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Theresa Cheung is an internationally bestselling author and public speaker. She has been writing about spirituality, dreams and the paranormal for the past 25 years, and was listed by Watkins Mind Body and Spirit magazine as one of the 100 most spiritually influential living people in 2023. She has a degree in Theology and English from Kings College, Cambridge University, frequently collaborating with leading scientists and neuroscientists researching consciousness.
Theresa is regularly featured in national newspapers and magazines, and she is a frequent radio, podcast and television guest and ITV: This Morning’s regular dream decoding expert. She hosts her own popular spiritual podcast called White Shores and weekly live UK Health Radio Show: The Healing Power of Your Dreams.
Her latest book is the paranormal thriller, NightBorn, available at Amazon US and Amazon UK.
You can visit her website at www.theresacheung.com or connect with her on X, Facebook, Instagram or Goodreads.
Can you tell us a little about yourself? Are you a full-time author?
I’m Theresa Cheung a leading dream decoder and personal and spiritual growth author, and now, fiction writer. I’ve spent most of my career studying the mysterious bridge between the seen and unseen worlds writing bestselling non fiction books about dreams, the afterlife, and intuition. My fascination has always been with what happens when science, psychology, and spirituality collide.
And yes, I’m a full-time author and have been for decades but Nightborn marks a thrilling new chapter for me. It’s the first time I’ve used story and suspense to share the deeper truths I’ve spent my life researching.
Can you tell us about your new paranormal thriller, Nightborn?
Nightborn is a psychological and spiritual thriller designed to mess with your mind in the best possible way. It’s a page-turner that pulls you deep into the mystery of dreams, reality, and what it truly means to wake up.
Readers have said the book feels like being inside a lucid dream — disorienting, beautiful, and utterly addictive. The story weaves thriller pacing with dream decoding secrets, so by the end, you don’t just finish the book… you experience it. Many readers have told me the cover alone, or even reading a few pages, triggered vivid dreams and memories. That makes me smile because that’s exactly what I hoped it would do.
Can you tell us a little about the characters?
At the heart of Nightborn is Dr Alice Sinclair a psychological professor who specialises in Jungian dream analysis. She’s intelligent, skeptical, and deeply human trying to use science and psychology to explain away the unexplainable until she wakes up one day to find people are dreaming about her — and not just people who know her people who don’t know her. This prompts her to investigate what is going on and she soon discovers that the truth is far more personal and terrifying than she ever imagined.
Surrounding her are characters who each represent aspects of our inner world rationality, intuition, fear, faith. Together, they form a mirror for the reader’s own subconscious. You might think you’re reading about them, but by the end, you realise you’ve been decoding yourself.
Where is this book set and why did you choose that location?
The story unfolds between the expansiveness of Florida USA and the shadowy cramped streets of London’s Covent Garden. I chose London because it’s such a potent blend of ancient and modern energy a city built on layers of history, secrets, and dreams. I chose Florida because of its beautiful beaches — the liminal place between land and water, known and unknown and where dreams and waking life can blend — and because it is the home of Disney’s ‘land of dreams.’
How can people benefit from reading Nightborn?
Beyond being a gripping read, Nightborn is designed to awaken your own dreaming mind. It’s a crash course in dream decoding but one you take with your eyes wide open.
Readers often tell me they start remembering their dreams again after reading it, or that the story sparks insights about their subconscious fears and desires. Not everyone is drawn to non fiction. I believe stories can heal, and Nightborn is my attempt to make that healing both thrilling and accessible.
If you’ve ever wondered why you dream, or if your dreams mean something more, Nightborn is my answer wrapped up in a pulse-racing mystery.
Is Nightborn your only book?
Not at all! I’ve been writing about dreams, spirituality, and intuition for over two decades. My non-fiction titles including The Dream Dictionary from A to Z and The Element Encyclopedia of Birthdays have been international bestsellers and my Angel titles have been Sunday Times bestselling. But Nightborn is my first step into fiction, and it’s been incredibly rewarding to translate everything I know about the unseen world into story form.
It’s not replacing my dream and spiritual writing it’s expanding it. I see Nightborn as the start of a new way to reach readers: through imagination, emotion, and the magic of narrative.
Thank you so much for this interview, Theresa. What’s next for you?
Thank you! I’m currently working on another novel but also have many non fiction titles in the pipeline. There’s so much more to explore about dreams, consciousness, and what happens when we truly wake up.
I’m also continuing my TV appearances dream decoding on ITV: This Morning here in the UK and my White Shores podcast and weekly UK Health radio show: The Healing Power of Your dreams which dives deep into dream research and spiritual science with fascinating guests. My mission remains the same: to make the invisible visible and to remind people that their dreams, both night and day, are always trying to tell them something extraordinary.
Link to purchase the book:
Link to Theresa
@thetheresacheung on Instagram
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Mary Lawlor is author of Fighter Pilot’s Daughter (Rowman & Littlefield 2013, paper 2015), Public Native America (Rutgers Univ. Press 2006), and Recalling the Wild (Rutgers Univ. Press, 2000). Her short stories and essays have appeared in Big Bridge and Politics/Letters. She studied the American University in Paris and earned a Ph.D. from New York University. She divides her time between an old farmhouse in Easton, Pennsylvania, and a cabin in the mountains of southern Spain.
You can visit her website at https://www.marylawlor.net/ or connect with her on Twitter or Facebook.
Would you consider your latest book to be a one of a kind? How so?
Fighter Pilot’s Daughter is one of very few books that give an account of ordinary, everyday life during the Cold War. Perhaps even fewer tell that story from the point of view of a military kid. It’s surprising to me how many readers—whether they grew up in the service or not—have contacted me to say they were thrilled to find a narrative that captured what the years of the Cold War felt like—all the fear we were brought up with and the strange things we were trained to do to protect ourselves in case of a nuclear bomb (duck under your school desk and cover your head; find the nearest bomb shelter). There are plenty of histories and film documentaries of the time, and much fiction is set in the Cold War. But there really aren’t many books that relate what it was like to actually live through those times.
Where is your writing sanctuary?
I write on a stationary bicycle situated in a large, sunny room on the second floor of my house in Pennsylvania. My husband arranged a ledge on the handle bars of the bike, so I can set my laptop there. I peddle and write at the same time. The peddling goes very slowly, but I feel that my brain’s moving a little bit more as my legs move. As an added benefit my metabolism is charging more than it would if I were sitting still at a desk. This, at least, is what I tell myself is happening! I also listen to music through ear buds while I’m writing, which stimulates my energy and imagination.
In Spain, I often take my computer up to the top of the mountain where my house is located. I bring a cushion along and settle myself beside an old ruined house or at the foot of a big cork oak. I can write for hours up there. The views are wonderful and inspiring.
What do you believe a writer should not do as far as getting his or her book published?
You shouldn’t approach a publisher directly (unless it’s an academic book), because publishers generally expect writers to come to them through an agent. When approaching an agent in the hopes that they will take you on as a client, you shouldn’t be vague, overly modest, or overly grandiose about your project (i.e. brag about it too much). Be as clear, honest, and concise as possible so the potential agent can get a sense of what the work is really like and who you are as a write.
What inspires you?
Lots of things inspire me. Listening to people talk—not always for the content or logic of what they’re saying but for the phrasing, word choices, pronunciations, and idiosyncrasies of usage—is always very interesting, and I get ideas for dialogue from it.
I also get great inspiration from looking at landscapes near my home in Spain. The mountains and valleys are very dramatic, and the sea coast, with Gibraltar jutting up in the distance, is always fascinating. The light changes in striking ways from season to season and hour to hour. The pathways through the countryside are intricate, complex. All these landscapes capture my imagination powerfully, and I’ve reproduced them in the works of fiction I’ve been writing recently.
What is one thing you learned about your book after it was published?
I learned how much people of my generation remember the Cold War in deeply personal ways. I’ve heard from so many people who tell me they recognize the scenes and situations I describe in Fighter Pilot’s Daughter viscerally. It’s interesting too to see how they respond to these descriptions with gratitude! It’s brought home to me the fact that there really haven’t been many non-fiction books written of a personal nature about life during those years.
Aside from writing, what’s your passion?
I love to hike in the mountains of Andalucia. Our house there is a small place but it’s situated at the base of a high mountain called La Loberia. I often put on my hiking boots and climb to the top. From there you can see the whole circumference of the landscape, from Gibraltar to the west and north to the mountains of Grazalema and east to Sierra Bermeja. Cork oaks, olives and almond trees grow up there, and you can find wild herbs as well-oregano, rosemary and thyme.
I also like to ride horses very much, but I’m not terribly good at it. There are several stables near my Spanish home where I’ve ridden, and once years ago some friends took me riding bareback in the mountains nearby.
A third passion is swimming. It’s my favorite and best sport. Chapter 11 of Fighter Pilot’s Daughter describes my time with my older sisters on a synchronized swimming team in California. I only did that for a couple of years, but the training and practice made me a strong swimmer. For many years I swam almost every day. Writing has taken up too much time for me to do that in recent years, but I still head for the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean whenever I can in summers and for whatever heated pool is in reach during the colder seasons.
What’s next for you?
I’ve been writing fiction since Fighter Pilot’s Daughter came out. I’ve finished a novel, The Stars Over Andalucia, set in the village in Spain where I live for half the year. At the moment I’m considering having it translated and published in Spanish, but there are still many issues to consider before taking this step. I’m also about half way (I hope!) through a first draft of a new novel titled The Time Keeper’s Room. It’s set in Spain and Morocco and focuses on the experiences of a young woman who’s exploring her family’s and her country’s past. She has visionary contacts with figures from the medieval period when Spain was shifting from Islamic to Christian domination. It’s a rather exotic story, and I’m having a great time writing it.
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Emily Astillberry is an author and RSPCA Inspector from Norfolk, England. She has a degree in English Literature and Linguistics from York University and has been investigating animal cruelty and neglect and rescuing sick and injured animals for 20 years. In her day job, Emily deals with very difficult and often emotional situations and meets all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds. Her career provides some of the inspiration for themes and characters that can be found in her fictional work.
At home, in a very old cottage in the country, Emily has a husband, 5 children, a dog, a cat, an axolotl, 2 giant African land snails and a varying number of rescue hens, so finding time to write can be a challenge. She is happiest outdoors, growing fruit and vegetables in the garden, walking the dog and family holidays usually involve walking up mountains in summer, skiing down them in winter and sleeping in a tent whenever possible.
Emily loves spending time with her large, noisy, chaotic family, cooking meals for friends and playing board games. She always has at least one book on the go and has always dreamed of writing her own novel. She now dreams of writing more.
Visit her website at https://emilyastillberry.com.
You can also find her on Facebook and Instagram.
The Essence of Bliss is her latest book.
Can you tell us a little about yourself?
I am a 42 year old mum of 5, keeper of a menagerie of rescued pets and I live with my family in a 250 year old cottage in rural Norfolk, England. My life is incredibly busy. When I’m not writing, trying to keep our house from falling down and looking after my brood, I love spending time with my chaotic family, being outside in the garden, hosting friends for dinner and playing board games. When we get away we usually head to the mountains. We walk up them in the summer, ski down them in the winter and pitch a tent and sleep under canvas wherever and whenever possible.
I have a degree in English Literature and had planned to spend my adulthood teaching and writing. However, my life took a different turn and I have now been an RSPCA Inspector for 20 years. I investigate complaints of animal cruelty and neglect. I am very passionate and proud of the work that I do and the difference that I can make in the lives of suffering animals. I see a lot of traumatic and appalling things and meet some of the worst examples of humanity but I also get to meet and work with incredible people and protect animals from future suffering. My career already has and most definitely will provide inspiration for my writing.
Can you tell us about your latest book, The Essence of Bliss?
The Essence of Bliss tells the story of Isabel Bliss, an ordinary woman with extraordinary power. Isabel is a reception class teacher who has a remarkable relationship with emotional energy. She can feel and experience other people’s emotions as if they were her own, sometimes to an unsettling or even debilitating degree. She also has the power to manipulate the emotions of others but has never understood or learned to harness her gift. Isabel’s abilities are put to the test when a little boy in her class experiences unspeakable suffering, and only she can sense his torment and help to end his agony.
During the book, Isabel encounters a kindred spirit and an adversary within the same family and she is propelled into a tangled web of love, passion and power, underpinned by secrets, deceit and betrayal. She is set on an emotional journey of self discovery, challenging the very concepts of chance, choice and destiny.
The Essence of Bliss is an emotional rollercoaster, with paranormal romantic escapism at its heart. I hope to have crafted a deeply empathetic heroine and a magical journey for readers, who may find themselves pondering the profound themes of emotions and the power of human connections.
Is The Essence of Bliss your only book?
The Essence of Bliss is my debut novel but I am well on the way to completing the sequel, The Essence of Insanity. I have many ideas and inspiration floating around in my head and hope that I get the opportunity to expand this series as well as working on some other new, exciting projects.
Can you tell us a little about the main characters in The Essence of Bliss?
Isabel Bliss is the protagonist, a reception class teacher in her late twenties. She begins the story in a long-term relationship with childhood sweetheart, Jack, parents, Beth and Max, and a younger sister, Stephanie. She also has a best friend called Donna. Isabel’s family are very close. Beth is eccentric and complicated but Isabel has always felt loved.
As the story progresses, a new family moves to town. The Callahans take up residency in the grand house at the top of the hill and the family consists of Nicholas, an extremely successful barrister with an incredible record, his beautiful wife Georgina and their two sons, Scott and Daniel. On first meeting, Isabel has a profound reaction to the sons, recoiling from one and being inexorably drawn to the other.
Do you see a little bit of yourself in your main character?
Isabel is not based on me but parts of her life and her relationships with her family are reminiscent of my own. Some of the interactions in the Bliss family, especially during the Christmas scenes and between Isabel and Stephanie are quite nostalgic for me and writing them gave me great pleasure for that reason.
Where is this book set and why did you choose that location?
Ramsey Bridge is a fictional town, which exists only in my imagination and within the pages of The Essence of Bliss. I was deliberately vague about its location so that readers are free to use their own imagination. However, I couldn’t help picturing my local area when I was writing and the beach scenes are based very closely on one of my favourite local beaches, Burnham Overy Staithe on the North Norfolk Coast, which I believe is one of the most beautiful places in the world.
What’s the best advice you can give to aspiring authors?
I would encourage anyone who wants to write, to get on and do it and stop waiting for the perfect time. Everyone’s lives are busy and it’s so easy to think that you’ll get around to it when the kids are a bit older or when you have more time but you will find that the perfect time never arrives. I had to snatch writing moments between work and family, ferrying various children to various clubs and parties and looking after my family, my animals and my home. It took me a long time but I made the time and it is the best thing that I have ever done. I wish that I had begun years ago, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Thank you so much for this interview, Emily. What’s next for you?
I am currently working on The Essence of Insanity, sequel to The Essence of Bliss. It is another intense, emotional ride but with a darker edge. I can’t wait to get it out there. I have ideas for a prequel as well as other stories in the same series and other exciting and very different projects that I desperately want to try, if only there were more hours in the day, days in the week, weeks in the year…
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Title: Soul Matters
Author: Yolonda Tonette Sanders
Publisher: Yo Productions LLC
Publication Date: September 30, 2025
Pages: 360
Genre: Contemporary Christian Fiction
Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle
With a successful husband, a fulfilling teaching career, and a baby on the way, Wendy Phillips seems to have it all. She’s certain God is on her side. After all, the woman she’s become wouldn’t exist without the strength of her close-knit family or her own determination to be a model daughter, sister, and wife.
But one phone call shatters Wendy’s illusion of perfection, turning her carefully crafted life upside down. Suddenly, everything she believed about herself, her family, and her faith is called into question.
As her marriage crumbles and her faith wavers, Wendy finds herself needing more support than she ever imagined. Her journey to healing will require a sister’s unexpected strength, a mother’s surprising honesty, and a truth Wendy never saw coming.
Now only God’s grace can help her confront the pain she didn’t expect and discover the soul-deep freedom she never dreamed possible.
Soul Matters is available at Amazon and Walmart.
First Chapter:
It was ten minutes to three, and Wendy was eager to leave work on time. “Start cleaning up now,” she said to her first grade class. They had crayons, markers, and books all over the place. “Be sure to put everything back where it belongs. After you finish, line up at the door and wait until the bell rings.”
Much to Wendy’s surprise, her instructions were followed with little resistance. A few students mumbled about not being able to finish what they were doing. Still, even they cooperated without her saying anything else. Maybe they could sense that something was different about her. Toward the end of each day, the children usually had exploratory time and could choose between various activities such as reading, coloring, playing educational games, or anything else that Wendy deemed appropriate. She usually walked around the classroom and interacted with several students during that time. However, she sat at her desk like a watchdog this entire week, responding only when needed.
“Just a few more days . . .” Wendy murmured to herself. Next Wednesday, the school would be closed for Christmas break, and as much as she hated to admit it, she was looking forward to having some time off. Although only seven weeks pregnant, she was beginning to feel the effects of this pregnancy on her body. She used to have the vitality of a three year-old, but lately, she felt like she would lose in a walking race against Methuselah. She was convinced that the term “morning sickness” was deceptive. If the feelings of nausea, vomiting, heartburn, and headaches were only confined to a few hours of the day, it would make the first trimester of her pregnancy much more bearable. Instead, she was liable to experience morning sickness at any given moment of the day. While the children were cleaning up, Wendy was on the edge of her seat, waiting for the bell to ring. Thank God it’s Friday. She didn’t think she would be able to make it another day. She was going straight home after work. She would not leave the house until it was time to go to church on Sunday morning. After service, Wendy planned to go over to her parents’ house to celebrate her father’s birthday. Wendy hoped to feel better by next Friday when she and her husband, Kevin, were scheduled to go to Philadelphia and visit his family for the holidays. The Ohio native would rather spend her Christmas vacation recuperating from her ailments in the comfort of her own home, but there was no way she could back out of the trip now. Her mother-in-law was ecstatic about the pregnancy and could not wait until they got to Philly so she could show Wendy some of the things that she had already bought for the baby.
“Keep your hands to yourselves,” she said to two boys who were shoving each other.
“He started it!” David stated, pointing at Jeffrey. “Nuh-uh, he did!” Jeffrey pointed back at him. “It doesn’t matter who started it. Both of you knock it off,”
Wendy replied sternly. Secretly, she knew that David probably was at fault, but she didn’t feel like investigating the issue. David was bigger than the other first graders in both height and weight. Jeffrey was one of those children who looked like he had been born premature, making him an easy target for David. Even though David was sometimes a bully, Wendy liked him, probably because he reminded her of herself.
Wendy had never been a bully, but she had been heavy and tall as a child. She used to feel awkward standing next to other children in her class. It irritated her when adults would ask how old she was and then say, “You look like you should be older than that.” It wasn’t until the summer before her freshman year of high school that she began to thin out. In her adult years, Wendy managed to remain a size eight, but she had to work hard at it, contrary to her younger sister, Kim, who naturally wore a size six.
When the bell rang, it was music to her ears. “Okay, let’s go.” Wendy jumped up and escorted her class to the pick-up area. Once there, another staff member stayed with them until their bus or a parent came to pick them up. When they reached their destination, Wendy said goodbye to her students and headed back to her classroom.
“Attention, all teachers and staff: Mrs. Phillips, please come to the office. Wendy Phillips to the front office, please,” she heard Donna Burchett, the office secretary, announce over the PA system.
For what? Maybe I should go ahead and leave. No one would be able to say for sure that I was in the building during the announcement. Wendy was only a few doors away from her classroom, so all she had to do was grab her stuff and head home. However, she reluctantly turned around and walked toward the office at a medium pace. Her shoulder-length hair often bounced as she walked. Today, it was pulled back in a ponytail. Wendy hated ponytails and only wore her hair in that style when she worked out. However, since she had been experiencing morning sickness, she devoted less time to her appearance. She even had her glasses on, and Wendy normally wouldn’t be caught dead in a pair of glasses.
“Wendy Phillips, please come to the office,” Ms. Burchett repeated.
Coming! she wanted to yell. I hope it is something simple like a signature needed on some paperwork that I filed. She dreaded the possibility of a parent waiting to speak with her about a child’s behavior.
“Hi, you paged me?” Wendy inquired as she burst through the door into the administrative office.
“Yes, dear, you had a telephone call,” Ms. Burchett replied, exposing the gap between her stained teeth resulting from years of smoking.
“A telephone call? From whom?” Wendy asked, scrunching her eyebrows to indicate confusion. No one ever calls me at work. Her friends and family knew she taught and was unavailable during the day. “It must be from a parent. I’ll take the message, but I’m not calling anyone back until Monday.”
“No, honey, it wasn’t from a parent. Someone called from Dr. Korva’s office.”
“Oh,” she said nervously, trying hard to keep her composure and not panic.
“I wrote down the number.” Ms. Burchett handed Wendy a piece of paper and pointed to the phone on her desk. “You can call from here if you’d like.” She carefully studied Wendy’s response.
“That’s okay. I’ll wait and call later since I’m getting ready to leave anyhow.”
“The lady didn’t tell me why she was calling, but it sounded important.”
Wendy could tell that Ms. Burchett was fishing for information. Odds are, she had already tried to gather as much as she could from the person who called. Wendy hadn’t told anyone at the school about her pregnancy yet, and now was not the time to make that announcement. “Thanks so much, Ms. Burchett, but I’m sort of in a hurry, so I’ll call back from my cell phone on my way home.”
“Okay. I just hope everything is fine,” she said with narrow, bluish-green eyes peering from the top of her glasses. “Are you sick, honey?”
“No, ma’am,” Wendy said honestly. Her mind was so boggled with getting to a phone to return Dr. Korva’s call that the feelings of morning sickness had been temporarily suppressed.
“Then why would someone from a doctor’s office call you?”
As much as Wendy wanted to tell Ms. Burchett to mind her business, she couldn’t. The woman was at least in her late fifties or early sixties, and Wendy couldn’t strike up the nerve to tell her off. If only I were a little more like Kim, she thought, because her sister would not have wasted any time putting Ms. Burchett in her place. The two sisters had similar characteristics with dark brown hair, brown eyes, and dimples. However, Wendy’s complexion was just a little lighter than Kim’s, and she was also a few inches taller than her younger sibling. Both ladies favored their mother, but Kim had been blessed with a high metabolism and the ability to speak her mind audaciously. Wendy wasn’t as outspoken. Besides, she generally liked Ms. Burchett, although this interrogation tested her patience. “I’m not sure, but I’d better run so I can find out, huh? You have a good weekend, Ms. Burchett,” she said, backing toward the door.
“Okay, you too—and I’ll talk to you on Monday.” Not if I can avoid it, you won’t! Wendy walked out of the office and raced back to her classroom. She was so disturbed by the call that she rushed past several of her co-workers without speaking. Why did Dr. Korva call me at work? She didn’t know, but she was desperate to find out.
When Wendy returned to her classroom, she grabbed the cell phone out of her purse only to discover a message waiting. That was nothing unusual because her phone stayed on vibrate during the day. A lot of times, Kim called her from the hair salon where she worked and left messages when she was between clients.
“Hi, Wendy, this is Susan, Dr. Korva’s nurse. She would like you to come into the office today, if possible, to discuss your test results. She’s leaving around four this afternoon. If you can’t make it before she leaves, then you need to come sometime early next week. Please call the office and let the receptionist know what works best for you. The number here is 555-3794. We hope to see you soon.”
Wendy’s heart sank. Dr. Korva told me that they take blood and vaginal swabs to run tests on all expectant mothers. The only reason they would call was if something came back abnormal.
She looked at her watch. The time was now three fifteen. It would be a stretch to make it from the southeast side of Columbus to the northern suburb where her gynecologist’s office was located. Such a trip would take forty minutes this time of day, at the very least. Still, she tried to call the doctor’s office anyway, hoping that, with any luck, they would squeeze her in.
Shaking and short of breath, Wendy wiped her sweaty palms on her clothing and dialed the number. “Hi, this is Wendy Phillips,” she said, trying to hold back tears. “I’m returning a call to Dr. Korva. Will she be able to see me today? I can be there in about half an hour?” She altered her traveling time, hoping to increase her chance of being seen.
“Oh,” she said solemnly when the receptionist said Dr. Korva was running behind schedule. Wendy couldn’t be seen until Monday morning. “Well, can you tell her I’m on the line? Maybe she can just tell me the results over the phone.” She crossed her fingers, praying that she would be transferred to the doctor. No such luck. Dr. Korva preferred to talk in person. “Okay, I’ll be there at nine on Monday,” she said, confirming the time of her appointment before hanging up the phone in despair.
How am I going to make it until then? She dreaded going back to the office and arranging for a substitute through Ms. Burchett. Forget it. I’ll just call in, she opted. Sure, not submitting a request for a substitute beforehand was inconsiderate and unprofessional, but she didn’t care at this point. Her main concern was finding some way to make it through the weekend without losing her mind.
Wendy got her stuff and headed for the car. She tried to talk herself into remaining calm, but it wasn’t working. She felt lightheaded. What if my baby has a mental disability? What if it’s deformed or has some kind of genetic defect? She tormented herself. She was afraid of what the doctor would say. She knew it was bad news. Her fear turned into anger toward Kevin. I told him that his smoking could cause damage to the child, but he didn’t believe me. If Kevin just smoked cigarettes, she could probably deal with it a little better, but he sometimes smoked marijuana, and Wendy couldn’t stand it.
Whenever she complained about his recreational activities, Kevin got upset. He would tell her that he was not doing anything that she wasn’t aware of before they got married. True, Wendy knew about his smoking when they were dating, but it was different then. She was attracted to his street-but-sweet personality. She had never dated anyone so successful, yet a little rough around the edges. Plus, he was very pleasing to the naked eye. He reminded her of a Denzel Washington wrapped up in a Barry White voice. He was the perfect package: sexy, successful, and single.
Kevin’s accomplishments intrigued her most of all. He worked hard for everything he owned and built his real estate business from the ground up. He was very successful and made well over six figures a year. He didn’t have parents who could afford to pay for his education. He paid for it himself. He didn’t grow up in the suburbs of some major city but lived in various ghettos of Philadelphia. His father left home when Kevin was only three, and his mother raised him, his older brother, and his sister with money she received from the federal government. He didn’t let his life’s circumstances prevent him from making something of himself, and Wendy respected that.
Foolishly, she convinced herself that Kevin would change the things that she didn’t like about him once they married, but he hadn’t. Now, nearly six months into the marriage, the honeymoon was over, and reality had settled in. If something is wrong with the baby, I know it’ll be all his fault, Wendy told herself.
Yolonda Tonette Sanders, Ph.D., is a storyteller at heart with a passion for both words and people. She is the co-founder of the Faith and Fellowship Book Festival and the author of numerous works, including novels, poetry, short stories, and academic publications. Her writing blends authenticity, emotional depth, and spiritual insight, often drawing from her own journey of faith and resilience.
Yolonda earned her doctorate in organizational leadership from Indiana Wesleyan University and is certified in emotional intelligence. She enjoys teaching, mentoring, consulting, and helping others discover their own voices through writing. When she’s not creating or consulting, you’ll likely find her spending time with her husband or enjoying heartfelt moments with loved ones.
Her latest book is the contemporary Christian fiction, Soul Matters.
You can visit her website at www.yoproductions.net .
Watch her YouTube channel!
Connect with her at X, Facebook, Instagram and Goodreads.
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Title: One Foot in the Ether: Whispers of the Pendle Witches
Author: Kayleigh Kavanagh
Publisher: Independent
Publication Date: September 29, 2005
Pages: 400
Genre: Historical Paranormal Fantasy
Format: Kindle
Demdike and Chattox, famed witches of Pendle Forest, might be dead, but they’re not gone. Bound to their bloodline, they’ve spent the past two and a half centuries watching over their descendants, waiting for when they’ll be needed.
When 14 year old Yana comes into her psychic abilities and inherits the ‘eyes of the Chattox family’, she can see the long-dead witches, as well as an encroaching evil. But even with this foreknowledge, she’s trapped by marriage interviews and being unable to see her own future, and more importantly, whoever her future husband will be.
Demdike’s healing gifts are alive and working in Claire, a mid-30s midwife well renowned for her skills and holding her tongue. The Secrets of Pendle are safe with her and her midwives. However, when surgeons looking to make standardisation the norm encroach on her territory, she soon realises how, even a respected woman is vulnerable in a patriarchal system.
The two descendants must come together to protect the ones they love from an ancient evil, all whilst balancing their lives and the cruelties of being a woman in a man’s world. Set in late 1800s NW England, this book has all the elements of the area: strong, hardy people, atmospheric horror and days as unpredictable as the weather.
One Foot in the Ether: Whispers of the Pendle Witches is available at Amazon.
First Chapter:
She hadn’t known what to expect from death. No one did. Still, none of her previous thoughts could have come close. This, and she was definitely having an atypical experience. For most souls, death was a release from the mortal coil. Complete separation from the life they’d once lived. She hadn’t been so lucky.
Some parts of the system had been the same. Her soul had been scooped up. Taken somewhere. She vaguely recalled going over her life and having events explained. Gaining an understanding of the why; to the point she was no longer angry about things which had once made her furious. However, the entire encounter was now a blur.
The powers that be had done this on purpose, but the awareness lingered instinctively. Either way, she knew she’d died, gone to the other place, and then thrown back. Before they could send her along to wherever she should have gone next. There’d been an issue. A snag. One which stopped her from moving along to the happy, bliss-filled world of the nether realm. Said snag bore one name: Chattox. Even in death, her frenemy was still causing her bloody issues.
“Hey, Demdike, how’s non-life treating you?”
Demdike didn’t answer, suddenly filled with the desire to bludgeon the other woman. However, she knew from experience it would be pointless. They weren’t physical beings any longer—even if they were still tied to the physical world. Unless she was willing to destroy the other’s soul, the spirit could reform. A tempting idea some days; this non-life was enough to make even the most patient saint a little homicidal. However, even in her worse moments, she wasn’t willing to land the final blow.
“The same way it’s been treating me for the past two and a half hundred years,” she eventually returned. Still not looking at the other, less she finally indulged her violent impulses.
“They’re having a bake sale soon, at the local church. Gods, I miss cake.”
Demdike sighed. The sad part was she couldn’t even get rid of the other. Without Chattox, she would be entirely alone in this exhausting existence.
“Their cake isn’t anything like the one we used to have. They have more access to sugar, for starters.”
Demdike wasn’t even going to comment on the reasons why. King James I’s and his ilk had done more than destroy her life. Stretching his greedy grip across the world. From the supposed lands of gold to the continent of darkness, James I’s influence had impacted many. She couldn’t help but feel for the poor souls stolen from these other countries. Their plights differed from the witch trials, but suffering was a universal language.
She would’ve liked to aid them, but she couldn’t even help herself. There was no one to hear her, anyway. Well, other than Chattox, but as she was in the exact same situation. It was no different than voicing her words to the void. Except the void didn’t reply.
“Aye, I know, but it doesn’t mean I don’t miss the little pleasures. Few and far between, though they were.”
Demdike hummed. This was a conversation they’d had many times. When their new existence was mostly just the two of them, they often spoke of their past. Their past life, to be specific. A lot of it seemed funny now. Maybe it was their time in the decompression zone post life—or maybe it was simply the effect of being so removed from what they’d once been—but matters of life and death were suddenly much less dramatic and far funnier when you were already dead. Fighting over coin, linens, and food were memories they could now look back on and find humour in.
Though she also missed cake, death was a lot simpler. Mostly. There was no fighting for survival when you simply just were. No hunger to push you forward or pain to keep you still. As much as she’d once lived with one foot in the ether, having both on death’s side was much simpler. If you ignored the limited company. Or how she feared her own mind and sense of self were slowly eroding over time. As though, without a physical body, she was slowly dispersing into nothingness; it was just taking a little longer.
Another reason she didn’t simply do away with her companion, even if Chattox drove her to distraction, at least she helped her still feel like a person. Still feel like Demdike. Elizabeth Southerns died many years ago, but Demdike had survived even past death. For better or worse.
“I think I miss a good warmed ale more than our cake, though,” Demdike piped up.
“I preferred wine myself. Still, I wonder if we’d tasted these newer versions. Which would be better?”
“Well, the newer cakes have sugar instead of just honey, but the newer ale’s don’t have any honey at all, so I doubt those would be much of a contest.”
Chattox made a clicking sound with her mouth. Neither agreeing nor disagreeing.
They might no longer have physical bodies, but they still retained their human shapes. Acted in human ways. Maybe they were a bit blurrier around the edges and looked younger than when they’d passed, but mostly, however they saw themselves, was how they projected their being. A fact she would have loved to have known whilst still alive. Could have saved her a whole heap of trouble when dealing with the spirit realm, if she’d understood these little nuances. But hey-ho, live and learn. Or not live and still learn, as the case may be.
Demdike wasn’t sure if this new way of being classed as life. It wasn’t life in the physical sense, and she definitely died to get here, but she’d also argue there was more freedom in this new state. She didn’t feel dead. Maybe she wasn’t part of the living any longer, but she wouldn’t call herself unalive either.
It was more like departing from the body meant her soul was now on another plane (one she’d regularly interacted with whilst alive), and now things were simply different. Like she’d relocated to a foreign country. It’d taken her a moment to assimilate, but now this strange ‘culture’ was a part of her new normal.
“I think little Yana saw me the other day.”
It took Demdike a moment to process the words. Yana, the nickname for little Mary-Anne. One of Chattox’s descendants, and part of the reason they were stuck like this.
“Really?” she probed, finding herself genuinely interested in something for the first time in—a good few years.
“Aye. She shook her head immediately after, so I’m not sure she believed her eyes, but for a moment…”
Their families were still a touchy subject. They were the entire reason the pair were still here. Still bound to the physical world rather than free to move onto the next part of the journey and eventually return to the reincarnation cycle. It was Chattox’s fault, something she’d reminded the woman of many times. Demdike didn’t really blame her (other than on her bad days). She knew Chattox hadn’t known this would be the consequence of her spell. Neither of them had. The spell demanded their lives; they hadn’t realised it would cost them in death, too.
Yet another reason why she also thought this was technically just another part of existence and she couldn’t be classed as dead. If the spell demanded their afterlife as part of the payment, it meant the magic still recognised them as living. Half living.
Chattox’s spell might have technically been on the greyer side of their craft, but if Demdike had known the full cost, she’d have labelled it as forbidden and stayed well away. The ritual had demanded their lives to save their family gifts. To keep the bloodline going and the ancient magics present in the physical realms. The gifts of foresight and healing were still strong in Pendle because of their sacrifice.
However, their actions hadn’t merely cost them their lives. Yes, their deaths fuelled the spell’s start, but it was the act of protecting future generations which accidentally bound them to their family members, even after death.
From this side of the veil, they couldn’t break the spell. Though even if it was offered to them, neither woman was sure they’d accept. A peaceful existence in the embrace of what came after was a welcoming thought, and one she often wished for, but Demdike could also sense they were still needed here. How fate, the gods, or some other powerful being needed them to help. They were now spirit guides to their families, and eventually they would be called upon to do exactly that—guide.
The problem (or one problem, as there were a few), was how the cunning folk were all but gone in England, or the United Kingdom, as it was now known. The witch trials had eradicated most of their people, if not by killing them directly, then from keeping others from the path. Within a few generations, this meant a great many of the skills they’d once held were all but gone from the world. Even if her own descendants technically had her gifts in their blood, they had no idea how to use them.
Demdike and Chattox had both tried reaching out to their kin at various points throughout their time stuck here. However, the results were the same. The people were scared, felt insane, or believed they needed an exorcism. When little Jennet’s grandson had called the priest to banish her, Demdike hadn’t known whether to laugh or cry. The irony of being on this side of the equation hadn’t been lost on her. As much as the holy water and chants had done nothing to her (as a blood bond was far stronger than a weak-willed man with a fragile cross), she’d still stepped away.
When she’d tried to reach out again to other descendants later, she’d become a bit of a folklore in her family. They didn’t know her, but they called her ‘the demon’. None seemed to be aware of their connection to her, or how she was the famed Demdike of the now somewhat infamous Pendle Witches. Though someone had figured out she ‘haunted’ their family and it was because of some ‘curse’ on their line. Not entirely accurate, but not exactly inaccurate either.
Chattox had fared little better. The church had demonised having gifts like the sight and psychic abilities in general, making her own descendants attempt to reject their innate talents. Praying away their blessings and hoping to be ‘cleansed’ of the evil within them. It broke both their hearts to see what would once have been celebrated and be embraced become a source of sheer terror to their families.
Especially the young girls. Neither woman could explain it, but the gifts were just stronger in females. Maybe it was their connection to the divine. Having the ability bringing life from one state of being into their realm must have created a deeper connection, but whatever the cause, they’d both had to watch on in horror as their daughters were tortured and tormented by both the living and the dead.
Of course, as spirit guides, they could stop malevolent beings from getting too close, but they weren’t around every descendant at all times. As much as both of their families still largely resided in the Pendle borough, many had gone further afield. Up to Scotland. Over to Yorkshire. Down to London. There was even a branch of her own family now in France. Neither could be everywhere at all times, and those with the strongest connections took priority. It meant some people slipped through the cracks. Sometimes, by the time the women even discovered they needed to intervene, the damage was already done.
Demdike would never forget Beth. She was her great-great-great granddaughter and only a small child, but the gift had been strong in her. She wasn’t quite the wild child like Alizon had been, but there was definitely an echo. The young girl had somehow befriended a fae—which an alive Demdike would have been terrified over—but now in the spirit realm she’d merely been glad there was a benevolent (if mischievous) being watching over the child. Thus, she’d left to visit another family member, believing the child safe and happy.
The time scale was blurry when there wasn’t anything to match it against. Days and years became one when she was an outsider looking in. When she’d become fully conscious of the world again, it was due to a dramatic tug on her core. Someone crying out for help.
Demdike followed the pull, flashed across the ether to where in the physical world the call came from. This was the first time since death one of her descendants had reached for her. Chattox had claimed it happened to her once, but Demdike hadn’t fully believed the other until she’d experienced it firsthand: like the anchor of a ship was dragging her along. As much as she could resist, she hadn’t wanted to. Followed the pull, only to be met with a heartbreaking sight: Beth, now a young woman, laid in rags on a cot.
Hair shaved off in patches and body so thin the bones were poking through. The room was filled with crosses and iron. To keep any spirits and fae away. Though neither was strong enough to keep out a bloodbound spirit guide. She doubted anyone outside the cunning folk and perhaps the odd shamans and traveller folk would even know where to begin with keeping her at bay. However, these people, who had bound and harmed a little girl (as twelve was definitely still a child) would never know how to keep Demdike away.
To this day, she wasn’t sure if she helped or hindered the situation. She’d tried to soothe the young girl. Tried to give her the love of spirit and assurance that whatever was happening, she was stronger than it. However, when the people returned and tried to harm the girl again, she may have lost her temper a little bit. Interacting with the physical realm as a spirit was difficult. Difficult, but not impossible. Demdike had fought with vengeful spirits many times, and when she’d passed over, she’d quickly understood how they’d managed.
Like when fighting as a cunning woman, she needed to condense her spiritual power into a smaller, compact shape and hit. Many creatures chose something sharp to cut and liked to leave scratches. Demdike, however, had always preferred using her fists. She might not have the strength to throw people across rooms, but a few good blows to the stomach had the people soon leaving.
It weakened her. As a wise woman, she soon recognised her actions had not been wise. The abusers—which she later learned were part of a sanatorium connected to the church—then took their anger out on the girl again. This time she could only watch, as helpless as the child. Beth later succumbed to her injuries. As someone on the other side of life, death seemed like a mercy. But still, it broke her heart to know one of her daughters had been treated as such.
Beth wasn’t the only victim of a corrupt society, and she wouldn’t be the last. Whether it was the church enforcing their standards of what was acceptable, men taking liberties (as they always had) or society making judgements, little had changed since her death. Except now, her family didn’t even have the protection of being part of the cunning folk and using their gifts.
Demdike had maybe become a little hopeless over the years; constantly watching the suffering without being able to intervene. It wasn’t all doom and gloom of course. There were genuine moments of happiness and levity between the hard stuff, but as beautiful as a new birth was, or as happy as a wedding could be, she couldn’t really enjoy those either.
Maybe if her family embraced her, and she could feel useful by doing her job—teaching and guiding the younger generations in her craft—she might have been happier. However, she’d spent over two hundred years from the outside looking in. Being half alive. Half a person.
These were thoughts she didn’t share with Chattox. They’d both commiserated their fates and screamed at the unfairness of it all, but still, they both knew—in the way the cunning folk often just knew things—their time was coming. Knew their reason for still being here would reveal itself soon. Then maybe they could feel more like themselves again.
About the Author:
Kayleigh Kavanagh is a disabled writer from the North-West of England. Growing up in the area, she learnt a lot about the Pendle Witches and launched her debut novel around their life story. Her main writing genres are fantasy and romance, but she loves stories in all formats and genres. Kayleigh hopes to one day be able to share the many ideas dancing around in her head with the world.
Her latest book is the historical fantasy, One Foot in the Ether: Whispers of the Pendle Witches.
You can visit her on Facebook, Instagram, Goodreads and Tiktok.
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Title: Fighter Pilot’s Daughter: Growing Up in the Sixties and the Cold War
Author: Mary Lawlor
Publisher: Rowman and Littlefield
Pages: 323
Genre: Memoir
Fighter Pilot’s Daughter: Growing Up in the Sixties and the Cold War tells the story of Mary Lawlor’s dramatic, roving life as a warrior’s child. A family biography and a young woman’s vision of the Cold War, Fighter Pilot’s Daughter narrates the more than many transfers the family made from Miami to California to Germany as the Cold War demanded. Each chapter describes the workings of this traveling household in a different place and time. The book’s climax takes us to Paris in May ’68, where Mary—until recently a dutiful military daughter—has joined the legendary student demonstrations against among other things, the Vietnam War. Meanwhile her father is flying missions out of Saigon for that very same war. Though they are on opposite sides of the political divide, a surprising reconciliation comes years later.
Fighter Pilot’s Daughter is available at Amazon.
Here’s what reviewers are saying about Fighter Pilot’s Daughter!
“Mary Lawlor’s memoir, Fighter Pilot’s Daughter: Growing Up in the Sixties and the Cold War, is terrifically written. The experience of living in a military family is beautifully brought to life. This memoir shows the pressures on families in the sixties, the fears of the Cold War, and also the love that families had that helped them get through those times, with many ups and downs. It’s a story that all of us who are old enough can relate to, whether we were involved or not. The book is so well written. Mary Lawlor shares a story that needs to be written, and she tells it very well.”
―The Jordan Rich Show
“Mary Lawlor, in her brilliantly realized memoir, articulates what accountants would call a soft cost, the cost that dependents of career military personnel pay, which is the feeling of never belonging to the specific piece of real estate called home. . . . [T]he real story is Lawlor and her father, who is ensconced despite their ongoing conflict in Lawlor’s pantheon of Catholic saints and Irish presidents, a perfect metaphor for coming of age at a time when rebelling was all about rebelling against the paternalistic society of Cold War America.”
―Stars and Stripes
First Chapter:
In the 1920s, when Jack was a child, a framed photograph of his father stood in the living room of their house on Richmond Avenue in South Orange, New Jersey. My grandfather, Edmond Vincent Lawlor, had
come to the United States in the early years of the twentieth century, when he was barely into his teens. On September 19, 1916, he became a U.S. citizen. Not long after, he signed up for Officers Candidate
School at Princeton and got ready to join thousands of others in The World War, later renamed World War I. The picture on the table shows him in uniform, stiff with duty. As a household decoration, it signaled the deep connection between the nation and the family, demonstrated through military service.
Papa, as we called our grandfather, gives a faint smile in the picture.
There’s nothing macho in this expression, no hint he was imagining himself heroic. He was a devout Catholic and would have understood his soldierly commitment as God’s will. Fighting on the side of the
Yanks also gave him a chance to show his affection for America. This was the country that had taken him in, given him a job in a powder factory, offered a new life to his mother and aunt.
World War I was still a pulsating memory when Jack was a boy. For him it would have been a murky tale of faraway places and mysterious danger. The photo showed his father on the edge of all this, an adventurer and a stunningly different person from the cheerful, gray-suited insurance salesman who came home every day at six o’clock.
Papa Lawlor at Officers Candidate School near the end of WWI Edmond never went to the war. It ended by the time he finished OCS. But Iremember that picture of him in uniform, there in the many living rooms of my own early years, a reminder that Papa was not only the mild, affable Irishman we loved, but a man who knew how to use a gun, had been ready to expose himself to violence on behalf of our country.
I say Papa smiles in the photo, but when I look at it now the expression isn’t so easy to read. The face is actually pretty blank. You could say it’s a mask, an empty screen hiding Papa’s feelings, even his sense of
himself as a Navy ensign. The eyes are aimed slightly to his right, off camera, as if he’s not entirely engaged in the portrait. If you keep looking, movement stirs in his face. It’s in the eyes of the beholder, of
course, but he begins to look like he’s ready for something else and can barely stand the still pose. Is this simply his characteristic lack of vanity?
Does he want to get going with the soldiering? Or is he itching to get out of the uniform, go home where he belongs.
As Jack came to the end of his school years, the laughing family and shady streets of South Orange started to look tame. He tried a few semesters at Seton Hall University, not far from home, but his performance was less than impressive. Letters show he was already captured by thoughts of himself far away, across the continent, perhaps the ocean. But he never looked down on his local, New Jersey world. It was the setting of boyhood stories he told us when we were kids. It was the place he gladly returned to after hot summer days in downtown New York, working as a messenger for the Japanese Cotton and Silk Trading Company. South Orange was his mother’s world. It was where Nan Ferris Lawlor presided over his beloved brothers and sisters—“my kin,” as he jokingly called them. In his first uniform, standing on the dappled lawn of the house on Richmond Avenue, he grins at the camera, his arm around her. He looks happy to be so grounded there, and so ready to go away. He wanted adventure. He wanted to go to sea, to learn navigation. And he wanted to fly.
In March 1942 Jack enrolled as a cadet at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. Established by Congress in 1938, the Merchant Marine Cadet Corps trained sailors for commercial ships that could convert to
military service in times of war. Now, with the demands of World War II pressing, merchant marines were needed for duty in less time than the formal curriculum allowed. Jack spent three months in the class
room at the Academy’s temporary facilities on the Chrysler estate in Great Neck, Long Island. Courses included seamanship, cargo handling, maritime engineering, math, and ship construction. He studied
hard and did well. Letters home, written in an exuberant voice, show how excited he was to be learning the life of a seaman, getting ready to see the world.
In preparing for a naval science exam in the spring of 1943, he wrote his father, “If I don’t pass it at least I tried. I know you’ll be interested to hear this Dad, knowing how disappointed you were with the time I wasted in Seton Hall. I realize that myself now, Dad, more than ever and I’m going to do my best to make up for it.” He was affectionate with his parents and wrote as if pleasing them mattered a great deal. For all
his desire to get away from home and out into the world, his identification with the family was absolute.
Gleeful at what the Merchant Marines were preparing him to do, Jack found talents he didn’t know he had in the seamanship training, especially in navigation. For the signaling course, he had to commit
endless codes to memory. He would have to pass a test that required sending eight words per minute in Semaphore and another eight in Morse. “It’s going to be tough,” he complained, “because there is nothing interesting about it. It’s just plain memory work. But you’ve got to know this stuff on board ship so it’s a good thing.”
Practicing as an able bodied seaman was another story. “Yesterday afternoon we shipped an 800 pound anchor over the side to a barge and there were only three of us to move it. Today we had quite a thrill. They sent Tex and me aloft to paint the masts in a boatswain’s swing. Boy oh Boy but you’re away way up when you do that and when we painted the top part and got down to the spar we had to crawl out on our bellies to paint the end of the thing. God I liked to die. That mast was swaying with the ship and me out on the yard that was bending under my weight. I’m so darn tired from hanging on that I can hardly lift the pen. But I think I’ll live.”
With his six-foot frame, good looks, and rough amiability, Jack made friends easily. Time with his new pals was often brief, as the advanced pace of Merchant Marine training meant assignments were given out
quickly. In letters home he complained at having to say goodbye. “I made quite a friend with this guy Tex. . . . But he’s due to go home in two weeks. Gosh it’s lousy this way your friends come and go so quickly
in a place like this.” As Jack’s first voyage approached, he was glum about the separations. “There are only 4 of us left out of our whole gang since this afternoon, for 3 shipped out then. . . . Boy it really seemed
tough saying goodbye to those 3 guys this afternoon and we’re a pretty lonesome bunch tonight.” The letter has a prophetic tone to it. There would be a lot of this in years to come. Jack would soon toughen up, learn to slap the guys on the back and say good-bye fast. He knew he might never see them again, and he stopped writing home about it.
Reading this letter about the three guys shipping out so many decades later, I feel badly for my dad. Then I see mornings on the tarmac when Jack is leaving us for some long-term mission. And the sight of a neighborhood comes up, receding in the back window of our car. Friends, then boyfriends wave good-bye. Of course, for Dad and his remaining pals another kind of loss lurked at the sight of the waiting
sea bags and in the last, terse good-byes. Where they were going death lurked right beside the adventures.
On May 11, 1942, he got his shipping papers. Rumors had been circulating that his cohort would have their first orders soon. Jack’s letters are ambivalent about it. Twice he uses the word terrific where
terrible should be. A few paragraphs after announcing the news of the shipping papers, he writes, “It seems terrific to think that I’ll be actually leaving home for such a long time. I keep trying to picture what it’s going to be like. I just dread the thought of the dam last day when I have to say so long to you all.” A week later, he and his pals set out by train for San Francisco where they would be assigned to a ship. In the club car with his friend Ray Barrett he penned a note, posted by the porter from Pittsburgh, describing his sad self in not entirely convincing terms: “Well that dreadful day when I had to leave you is almost past and let me tell you the big tough guy who never got homesick isn’t so big and tough any more and this afternoon at Penn Sta he was plenty homesick. But after we fastened up we had a good chicken dinner for $1.65 less 10% for the uniform. I felt much better. But it was terrific leaving you.”
In San Francisco, before reporting for ship duty, he had the time of his life. He and his friends were treated like visiting celebrities. “I’m in the best place in town, the Hotel Francis Drake, and a gal just took my picture. I’ll send you one.” In the same letter he tells them “our picture was in the S.F. Chronicle. I’ll send you one of those too! The S.F. Chamber of Commerceis having a National Maritime Day and we were picked to pose for the paper.” He sent a clipping along, a photo of himself and a fellow cadet in dress uniform, smiling as they explain the details of a model cargo ship bridge to a San Franciscan named Virginia Haley. It’s hard to tell whether the center of the photo is the ship model, Dad’s grin, or Haley’s legs. At the Persian Room on May 21, he laughs at the camera in the company of an unnamed actress in a white pillbox hat. The next night, at Charlie Low’s Forbidden City, a supper club on Sutter Street, he stands beside a local actress, looking awkward but dapper nonetheless. Another night in the Persian Room, Jack
glances at the photographer while talking with Ray Barrett and another friend from the Academy. Over cocktails and smokes, they’re obviously enjoying themselves, but something serious hovers between them. Ray wrote on the inside of the photo sleeve, “We went to the Academy together and now we’re going to sea together. Need I say more than all the luck in the world to you?” Amid the dancing and cocktails and the photographers, they were having a ball. They were also thinking about what was coming next.
He was assigned to the Grace Line’s Santa Clara. “The ship is a corker—it’s big, fast and well armed (Thank God),” he wrote to the family. “Our stateroom was a mess when we first got into it but today we fixed it up and it’s pretty nice. We have plenty of room, our own bath and lots of closet and locker space. There are three of us in the room and we get along swell. The meals are swell and we eat in the officers’ mess. It’s a break being on a troop ship, because the food is always extra good on them and besides they are well protected.” Earlier, still in San Francisco, he had met some of his superiors and written home, “the officers are swell guys and surprisingly young. We are with the third mate tonight and the girls [Jack’s sisters, Ann and Marg] would go nuts over him. We are learning more than I thought it was possible for me to commit to my thick cranium, just through these young fellars. The skipper is only 35. How about that?” In ten weeks they would be back in New York. Jack was out of his head with excitement but mindful of his attachment to home. In a postscript, he notes “I’m damn happy, but a little lonesome.”
By the end of his first year, Jack had been at sea for nine months.
Still he kept in touch with South Orange regularly. He addresses the household as “Dear Home” and signs his letters “Salty.” Expressions of affection intensify as time, distance grow. On the eve of his first trip to
the Pacific he wrote: “You have said you were proud of me. Well I’m pretty damn proud to call myself one of you.” At times the words have a faint ring of guilt—for being so far from home, for having a great time
at it: “You are the grandest Mother and Dad a fellow could have and I’ll always look forward to the days I can spend with you again.”
Jack was out on a cruise when Edward Haugh, who would soon become his close friend and brother-in-law, entered the Merchant Marine Academy in 1943. Five years later Ed married Frannie’s younger
sister, Mary Ellen. Like a mirror opposite of our own family, Mary Ellen and Ed had four sons, more or less our ages. Much later, after my dad and uncle had become experienced seamen and pilots, after they’d
seen violent action in war, it was the Haugh boys who learned about the most dramatic events, the violent ones. As girls and even women, we were never told those things. Bits and pieces reached our ears, fragments of stories about crashes and escapes through enemy territory. We would wonder, mystified, about where our father had been, how these things happened, what he felt and did. I imagined veiled scenes in dark jungles, Dad slipping through the high growth, his terrified gaze hunting the perimeter. He would be operating on deadly survival instincts, hungry, thirsty, wet. A specter as frightening as the enemies who missed him, he crept in absolute silence, the blue eyes, like flashlights, pointing the way. Or he was down in the sea, clinging to the wing of a plane, waiting for some helicopter to lift him out. These images came and went whether he was home or away.
During the return cruise to New York in early August, Jack’s exhilaration with life as a Merchant Marine came under the cloud of one particular commander. The man threw his weight around, made his presence felt among the cadets, making them do unnecessary things, just because he could. Jack got in his sights and found himself in a power struggle with a personal charge to it. He restrained himself from
telling the guy off when he demanded that a course, checked for accuracy several times already, be backed up with a series of alternative routes—a job that called for meticulous, time consuming calculations.
Jack took a deep breath and performed the useless task but swore he would get out of this man’s clutches. Landed in New York again in September, he and his buddies proceeded to the Merchant Marine
office downtown to sign up for another trip out, but the functionary in charge refused to put them together on a different ship. Word had made its way from the dock. Jack and his best friend, George Roper, decided “to hell with them.” As Merchant Marine cadets, they had already been sworn into the Navy on reserve status. The Navy could give them something the academy couldn’t. They could learn to fly. The next day the two of them walked north to the Naval Recruiting Office
and enlisted for active duty.
In the Merchant Marines, the cadets had been introduced to the ancient discipline of navigation. Always good at math in school, Jack, George, and my uncle Ed had taken it up like naturals. Mathematical
representations were as real to them as the ground itself. Even in retirement, their desks were littered with compasses, rulers, pencils and scraps of paper covered with calculations. The practice of charting seas
gave them confidence in moving through watery space, like it was lined and readable as a series of roads. Success at plotting a course at sea, as Uncle Ed explained not long ago, rattled their imaginations. They wondered how it would be to navigate the sky.
In the autumn of 1942, Jack and George began flight school at the Naval air station in New Paltz, New York, north of West Point. Ed came up the following year. Jack’s notes for the first course, in a folder la
beled in block print “Aircraft Identification, Mr. Oakley,” show he was already dedicated to learning everything he could about airplanes. In a careful hand he lists “Four main wing and plane relationships,” “Wing Descriptions,” and “Tips.” He copies the markings for Navy and Army aircraft alphabetically. A hand-drawn graph, the boxes neatly ruled, identifies the names of airplanes with their wing and tip configurations; engine and armaments; tail and fuselage surfaces; speed, ceiling and load range. Forty-two different planes appear in the six-page chart.
Photos, cut from catalogs and neatly taped to the notebook pages, show the Grumman G-21, the F4F Wildcat, the Martin PBM-3 Mariner (a “flying boat”), the Vought-Sikorsky OS2U-1 Kingfisher, the SB2U-3
Vindicator (“a dive bomber”), and many others. British planes appear—the Hawker Hurricane IIc (“with bombs slung under the wings”), and the Handley Page Halifax. A page is set aside for Japan’s Kawanishi
Type 94 (a bomber for which “no information is available on the location of the bomb bays”); another for Germany’s Dornier DO 17 (“a reconnaissance bomber”) and the infamous Messerschmitts—the ME
110 and ME109F.Captions indicate the wing and tail markings and the all-important size, speed, and range specifications. For survival’s sake, Jack would have to get these in his head. Notes in the margins indicate he was memorizing speed, altitude, and bombing capabilities of all the aircraft.
In March 1943, he wrote his father, “I’ve got almost four hours in the air now and I ought to solo in seven or eight, which should be some time this week . . . I’ve got a damn good instructor and he drums those
fundamentals into us all the time. I’m due to go upstairs to learn a series of ‘spins.’” Upstairs referred to four thousand feet, a dramatic, new level. The excitement of flying so high, of getting to take the airplane to the limits of its capacity, continues a few days later: “Boy those spins are something. We climbed to 4000, cut the motor and turner her nose straight up and put the rudder hard left and bingo! Down she goes nose first spinning like a top. We do two complete spins and come out of it.”
Shortly after, he made his first solo. The plane was an Aeronca Defender. He told his brother Edmond about it later, but no description of this prime moment appears in the letters. Soon he sent his
mother an account of what flying alone was like. “Walt, my Instructor, let me go out over our area alone yesterday afternoon for a whole hour.
You can’t see the area from the field so I had quite a time for myself. First I practiced high work and went up over the cloudbank at about 7,000 feet. You never saw anything so beautiful in all your life just you
the plane and the sky and those big white pillows below you. Super stuff.” Already he felt confident enough with the aircraft to start fooling around. “After that, I went down very low and practiced forced landings and made sure the fields were pastures and Boy you ought to see those dam old cows run. When I realized how much fun it was I tried dive bombing them and hot dog if ‘Bossie’ didn’t dam near give birth to a goat. Oh you should of seen them go—” He signs the letter “Orville Wright.”
Training continued into the summer of 1943 at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he started doing acrobatic hops; then at Bunker Hill, Indiana, where his enthusiasm grew explosive. “The flying is really terrific,” he wrote his mother and father. “There are three stages you have to get through. First you have A stage, that’s just safe for solo and then B stage, that’s ‘S’ turns and slips to circles and wingovers. Then in C stage you really start flying. That’s acrobatics and night flying and those acrobatics include everything, slow rolls, snap rolls, Immelman’s and inverted spins and falling leaves and every other tough one you can
think of.”
During those months at Chapel Hill, Jack went through a rigorous athletic program, including a week each of track, swimming, football and boxing. The cadets were graded for each sport. Competition for strong marks was high. On August 5 he wrote his parents, “I got my boxing marks yesterday and today. I didn’t make out too good yesterday. I lost my fight but today I made up for it. I won by a T.K.O. (that means they had to stop the fight because the guy I was fighting was pretty badly cut up).” Without another word about this, he moves on to his successes in football. He had made the battalion squad, a first for his
platoon. His father must have written expressing concern about the August 5 account of leaving his boxing opponent “pretty badly cut up.”
On the thirty-first, Jack wrote, “You sounded a little worried about my reaction to that fight I had. Well it’s O.K. Fact is I’ve made pretty good friends with the guy since and he wasn’t hurt too much anyway.”
This is the first evidence of Jack’s capacity for combat. The athletic schedule at Chapel Hill was aimed at sharpening reflexes for just this purpose. In late August he described to his mother how wrestling was
simultaneously training in hand to hand combat: “This hand to hand is the coldest stuff man ever thought up. It was explained to us this morning as the ways of quickly killing or disabling permanently a man with
only the weapons God gave us. We’re being taught to gouge out a man’s eyes and bite off his ears and bite into his jugular vein in his throat and every conceivable dirty stunt in the books.” If the “dirty stunts” seemed repellent to Jack and the detailed description a way of absorbing the shock, they must have been nothing short of shocking to his mother.
Why he would submit this information to her is something of a mystery.
Sharing scenes of violence with women was not a practice he would continue. During these years as a young flyer, everybody in the family served in the crucial role of audience for his adventures.
Jack’s preferred vision of military life at this point was far and away a vision of flying, of trying out the heights and lows, the angles and spins an airplane could take. Ground combat was distasteful and not for him.
In June of 1944, he earned his wings at the Naval air station in Pensacola, Florida. At this point, a cadet could chose to continue with the Navy or to shift to the Marine Corps, and Jack chose the Marines. That fall he found himself on the west coast again, this time in southern California.
At the Marine Corps air station in El Toro he underwent a combat conditioning course. “You would think we were going through infantry school instead of being aviators. It’s very much similar to Chapel Hill
only a lot tougher. We start at the crack of dawn and do close order drill, exercises and bayonet drill until sundown. And then to bed and no kidding I’m there by seven. It’s doing good, I guess.”
But El Toro meant more flight school too. By now he was tired of being a student. “Well here we are again,” he wrote in early January of 1945, “back in school. How do you like it? Gee I haven’t done a damn
thing but go to school since the beginning of the damn war. But this time I think I’ve got something because these jokers say that they are going to teach us how to fly every airplane the Navy uses, from primary trainers to the big 4 engined flying boats. This month alone we will be flying Avengers, Hellcats, Hell divers.” He had been through seventy two weeks of flight training, almost a year and a half as a student. As a professional aviator, he would go back to “school” periodically to learn the technology of new aircraft. Later training, however, was more about refining skills he already had, skills that would eventually come to be recognized as those of a master aviator.
Jack had been away from home for some time now. He wrote that he missed the holidays with the family. “I don’t expect we’ll get a transcontinental for a couple of months yet, but I’ll get there by gosh. If they
won’t send me over seas I’ll get there by hook or crook.” Aware of the ambivalence in his phrasing and the muddiness—won’t instead of don’t and the open-ended meaning of there—about what he really wanted next, to go home or “overseas,” which meant to the war, he adds in parenthesis, “to New York I mean.” In spite of Jack’s exhaustion with being a student, it’s pretty clear as he virtually chants the names of the airplanes he is about to get his hands on that what he wants most is to fly and fly some more. The implication is strong that he wanted not so much to go home but to get further away.
In all Jack’s letters written from the Merchant Marine Academy, from Navy flight school, and Marine Corps training, references to the Catholic religion in which he was raised are sparse and formal. From Navy pre-flight school in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in September 1943 he described a field mass he attended at the base stadium. It was a solemn high pontifical mass, “very pretty and very impressive . . . I sang
in the choir and we sang the mass of St. Basil and it sounded pretty good.” But the event is also memorable because his girlfriend Ruth was visiting from New Jersey. They’d been engaged since before he’d left the Merchant Marines, but the relationship wouldn’t survive the long separation to come.
Later that month the base chaplain, Father Sullivan, asked Jack to manage a fund raising campaign with his outgoing battalion for the construction of a church. Jack spent a week with a friend giving “pep
talks” and canvassing. The priest “almost jumped out of his pants” when they handed over $444.60. Other stories sent home remind his parents that he’s still a good, practicing Catholic son; but none of his writing
expresses a deep or conscientious sense of devotion. In a postscript, he notes, “The chaplain is a grand guy. Have been to Sacraments” and “Still taking pills and saying Hail Marys.”
If pressed, Jack would undoubtedly have declared the whole project in which he was engaged—learning to be a warrior for the good guys—the deepest sacred duty he could perform. It was the sort of credo he
would maintain throughout his military career. God, Christ, and the Virgin seemed to loom for him in a distant sphere. Signs of their benevolence or wrath might be legible in this-world phenomena, but they
existed elsewhere. Although he kept an image of Our Lady of Loretto—patroness of aviators—in the cockpit with him, it wasn’t until after retirement that he showed a personal, more intimate connection with Catholicism. Maybe it was there in him earlier, but the letters suggest that for the young pilot, the more abstract, the more formal his religion, the better it would work for him.
In May of 1945 he finally set out for the war, to the site of one of the bloodiest conflicts, Okinawa. Assigned to Marine Fighter Squadron 222 of the Second Marine Air Wing, he left San Diego on a troop transport.
He had been waiting for this, for the chance to get beyond the dress rehearsals of training to the sites of real action. Excitement beat like a drum. He knew, of course, what horror lay ahead. The terror was fuel,
already sharpening his senses.
The well-ordered life at sea, like the round of days on the base, held up a steady, familiar, world. The repetition of chores, drills, and meals flattened shipboard experience. Behind the lulling rhythms, however, an eerie, Melvillian, spell dragged along. One hot day near New Guinea, when they couldn’t take looking at the gunmetal and the horizon anymore, Jack and a few others climbed over the edge for a swim.
Shortly after, the voice of the commander boomed from the deck, ordering them back on board. Reluctantly but quickly they did as he said. The officer walked them across deck to the opposite side of the ship and pointed into the water. It was boiling with hammerhead sharks.
A “shark shooter,” as Uncle Ed Haugh told me, would normally be stationed at a lookout point high above the deck when sailors were swimming in Pacific waters. Protecting the vulnerable crew, the shooter kept a close eye off the gunwales, ready to fire at any moment. If this protection was in place, it didn’t dispel the commander’s terror at sight of the enormous, T-shaped fish, thronging too close to the splashing men.
The hammerhead shark story was in our heads, told more than once, so vivid was it in Dad’s memory. He was a good storyteller. He knew how to pace the action, when to pause, when to raise and lower his
voice. Making a collective character of the swimmers, he showed with wide eyes and eager shoulders how dangerously naïve they were. The commander, deep voiced and rigid, was right, he told us, not because
the hammerheads proved him to be, but because he was the commander. With loose-minded people like his younger self to teach and supervise, the commander had to convey that his word, his order, was reason in itself. Jack’s heart was not revolting now, as it had to the arbitrary power of the Merchant Marine officer in the summer of 1942. He had grown up, become a professional; and the wartime context demanded that everybody do precisely as they were told. The scene looks ominously symbolic of the enemy waiting over the horizon, a threat that hadn’t crossed the threshold of visibility for Jack quite yet. But to our ears as children, the episode was like an allegory of the horrible things that could happen if you chose not to follow your leaders, whether they were parents, or teachers, or ship commanders. Outside the boundaries of our ruled lives, nature and the world’s violent passions came snapping at your heels. Better to stay on the boat, as Chef repeats in Apocalypse Now, his voice mechanical, dehumanized with fear.
In all those years of sailing, flying, fighting and bombing far from home, pitched against nature and other people, was my father on the boat or off it? Following orders, he kept his place. He knew to stay near
the boat and climb back aboard when commanded. But in later years he would often have to operate as an irregular, out of anybody’s reach, untraceable, courting danger. In this sense he seemed regularly off the boat. And that meant he was unreachable for us, at home, too. Being off the boat was at some level a choice for Jack, like it is for Captain Willard, just returned to Vietnam at the beginning of Apocalypse Now, describing his feelings about home: “When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle.”
VMF222 would be credited with shooting down fifty-three Japanese planes during the Battle of Okinawa. Jack flew the F4U Corsair, a carrier-based fighter aircraft he’d been trained to operate at El Toro.
The Corsair was armed with Browning machine guns on the wings. It could shoot missiles and drop bombs.
The Battle of Okinawa lasted for three months, until May 1945. At this point, the U.S. forces had established bases to be used as launch sites for a major attack on the Japanese mainland. The plan was
scrapped, of course, when the atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; but the bases remained in place. Jack and his fellow pilots lived in improvised quarters—tents and later quonset huts—not far from the airfield at Awase.
From February until May of 1946, the war now over, Jack was as signed to “Special Service” with the Fourth Marine Wing. This meant duty in Northern China. Among Dad’s medals is a long yellow bar with
a red stripe at each end, the China Service medal. Marines had been posted to China since September 1945, helping accept the surrender of Japanese forces. The situation was complicated by the civil war that was building between Chang Kai-shek’s central government and the expanding Communist movement under Mao Tse Tung. Stalin, still America’s ally, was supporting Mao. The United States hadn’t taken an
overt military position in this struggle, although the hope was that Chang would prevail. For ordinary marines on duty in China, the scene was sometimes difficult to read.
Jack was housed in U.S. facilities at Tsingtao, on the coast southeast of Beijing. He and other marines shared the rough quarters with foreign nationals posted on commercial and diplomatic missions since
before the war, and with members of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. (The UNRR was formed in 1943 by Roosevelt; the “United Nations” were the WWII Allies. The mission was to provide economic aid and relief for nations damaged in WWII.)
Among the international community in Tsingtao, Jack met a Russian woman named Vlada, who he went out with a few times, but either he decided for himself or he was told to stop seeing her. Dating a Soviet
citizen had become a problem, and Jack did as he was told. One night Vlada came knocking at his BOQ door. He didn’t answer. She knocked louder and shouted into the night, “It is I, Vlada.” He still didn’t answer.
Eventually she went away. As Dad told the story, it was clear he thought it was funny. He did a comic imitation of Vlada’s accented, dramatic English. It’s hard to know if he was laughing at the time. My sisters and I never thought to ask this question. Were her antics laughable? Or had he distanced himself from her anyway, before the new rule came about, because she was demanding, too serious about him? Did Vlada’s foreignness mean he didn’t need to take her seriously, whether she was funny or not? I think of Vlada, wonder what she was going through that night. Who had she thought she’d found in Jack? What did she think, walking away from his door? Did she remember him for long? And what of Jack in his own eyes? Did he see himself still as a gleeful young pilot, ready to leap the oceans, explore jungles continents away from South Orange? Or had he grown some armor he hadn’t had before the war, a toughness about the heart that would recede and then strengthen again in the tough years to come? If Vlada could be dismissed with a laugh, how ready was he to open his heart seriously to anybody—and to
any woman—backhome?
About the Author:
Mary Lawlor is author of Fighter Pilot’s Daughter (Rowman & Littlefield 2013, paper 2015), Public Native America (Rutgers Univ. Press 2006), and Recalling the Wild (Rutgers Univ. Press, 2000). Her short stories and essays have appeared in Big Bridge and Politics/Letters. She studied the American University in Paris and earned a Ph.D. from New York University. She divides her time between an old farmhouse in Easton, Pennsylvania, and a cabin in the mountains of southern Spain.
You can visit her website at https://www.marylawlor.net/ or connect with her on Twitter or Facebook.
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