Florence Dombey Creations
Traveler
Whirlwinds, Waves, and Willow
disconnected and drifting
Traveler is a work of Literary Fiction, a character-driven tale of two women who fall in love as teenagers during a week at a summer camp in 1962, after which they are unwittingly separated for decades due to serendipity and youthful folly. Sue Reinhart is born into the simple world of Blain, a small village in Sherman's Valley, a valle
Traveler is a work of Literary Fiction, a character-driven tale of two women who fall in love as teenagers during a week at a summer camp in 1962, after which they are unwittingly separated for decades due to serendipity and youthful folly. Sue Reinhart is born into the simple world of Blain, a small village in Sherman's Valley, a valley that runs parallel to the Tuscarora Mountain in Pennsylvania, where Sue lives the life of a woman confined to the sometimes-stifling isolation of marriage typical of rural America in the 1970's, 80's, and 90's. Miriam "Mimi" Smithson was a popular athlete and excellent student at a large suburban high school in Central Pennsylvania, to which she returns to coach track and teach after having hiked the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine in the months following her graduation from Penn State. In 1969, Mimi lives in a basement apartment in the home of Lydia Banks, who is a psychiatrist with a predilection for clandestine sexual dalliances with male patients who are prominent professionals in Harrisburg and its surrounds. Eventually, Lydia--motivated by boredom and curious about sex with a woman--seduces Mimi and becomes preoccupied with determining why a woman, nearly twenty years younger than Lydia and with no apparent interest in Lydia as a person, had acquiesced so readily to Lydia's wishes, which leads Lydia to hypothesize that Mimi was, in effect, groomed as a child by someone.
One evening toward the end of May, Sue--having accepted her destiny as being the loving mother to 5-year-old Sally and the compliant wife of a kind but sexually clueless Bill Bishop--is told that Bill has just been killed in an accident, At a party celebrating a notable track season, Mimi is caught in the act of being kissed by a girl who is a star on the track team. Mimi did not encourage or welcome the kiss, but being caught instantly plunges her into an irrational downward spiral of escape, which ends in Mimi's involvement in a murder. Now in deep panic, and having already prepared to hike from Harrisburg to Maine at the end of the school year before enrolling in a University of Maine graduate program, Mimi packs up her gear and disappears for the next three decades into the Appalachians where she becomes a mysterious woman known along the Appalachian Trail as The Traveler. During those years, Sue marries a rough and tumble contractor named Harold Burkholder, raises her daughter, and eventually--tired of her lifelong confinement to unfulfilling marriages and Harold's cheating with a Marysville redhead--Sue obtains a divorce and uses the settlement to buy a small business in Blain called The Tuscarora Hotel and Café. Not long after Sue becomes a hotelier, The Traveler--who would occasionally over the decades enter small towns near the Appalachian Trail for supplies or temporary work--enters the Tuscarora Café with her sidekick Grits, a large, longhaired, black dog of indeterminate lineage.
Sue and Mimi were both intimately linked to Charles Mason during their youth but are not reunited with him until after Charles, now the multi-term Harrisburg Mayor, decides to run for what is expected to be an open election for Governor of Pennsylvania in 2002. Charles hopes winning the election will be an important step toward a Presidential run in 2008, and hires Winona Wellington, a calloused, high-powered, and ego-maniacal political operative to manage his gubernatorial campaign. Wellington has two specific and essential challenges: find a way to hide Charles' graft related to a land grab near Blain and a way to "deal" with Charles' wife, Lesley. The decision is made to hold a campaign kick-off rally in Blain, and it is there and then that the past collides with the present and instructs an unexpected future when The Traveler, Sue, Lydia, and Charles converge in Blain.
disconnected and drifting
Whirlwinds, Waves, and Willow
disconnected and drifting
Disconnected and Drifting is a character-driven work of Literary Fiction and a two-part prelude to THE WILLOW CHRONICLE (two novels in one eBook), the novel is set in 1955; part 1 tells the story of why Willow Benton’s father, Carl Meyers decides to leave Lewes on the Delaware Bay and head to Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula in sear
Disconnected and Drifting is a character-driven work of Literary Fiction and a two-part prelude to THE WILLOW CHRONICLE (two novels in one eBook), the novel is set in 1955; part 1 tells the story of why Willow Benton’s father, Carl Meyers decides to leave Lewes on the Delaware Bay and head to Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula in search of Willow's mother.
In part 2, Willow is introduced in two cameo appearances as this section of the book reveals the significant consequences of her parents' reunion, including the solving of the murder of Meyers' Marine brother.
Whirlwinds, Waves, and Willow
Whirlwinds, Waves, and Willow
Whirlwinds, Waves, and Willow
THE WILLOW CHRONICLE, VOL. 2
Whirlwinds, Waves, and Willow is a character-driven work of Literary Fiction, which begins in 1956, after 17-year-old Willow Benton finds her town has become claustrophobic due to the arrival of her father who she'd been told had died in WW II. Bambi Macey, a year older, has her own problem: an unwanted pregna
THE WILLOW CHRONICLE, VOL. 2
Whirlwinds, Waves, and Willow is a character-driven work of Literary Fiction, which begins in 1956, after 17-year-old Willow Benton finds her town has become claustrophobic due to the arrival of her father who she'd been told had died in WW II. Bambi Macey, a year older, has her own problem: an unwanted pregnancy. It is the start of an epic journey when the two girls decide to run away to the South Pacific aboard a stolen 60-ft yawl.
From the Self-Publishing Review: "The narrative is remarkably detailed and well-researched, seamlessly diving into nautical terminology and sailing lingo that feels authentic and colloquial. From multilayered narrative musings and creative descriptive passages to explosions of raw emotion that reveal the unbridled ugliness of human nature, there is attention to nuance in every aspect of the prose. This captivating story is an ambitious, unpredictable, and undaunted examination into the dark corners of human connection, resulting in an intimate and revelatory novel."
At sea
Found and Lost in Paradise
Whirlwinds, Waves, and Willow
THE WILLOW CHRONICLE, VOL. 3
Within The Willow Chronicle is an epic, three-volume, coming of age story that begins in Whirlwinds, Waves, and Willow and concludes with Found and Lost in Paradise. The middle volume of this trilogy, At Sea, a character-driven work of Literary Fiction, finds two young American women who have begun a great ad
THE WILLOW CHRONICLE, VOL. 3
Within The Willow Chronicle is an epic, three-volume, coming of age story that begins in Whirlwinds, Waves, and Willow and concludes with Found and Lost in Paradise. The middle volume of this trilogy, At Sea, a character-driven work of Literary Fiction, finds two young American women who have begun a great adventure in 1956, an escape from the puritanical world of small town America to what they hope is a liberating world of French Polynesia aboard a stolen, 60-foot yawl. In At Sea and later in Found and Lost in Paradise, Willow "Billie" Benton and Brittany "Bambi" Macey endure tumultuous months that erase whatever remains of adolescent innocence. Under the mentorship of Oliana Teriierooiterai, the last Marquesan Chieftess on Hiva Oa, Billie and Bambi learn to cope with a world where the only restraints to satisfying their desires are consent and imagination. The inclusion of significant does of greed and betrayal, a touch of cannibalism, and a beautiful and faithful mahu -- a third gender person named Mahana who becomes a friend and lover to them both -- creates a story set in a world that is far different from the America that Billie and Bambi have left behind. But there remains a greater world to which they must return, a world where conflicts are resolved by fate, courage, perseverance, and a strategic return.
Found and Lost in Paradise
Found and Lost in Paradise
Found and Lost in Paradise
COMING IN APRIL 2024
THE WILLOW CHRONICLE VOL. 4
See description of At Sea.