Saturday, September 4, 2021

Whisper Dancing


 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.

Whisper Dancing

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.


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