Whisper Dancing, the third collection of short stories in The Last Storyteller trilogy is available in paperback and electronically. The Audible edition will be available October.
Follows is an excerpt from the title story-
The
child was ill most of time, perhaps the cold floor took more than it gave. One
year, Patricia Mae fell ill with pneumonia. Her mother had saved pennies, hiding
them away in an old milk jug, in hopes Christmas morning would include candy
for her children. Carrying the milk jug under one arm and little Patricia under
the other, Emma trudged through the muddy streets of Eastie with her head bowed
against the wind and stinging sleet, to the only physician practicing in East
Boston. A gentle man of sixty (maybe seventy), bent at the waste, wearing wired
spectacles balanced on the tip of his bulbous nose. His hair as white as snow,
and his voice barely a whisper. The good doctor waived his customary fee when
presented with the milk jug half-filled with pennies. His nurse, a young girl
from Scotland, calmed the small child, Patricia, by making silly faces and
singing nursery rhymes while the doctor administered care. The young nurse,
Ailisa Barrie by name, fascinated the small girl. Patricia Anne giggled at her
Scottish accent and silly faces. Secretly, Patricia wanted to be just like
Ailisa. A dozen years later, her dreams come true. She realized the only way
out of Eastie and the crowded two-room apartment (although by that time only
four of the seven children stilled resided there) was to go to nursing school.
Massachusetts General Hospital had opened a nursing program a year earlier.
Patricia worked diligently and was accepted into the program on the eve of her
16th birthday. Four times a week, she woke before the sun peeked
over the Atlantic, and walked the dark streets of Eastie to catch the first
ferry to Boston, home of Massachusetts General Hospital. The night sky was her only
companion when, after a long day of learning the skills of Florence
Nightingale, she boarded the last ferry back to Eastie. It was during a return
trip home she met the young man she would marry, Thomas, “Red” Quinn.
Quinn,
riding the ferry every day to work in the booming textile industry, possessed the
same determination to escape the poverty of East Boston as his future bride
did. The textile industry paid twice the wages of that of a boat builder and
promised futures not more boats.
Each
evening, as the ferry crossed the harbor, he would stand next to Patricia,
holding onto the rails, secretly hoping her hand would brush against his.
Gazing across the water and sharing his dreams of one day attending Harvard and
hers of becoming a nurse, Thomas Quinn fell in love with the girl from Eastie.