Child to the Waters

"All stories are one, as all rivers are one. They shape from spring sources . . . and make transcendent full memory, carried as whispers deep from the blood, to arise then as gifts from a dream." --from the preludeThis poignant collection of stories celebrates the Celtic ancestry of the Piedmont region of the American South, as well as truth and beauty of life, where strength is drawn from the value of place, family solidarity, and continuity. In "Shone and the Whispering Bridge" the floodwaters gift a childless couple with a son who seems born of the river in which his parents died. When Union soldiers approach with malice in "How Jakob Emig Encountered Old Scratch," the devil himself is beaten back by the faithful incantations of the family patriarch. Earth and wind meet, marry, and mend a rift between families in "Sidhe and Ingus." Like the free-flowing river by which they take place, these fables together form a timeless world where the power and majesty of myth rival only the forces of nature in these lives."Come away, O human child!To the waters and the wildWith a faery, hand in hand,For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand."--William Butler Yeats, "The Stolen Child"Kibler, James Everett is the author of 'Child to the Waters' with ISBN 9781589800953 and ISBN 1589800958.