Author: Cindy La Ferle Website
Publisher: Hearth Stone Books
Copyright © Cindy La Ferle
Review by Dawn G. Prince
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Excerpt: Beach Stones
What is it about human nature that makes us want to share our stories and read other people's stories? Give me a book of personal essays and I am in my element, anxious to steal a peak, however briefly, into the lives of people I've never met, but whose experiences, almost always, rub up against my own.
Beverage beside me, I delved between the pages of Cindy La Ferle's
Writing Home, reading the pieces out of the dated sequence, a title catching me here and there and a story drawing me in. The first story that caught my eye was
Beach Stones, and it struck a responsive chord within me about what to keep and what to let go of...aptly relative to this point in my life, where 40 plus makes you realize your priorities and the things worth holding onto and being open to the world of possibilites. This is my favorite piece.
The stories are essays and columns from La Ferle's 12-year stint with The Royal Oak Daily Tribune.
She is every woman - with a career and family - facing the daily challenges of life in the suburbs, and her stories are indentifable by their sheer simplicity and commonness. She talks about empty nest syndrome, faith, aging gracefully, what's good for the soul, family, women bonding and all the every day, and sometimes, philosophical things that come up in the life of the modern woman trying to do it all while remaining mindful. Her world and the people in it seem very familiar to me.
La Ferle's words are easy, inviting you into her small, yet significant life and keeping you there because you recognize parts of her world and experiences. There's warmth to her words that puts you at home. There's calmness to her writing, nothing frenzied but written as if the words just rolled off her lips in conversation and landed on the page. She packs alot into these short essays, capturing every nuance of life, and I came away with the sense that our experiences are, indeed, universal.
Good writing does several things. It takes you to a place of familiarity, or it teaches you something about yourself and evokes emotions.
Writing Home does all of these things.
The book has won numerous awards, including the Writer's Digest award. La Ferle's voice is like sitting down with an old friend over coffee, sharing small stories that probably won't change the world, but they are important, nonetheless, because they remind us of this or that time in our own lives - moments that are ordinary and extra-ordinary at the same time.
Focusing on women's issues, Cindy La Ferle is a freelance writer based in Royal Oak, where she is Writer-in-Residence for the Royal Oak Public Library. Parts of this essay were excerpted from her award-winning essay collection, Writing Home, which is distributed to Michigan bookstores from Wayne State University Press. It's also available at
Amazon.com. Visit Cindy La Ferle's Home Office:
www.laferle.com for her weekly blog and more information on her writings.
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Beach Stones
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