Front Range, The Pedestal Magazine and many more. One of my poems won first place in the Franklin Christoph prize, 2010.

I was given the Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment Award by California Legislature members, Carol Liu, Dario Frommer, and Jack Scott. I can't help but be proud of that.

In it's first edition, "The Frugal Book Promoter" became an instant best seller as an e-book on ebookad and the paperback opened to rave reviews here on Amazon. It it now in its second edition, expanded and updated. It became the first in a the How To Do It Frugally series. "The Frugal Editor: Put YOur Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success" is the next. I published a couple booklets to go with it. One on word trippers and other gremlins lying in wait to trip you up. It is "Great Little Last-Minute Editing Tips." The other is "The Great First Impression Book Proposal."

The Book Publicists of Southern California honored me with their Irwin Award and the "Pasadena Weekly" for literary activism. My hometown's Character and Ethics Committee honored me for my work promoting tolerance with my writing.

Yes, I am having fun yet!

Find me at:
Sharing with Writers and Readers blog (A Writer's Digest 101 Best Websites pick!), www.sharingwithwriters.blogspot.com
www.HowToDoItFrugally.com
www.CarolynHoward-Johnson.com
My newsletter by sending an e-mail with "subscribe" in the subject line to [e-mail].

First person essay: http://www.howtodoitfrugally.com/published_works_almanac.htm

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Strikes familiar and resonant chords..., March 22, 2003

By 

Nina M. Osier (Randolph, ME USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered (Paperback)

When I was six years old, my family moved from Maine's heavily Protestant coast to one of its just as heavily Roman Catholic mill towns. What strikes me most powerfully about Carolyn Howard-Johnson's "collection of gentle sequels to THIS IS THE PLACE" (her novel of life in 1950s Utah) is how curiously familiar it feels to me - a woman whose entire experience with Utah consists of sitting on the runway for an hour in Salt Lake City, waiting for a transcontinental flight to continue, many years ago. For HARKENING's tales have two common themes running through them, and binding them together: "the child as outsider," and "the family as it really exists vs. the family as it imagines itself to be."

In "Child's Play," a little girl relaxes, chatters freely, forgets to be guarded with her playmate - and soon gives inadvertent offense. And so the author writes: "His face changed and I knew I had blundered." That feeling visits the child over and over, throughout the collection's stories told from her viewpoint. Her religious beliefs differ from those of the highly cohesive majority surrounding her, and she must always remember that she is an outsider. Whenever she forgets, she blunders; and then she must pay her nonconformity's price. Over and over.

"House of Neglect" made me smile in recognition, because although her name was not Nina - I nevertheless had an "Aunt Nina" of my very own. And an "Uncle Theodore," who loved her through half a century and more of unconventional matrimony; buried her with that love still evident; and passed away not long afterward, leaving a house filled with relics for the childless couple's nieces and nephews to distribute among them. Relics, and the memories that go with them.

Memories which, in "Legacy," are "filtered through glasses of one color or another" until neither the author nor her mother (the story's source) can be sure of their accuracy. Which does not rob those memories of their importance, or of their own kind of truth. Family stories take on their own lives, with time and repetition; and this particular truth Howard-Johnson understands very well.

I'll be loaning this book to my own mother next, because she is sure to recognize the situation described in its prologue. An adult daughter at the wheel of a car that she's driving through a city she knew well many years earlier. Her aging mother in the "navigator's seat"; and in the back seat, her aging aunt. Giving conflicting directions!

Although firmly grounded in Howard-Johnson's Utah, I'm sure HARKENING will strike familiar and resonant chords for other readers just as it did for me. Highly recommended!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Touching, October 28, 2002

By 

Tonya Ramagos (Chattanooga, TN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered (Paperback)

Every family has stories to tell. We hear them most from those older and wiser than us. Stories of the past, of their lives and the lives of loved ones before them. Often we hear these stories so many times we fail to pay attention after a while. We roll our eyes thinking, not this again or how many times have I heard this story but we must stop and wonder have we ever really listened to the truth inside the story?

Carolyn Howard-Johnson's second novel, "Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered," will make you ask yourself that very question. "Harkening" is not your average book of short stories. Designed to be read at leisure, each story with the ability to stand on its own, it has been carefully arranged to take you through a time line of life. Mrs. Johnson shares with us from her own memory stories told to her by members of her family about her family spanning over many generations.

In a distinct writing style that only Carolyn Howard-Johnson possesses, the characters of "Harkening" are skillfully described in such a way that you can almost hear them telling the story in their own voice rather than reading it second hand. Each story is a beautifully crafted piece of "creative nonfiction," as termed by Mrs. Johnson, leaving you with an overwhelming sense of truth and the realization that maybe you should pay closer attention to those stories you've heard so many times in the past by your own family.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Harkening" Stories Remembered, October 24, 2002

By 

Judith W. Colombo (Deposit, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered (Paperback)

Review

By

Judith Woolcock Colombo

We stroll through a garden, we take a museum tour, or we look through a friend's family album. These are all quick glances at the bits and pieces that make up the whole. However, "Harkening: A Collection Of Stories Remembered" by Carolyn Howard-Johnson is more than a mere glimpse of the whole. Each story is like the petal of a rose, perfect and unique, an entity unto itself. When merged together each petal becomes more than itself. It becomes the rose superb and perfect.

"Harkening" presents us with the rose petal by petal. They are memories emerging from a woman's mind, recollections of her childhood or of stories handed down to her with love. The unique perspective of the person telling it colors each story. "Most stories came filtered through one glass or another."

There are stories that shock us. In "Legacy" an aging woman recalls discovering as a small child that her youngest aunt had syphilis, a legacy from one of her many lovers. She also discovers that her mother had an illegitimate child who disappeared. Stories such as "Mama's Depression" move us with the triumph of the human spirit over poverty. In "Child's Play", "Neighbors", "What isn't Lavender", and "Remembering Winter", religious intolerance mars a child's life. We are left stunned at the stupidity of an intolerant society and awed by the resilience of children to surmount hate and prejudice and to survive intact.

In "Harkening", we relive childhood's hurts and disappointments and revel in its triumphs, like learning to milk a cow. We wince in recognition of the mother, daughter conflict, but nevertheless, it intrigues us, and we wonder where the next story will lead.

Throughout the pages of "Harkening", another story emerges. It is the story of Utah, the land of towering mountains, glorious lakes, gray desert plains, and shimmering white salt flats. It is the story of a land whose soil, according to the author, "Harbored the pulse and throb of her heritage." This land nourishes, comforts, and punishes. It is part of its children's lives. Utah is in Howard-Johnson's blood. She cannot escape her great mother whom she both praises and damns, this nurturer and devastator. Without Utah the stories would lack the beauty and majesty that they now possess.

"Harkening" is a must read for anyone who loves the written word or wonderful stories told well. If you have read Howard-Johnson's first novel "This Is The Place" and loved it, you will also love Harkening because these are the experiences from which the novel sprang. If you have never read "This Is The Place", do so.