30 July 2020

*Review & Giveaway!* LANDING IN MY PRESENT by Mary Walker Clark

LANDING IN MY PRESENT
by
Mary Clark 

  Biography / Aviation / Historical / WWII
Publisher: Hellgate Press 
Date of Publication: June 15, 2020
Number of Pages: 218

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Mary Walker Clark barely knew her father. When he died, he left not only the obvious void every teen would experience, but took with him scores of Indiana Jones-style tales about flying the Hump, a treacherous series of US missions that transported supplies over the Himalayas to China during World War II. 

It would take a chance interview with a pilot who had flown with her father in the war to launch a series of extraordinary journeysinto a shrouded past and halfway around the globe to India and Chinafor Clark to finally come to know the father whose absence had haunted her for decades. 

Landing in My Present chronicles the adventures of a daughter who chose to pry open a painful past while enlarging her view of an adventurous father long thought lost.





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When Kristine the Book Siren posted the sign-up for LANDING IN MY PRESENT by Mary Clark in our blogger group, I knew I had to jump at the chance to read and review this book.

You see, I’ve got a lot in common with this author.  No, we do not know each other, and, no, we are not even in the same generation (technically-kinda-sorta), but we do have a great deal in common.
I tell y’all all about it.

But first things first. Yeah, I might give one or two spoilers.

DON’T GET USED TO IT, THO, YO!

What immediately struck me about Clark’s story was her now almost desperate need to know her father. Not that she didn’t know him, but he’d died due to an accident at work when the author was at the pivotal age of 16. You know…those angsty years when we are more self-centered and interested in our friends and swooning over love interests.

That is the point at which my heart shattered. In fact, I will confess that I had to read this book in short segments, because of all the feels.

You see, I was a true Daddy’s Girl, the baby of the family, and I adored my Daddy like he hung the moon. Speaking of the moon … My Daddy, like Clark’s own father, was a work-a-holic, like most men in The Greatest Generation. So most of the time when my Daddy was just getting home from work, it was at the end of the graveyard shift, when the world was dark and quiet. When the only things awake were night creatures and the jewels and gems strewn across the sky, scattered around the moon.

He’d always awake me when he’d get in, still in his work clothes, and whisper, “Belle Buttons, wanna take a walk with Daddy?” I’d scramble out of bed, slip on shoes (still in my PJs), and Daddy and I would walk the woods and pasture without a flashlight, using only moon and starlight to guide our steps. He taught me the magic of the night. He’d stop and whisper, “Let’s listen to the nightlife for a while.” And we’d stand, hand-in-hand, listening to the creatures of the night singing their songs to the twinkling sky above.

I learned the constellations by name, Orion is still my favorite, the Little Dipper coming in second, and he taught me to appreciate how the silvery moonlight dripped from the edges of the tree leaves against the canvas of the velvety night sky.

Daddy was magic. At that young age, and even now at my not so young age, he was, and will always be, a giant in my eyes. Though he was relatively small in stature. Indeed, it had been such a shocking blow when he succumbed to a hospital infection at the young age of 81 that it truly nearly crushed me.

Seventeen years later, I still speak to him every day.

And I listen to the nightlife as it sings to the night sky every night.

Thank you, God, that I had my Daddy until I was 35 years old and that he'd lived long enough to teach that same magic to my daughter.

My heart ached for Clark as I read how she’d not had the time to truly know her father. But I was immediately swept up in intriguing the story of how she’d pieced together the giant mystery of her father’s past life in the military.

Clark’s search for the story of her father’s untold part in the Army Air Corp during WWII is so tangible that I felt as if I were right there with her, helping her put the evidence together.  Her style of toggling betwixt the present and her childhood pulls the reader deeper into the story until the reader feels personally invested in finding out the truth and getting to know her father.

Well, it hit me deeply in my heart, because, as I stated earlier. Clark and I have a lot in common, though we are (kinda-sorta) not in the same generation. You see, my Daddy had also been in the Army Air Corp during WWII doing armed reconnaissance in the South Pacific, stationed on New Guinea. My uncle, Daddy’s older brother, coincidentally served in Africa (where Clark discovers her father had also served) and later on the beaches of Normandy.

Daddy was also a photographer for the Army Air Corps, and we have many of his original photographs from the war. Many of the ones you see in books of the South Pacific were taken by him and his group.

Is Clark’s father in some of those photos? I have to wonder, I wish I knew!

This is my Daddy before the war. He'd enlisted at the age of 17, before Pearl Harbor.

Isn’t it odd that I, a GenXer has so much in common with a Baby Boomer? Actually, I’m kinda in a gen all my own, since Daddy was 21 years older than my mother. *Le Gasp*!  (Yes, it was both of their first and only marriage.) Indeed, I have so much in common with Clark that I wasn't even surprised to discover that she had majored in History just like moi!

But I, once again, digress…

Clark has taken me on a long drive into her past, and in doing so has turned my gaze backwards, too. The difference betwixt mine and Clarks’ stories is that Daddy told us all about the war. It was ingrained in us. In fact, I frequently did school reports about Daddy’s war service and took his pictures to school for presentations. It truly struck me in my heart that Clark had to really work to search for clues about her father’s personality, military service, and what he’d been like in his younger years.

Y’all, I can see this book being turned into a Netflix original movie. There are so many bits and pieces of the puzzle that Clark unearths, and along that way, she gets to know her father who’d died all those years ago. I'm pretty sure she may have used a bit of magic of her own!

And that’s why I grant

LANDING IN MY PRESENT
By
Mary Clark
5 Fabulous Flying Brooms!


Mary Walker Clark is a retired attorney turned travel writer who loves taking readers with her to worldwide destinations. She has been traveling independently and internationally for over fifty years. Her essays may be found in the Paris News, at her blog, "Mary Clark, Traveler," and her podcasts at KETR 88.9, an NPR affiliate. Clark is an award-winning member of the North American Travel Journalists Association and a contributor to Still Me, … After All These Years, 24 Writers Reflect on Aging. 
In 2016, Clark traveled to India and China to follow her father's WWII footsteps when he was a Hump pilot flying over the Himalayas. Her journey to connect with him fifty years after his death is told in her book, Landing in My Present
Clark is a fifth generation Texan living in Paris, Texas.
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18 July 2020

*Review & Giveaway!* A DELIGHTFUL LITTLE BOOK ON AGING by Stephanie Raffelock

A DELIGHTFUL LITTLE BOOK ON AGING
by
Stephanie Raffelock

Genre: Inspirational / Spiritual / Essays / Self-Help 
Publisher: She Writes Press 
Publication Date: April 28, 2020 
Number of Pages: 119 pages 


Scroll down for the giveaway!




All around us, older women flourish in industry, entertainment, and politics. Do they know something that we don’t, or are we all just trying to figure it out? For so many of us, our hearts and minds still feel that we are twenty-something young women who can take on the world. But in our bodies, the flexibility and strength that were once taken for granted are far from how we remember them. Every day we have to rise above the creaky joints and achy knees to earn the opportunity of moving through the world with a modicum of grace.  Yet we do rise, because it’s a privilege to grow old, and every single day is a gift. Peter Pan’s mantra was, “Never grow up”; our collective mantra should be, “Never stop growing.” This collection of user-friendly stories, essays, and philosophies invites readers to celebrate whatever age they are with a sense of joy and purpose and with a spirit of gratitude.


PRAISE for A Delightful Little Book on Aging:



“Where are the elders? The wise women, the crones, the guardians of truth here to gently, lovingly, and playfully guide us towards the fulfillment of our collective destiny? It turns out that they are right here, in our midst, and Stephanie Raffelock is showcasing the reclamation of aging as a moment of becoming, no longer a dreaded withering into insignificance. A Delightful Little Book on Aging lays down new and beautiful tracks for the journey into our richest, deepest, and wildest years.” 
Kelly Brogan, MD, author of the New York Times bestseller A Mind of Your Own

“A helpful, uplifting work for readers handling the challenges of growing older.” 
Kirkus Reviews

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Well, howdy, y’all!  How’s everyone progressing through this weird Covid-19 pandemic thing?  All I can say is that I’ve just given myself my second quarantine haircut. I won’t say any more about it, except that there was hair all over the bathroom when I was done. And seeing as how my hair is pret-near (East Texas slang for “pretty near”) blood-red, the aftermath looked like a murder scene, which it kinda was in relation to what I did to my Pompidou. My hairdresser will likely loathe me with the flames of a thousand suns when she finally gets to see me again.

All of this Covid-19 stuff makes me feel shut off from the world with my memories of freer days. It’s as if we, as a society, have had our childlike innocence stripped from us, and now we see the world through raw eyes. It’s as if carefree days are gone forever – no more last-minute trips to the coffeeshop with friends or lingering visits to my favorite museum for fear of contracting the plague.

I am reminded of a quote in one of the Harry Potter movies regarding Dementors: 
“It’s as if all happiness has gone out from the world.”



And this makes me feel old.

How timely is it that Kristine-the-Book-Siren messaged me about an upcoming review op of a book about aging? Okay, I confess that my nostrils flared, my eyes grew wide, and I huffed.

“She’s calling me old!” I said to myself. “How dare she insinuate such a thing!” I huffed as I typed my deets into the blogger tour sign up form. “Well, I never! The very audacity of the thing!” I blustered as I clicked the “submit” button.

And then I remembered that I’m a GenXer, and I am kinda - sorta … in a roundabout way … aging

Heck fire and save the matches! This is the oldest I’ve ever been!

HELP!!!!!!!!!!!

Help arrived on a scalding hawt summer afternoon. It was hawt as a firecracker when I peered into my mailbox and withdrew the envelope, which contained the most adorable little hardback book I’ve seen in a long while. It’s even got a prim little dust cover! I confess that I squeed out loud in the blistering heat, just before wilting like an old flower out of water. Thank goodness my truck has a powerful AC. Hallelujah and amen!

By now, y’all know that the first thang (yes, I meant to include that “a”) I did was carefully turn back the adorbs cover to look for that all encompassing and most desired autograph. Alas, there was none. I daintily checked the next two pages. Nope. Nada.



“Well, son of a biscuit!” my internal voice echoed in my head. “Le sigh. At least she sent a note with the book.” My bottom lip pooched out, and I headed back to the house to begin my journey through the pages of A DELIGHTFUL LITTLE BOOK ON AGING by Stephanie Raffelock.

This little book feels so good in the reader’s hands. It has a tangibility of quality and collectability (me likes alliteration) that book nerds love. It also came with a darling little ethereal bag tied with a white satin ribbon that contains a neat stack of pocket cards of “inspiration and light,” according to the card on top.

Those three words are a perfect description of these lovely pocket cards. Each one is inscribed with a bit of wisdom, of, well, inspiration and light!

Except for the last one in the stack:


Sorry, Stephanie, I plan on becoming a vampire and living forever.

But I digress…

I thought this little book would be an easy, quick read. At just over 100 pages, it shouldn’t take long to plow through, right?



Test results determined that was a lie.

A DELIGHTFUL LITTLE BOOK ON AGING is packed with thoughtful essays, though short, are richly filled with a lifetime of wisdom mixed with a dash of Stephanie’s personal stories, and topped with an indescribable spice that rests on the mental palate and makes the reader want to slow down and savor each one. And learn from them.



Each year, I try to have a theme for myself. This year has been a theme dealing with anxiety by learning to mediate. It’s a journey of learning deep, life-changing wisdom that I’d never known was possible through the practice of sitting in mediation. I’ve learned this through the Calm App on my phone. It’s extraordinary how it changes the way one looks at everything.

At how one learns to be present and in the moment with gratitude.



This great big little book is in tandem with what I’ve been learning through meditation. And it’s exceptional. It’s beyond meaningful. Reading Stephanie’s essays, stopping to relish a sentence or paragraph once more, is like having that longed-for, last-minute trip to the coffee shop with a friend during which one lingers over a steaming mug of coffee and crumbly bites of cake while engaging in rich conversation and connection with a close friend.

I feel less alone. I feel understood.

I feel less old and more wise. (I know it should say "wiser," but just roll with me here.)

I feel as though I’ve made a new bestie. That's why I decided that only a certain bookmark would do for this book. Yes, Stephanie Raffelock is my new best friend!
(I promise not to stalk you, Steph! It's okay if I call you "Steph," right?)


There’s a richness in Stephanie’s prose … a certain (almost) poetic quality that draws the reader into the innermost part of each essay, as if the reader is a little bee and each essay is a blossoming, fragrant flower. Just as it is impossible for the bee to leave a flower without becoming covered in pollen, so it is impossible for the reader to come to the last sentence without having gleaned some deep magic.

Am I proposing that Stephanie is some mystical siren or magical being? Mayhap she is!




A DELIGHTFUL LITTLE BOOK ON AGING by Stephanie Raffelock is anything but little. Once the reader turns back the cover and steps in, she discovers just how deep this book is. It is a veritable library of life wisdom. 

Richly and warmly written, A DELIGHTFUL BOOK ON AGING by Stephanie Raffelock is a priceless jewel worthy of reading again and again.

And that’s why I grant
A DELIGHTFUL LITTLE BOOK ON AGING
By Stephanie Raffelock
5 wise brooms of gratitude! 





Stephanie Raffelock is the author of A Delightful Little Book on Aging  (She Writes Press, April 2020). A graduate of Naropa University’s program in Writing and Poetics, she has penned articles for numerous publications, including the Aspen Times, the Rogue Valley Messenger, Nexus Magazine, Omaha Lifestyles, Care2.com, and SixtyandMe.com. Stephanie is part of the positive-aging movement, which encourages viewing age as a beautiful and noble passage, the fruition of years that birth wisdom and deep gratitude for all of life.  She’s a recent transplant to Austin, Texas, where she enjoys life with her husband, Dean, and their Labrador retriever, Jeter (yes, named after the great Yankee shortstop). 

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