When the Grits Trees are in Bloom

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire6 Comments
Grit Flower

“Giving Northerners unbuttered instant grits is an old remedy for getting rid of tourists.” — Lewis Grizzard, author of “Don’t Sit Under the Grits Tree with Anyone Else But Me.”

You know it’s spring in south and central Georgia when the grits trees are in bloom.

True grits, as the late Atlanta humorist Lewis Grizzard would attest, are not INSTANT: “The idiot who invented instant grits also thought of frozen fried chicken, and they ought to lock him up before he tries to freeze-dry collards.”

After a hearty breakfast of grits and red eye gravy, true Southerners drive south on I-75 through Macon into what was once Stuckeys and pecan praline country toward Tifton where, years ago, Captain Tift once built a saw mill in support of his family’s shipping business.

The captain was also into turpentine, tobacco, pecans, sweet potatoes and grits. Northern historians, thinking grits were made in factories, overlooked Tift’s grit orchards, so you won’t find them in your grade school history books. But those orchards flourish today and every year on March 25, the kind of people who might take exception to freeze-dried collards, head into the lush agricultural lands of Georgia’s coastal plain in search of evergreen trees with large white flowers.

Years before the white man knew there would one day be a Southern state named Georgia, the Apalachee Indians discovered that the natural result of crossing a Live Oak (Quercus virginiana) with a Southern Magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora) was the Grits Tree (Quercus grandiflora Zea mays).

Like pearls in oysters, Grits are created in the soft tissue of the tree’s magnificent flowers. In the late summer and early fall, Grits fall like rain from the trees where Grits Sweepers gather them into windrows that look like dunes of snow. They dry in the sun until they are ready to be vacuumed up and cast before swine in the form of bacon, ham, and breaded pork chops.

But in the spring, it’s the white grits flowers that attract the attention. The kind of person who would eat freeze-dried collards or who thinks red eye gravy is the airline food served on long, over-night flights, will mistake a grits flower for a magnolia blossom. Magnolias have a musky, cloying scent. Grits flowers smell like Waffle House.

True Grits are in the Bag

“Sitting under the grits tree” is a phrase that goes back to founding of Georgia Grits Day on March 25, 1901 in honor of the birth of Georgia Brown beneath such a tree near Tifton. Sitting under a grits tree is about jazz and having babies and eating red eye gravy on a hot summer afternoon when it seems like every breath of air between Macon and the Florida border smells like breakfast at a Waffle House.

There’s no love better than the love built with true grits. It’s Southern love and you can’t get it in a factory and you won’t find it in the hashed browns part of the country. Every March, we celebrate true grits, not the movie, but the food and all it stands for.
–

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of the satirical novel, “Special Investigative Reporter” on Kindle for about the same amount as a steaming bowl of grits.

The spookiness of written truth

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn fiction, magic2 Comments

Some people have a built in BS detector. They can see the flaws and scams in the world’s best publicity.

Writers have a spookiness truth detector.

In her excellent book for writers, The Sister from Below: When the Muse Gets Her Way, author Naomi Ruth Lowinsky begins with one of my favorite Robert Graves quotes:

“The test of a poet’s vision,” writes Graves, “is the accuracy of his portrayal of the White Goddess. The reason why hairs stand on end, the eyes water, when one writes or reads a true poem is that a true poem is necessarily an invocation to the White Goddess.”

The experience Graves describes is similar to that spooked feeling one gets while walking down a lonely road at night and pondering what might be watching him from the dark forest, or while walking through an old house at night and thinking of yarns about it being haunted or that people were killed there or that something lurks within that isn’t human.

When a writer reads or writes the truth, the bells and whistles of his spookiness truth detector go off. Now, this detector won’t help him decide whether Mobil or Valvoline is better for his car or even whether he can get the meal his body needs on any given night at Olive Garden or Outback.

No, the spookiness truth detector is usually reserved for matters of the heat and soul, gods and goddesses, sun and moon, and for thoughts and ideas that are only too happy to go bump in the night.

When I read, I want to be spooked either by thrills and chills and excitement or by the truth of important things. When I write, I know my revisions and edits are done when my eyes water and the hairs on my arms stand on end.

If you’re a writer who is in tune with his muse—or, say, with the universe—then you may feel spooked when you read Lowinsky’s book. Truth be told, my BS detector went off while reading certain sections of Robert Graves The White Goddess. But it didn’t go off when I read The Sister from Below: When the Muse Gets Her Way.

But, I’m not here to convince you to buy the book. I’ve been feeling spooked while researching and writing my novel Sarbande and while reading through a lucky haul of good novels lately.

I’m not frightened, mind you. I just wanted to spread out the chills a bit.
–

You may also like

I’ve started a new web log called Sarabande’s Journey to share some of the heroine’s journey resources I’ve found while working on my novel. If you are reading about, writing about, or on such a journey, I invite you to stop by and see if anything there spooks you.

—Malcolm

Kalispell Workshop: Getting Kids Engaged with Nature

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn environment, Glacier National Park4 Comments

Free copy for each participant
from NPS Glacier National Park

On Saturday, April 9 the education staff at Glacier National Park, in conjunction with the Flathead Community of Resource Educators (CORE), will offer a free workshop for parents, educators, and others who work with children focused on how to get children outside and engaged with nature. The full-day session will be held at Lone Pine State Park (see map) in Kalispell from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Topics to be covered include how to encourage youth to spend time outdoors, fun activities that connect children with nature, and places in the local community for outdoor play. In addition to Glacier National Park staff, Flathead CORE partners for the day include the Flathead Conservation District, Ravenwood Outdoor Learning Center, Flathead National Forest, and Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks.

A large portion of the day will be spent outdoors, so participants should come prepared to be outside, regardless of the weather. Participants should also bring a bagged lunch. A variety of information resources will be provided.

As more and more children and adults become disconnected from the natural world, Glacier National Park hosts this workshop to support goals of the National Park Service Children in Nature effort: “To reconnect our youth and their families with the land, create a new generation of stewards, and improve the physical and mental health of our Nation.”

This is the third year this workshop has been made possible through a grant from the Glacier National Park Fund. Thanks to this generous financial support, all workshop participants will receive a free annual Glacier National Park pass, valid for unlimited visits to Glacier National Park for 12 months plus a copy of Richard Louv’s book ‘Last Child in the Woods – Saving Our Children from Nature- Deficit Disorder.’

The workshop is limited to the first 40 registrants. Staff from Ravenwood Outdoor Learning Center will provide a free concurrent children’s camp for up to 20 school-aged children that accompany parents attending the workshop.

Contact Debby Mensch at debby_mensch@nps.gov or (406) 888-7942 to register and/or ask questions.

Review: ‘The Other Life’ by Ellen Meister

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, reviews1 Comment

The Other LifeThe Other Life by Ellen Meister
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Quinn Braverman gave up her life in the big city with her high-energy, neurotic boyfiend Eugene for life in the suburbs with a loving son, Isaac, a stable but undemonstrative husband Lewis and a Volvo. The Volvo is a nice touch, for it symbolizes what Quinn believes she has—a rock solid middle class life with no spark in it. Quinn has “issues.” In fact, all of the characters in Ellen Meister’s poignant, yet somewhat flat, “The Other Life” have issues.

Quinn’s artistic mother, who suffered from depression, escaped her lot in life through suicide. As Quinn tries to come to grips with a difficult pregnancy, the loss of her mother and whether or not her own life is worth living in its present form, she has an escape hatch that’s better than death but ultimately just as absolute.

Quinn has always known that another Quinn lives another life in an alternative universe. She is aware of portals between the here and now and that look-alike place. In the other life, she’s still with Eugene, isn’t carrying a daughter who might never have a life at all, and isn’t driving a Volvo with all that entails. Seeking answers, if not escape, she finally steps through the portal in her basement. She likes what she sees. She feels guilty for liking it. It pulls at her like a dark undertow on a sunny beach. Yet, if she likes it too much and chooses to stay there, then Isaac and Lewis will be lost to her. Early on, she understands that she will not be able to step back and forth between these lives forever.

“The Other Life,” isn’t science fiction; yet some readers might appreciate additional clarity about Quinn’s universe next door. While Quinn acknowledges that the other life contains another version of herself, she never meets this self, nor does she become that other self and suddenly have all of the continuity and knowledge that would bring her. One gets the impression that the universe next door exists in stasis until Quinn appears.

More importantly within the scope of the novel, however, is the reality with which Meister presents the typical, and often difficult, challenges a woman faces in marriage, balancing the needs of a husband and a child with her own creaturehood, the losses of parents, and the prospects of a heartbreaking future with a daughter who may be born retarded. There’s an honesty here that we don’t often see in fiction, the concept that a woman can be happily married while wondering if that marriage is really the choice she should have made.

Quinn, as all real and fictional characters, must make painful decisions. Meister’s inventive next-door universe gives Quinn a unique option even though more magic, spark and facts about how that other life works would have strengthened the novel. While Quinn herself comes across as self-centered and a bit hard for anyone, including a mother, to love, her choice is no less difficult. Her thought processes as she makes her choices about the road not yet taken are the story’s greatest strength.

View all my reviews

–

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “The Sun Singer,” a mountain adventure about a young man who steps through a portal into an alternative universe.

The Call of the Mountains: The Artists of Glacier National Park

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn art, Glacier National Park3 Comments

Larry Len Peterson brings together in one book a representative selection of the artists who have been inspired by Glacier National Park along with commentary that places the work into a historical perspective.

The Call of the Mountains: The Artists of Glacier National Park (Mountain Press Publishing, 2002), is organized into four sections: “Sign Talkers: The Authors,” “Empire Builders: The Hills and Their Artists” “Shadow Catchers: The Photographers” and “Word Painters: Charles M. Russell and Friends.”

Author of over forty publications, Peterson is a collector of western art and the former chairman of the Charles M. Russell Museum’s advisory board.

Jerry Fetz, of Crown of the Continent E-Magazine writes, “The Call of the Mountains is an exceptional book, one that every admirer of Western art and Glacier National Park, separately but especially together, should own, look at again and again, and give to likeminded or even potentially like-minded friends and family members on special occasions. We owe Larry Len Peterson much gratitude for gathering these artists and works together, and for supplying extremely important textual background and information about the artists, their artistic works, and the amazing Glacier National Park that inspired them.”

A magical novel set in Glacier National Park

It’s just your imagination, kiddo

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books2 Comments

“We’re going through!” The Commander’s voice was like thin ice breaking. He wore his full-dress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap pulled down rakishly over one cold gray eye. “We can’t make it, sir. It’s spoiling for a hurricane, if you ask me.” “I’m not asking you, Lieutenant Berg,” said the Commander. “Throw on the power lights! Rev her up to 8,500! We’re going through!” The pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The Commander stared at the ice forming on the pilot window. He walked over and twisted a row of complicated dials. “Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!” he shouted. “Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!” repeated Lieutenant Berg. “Full strength in No. 3 turret!” shouted the Commander. “Full strength in No. 3 turret!” The crew, bending to their various tasks in the huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at each other and grinned. “The old man will get us through” they said to one another. “The Old Man ain’t afraid of Hell!” . . .

“Not so fast! You’re driving too fast!” said Mrs. Mitty. “What are you driving so fast for?”

“Hmm?” said Walter Mitty. He looked at his wife, in the seat beside him, with shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who had yelled at him in a crowd. “You were up to fifty-five,” she said. “You know I don’t like to go more than forty. You were up to fifty-five.” Walter Mitty drove on toward Waterbury in silence, the roaring of the SN202 through the worst storm in twenty years of Navy flying fading in the remote, intimate airways of his mind.

— James Thurber in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”

I no longer remember when I first read James Thurber’s famous short story, but I appreciated Walter Mitty. While I had no intention of growing up to be a hen-pecked husband, I was addicted to the world of my imagination, and Mitty was the epitome of imaginators.

Even though my school teachers assigned the Walter Mitty story every few years, they did so for purposes of a tedious discussion and not so we would go and do likewise, imagination-wise.

While Mrs. Skretting was conjugating German verbs and Mrs. Johnson was talking about the symbolism in “The Grapes of Wrath, I was far away.


I was storming the guns of navarone in the Greek islands with Gregory Peck or riding across the desert with Lawrence of Arabia or kissing Holly Golightly after having breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Early in life, I learned that my imagination was much more interesting–and often more sexy–than diagramming sentences, dissecting happless frogs, or computing the area of a triangle. When asked why I was a lousy student, I said, probably with a touch of youthful arrogance, that I wasn’t planning a career in diagramming, dissecting, or triangles.

“Well where have you been?” my teachers, pastors, parents and other mentor-type individuals asked with a touch of exasperating.

“Trying to save the Alamo,” I said.

“That’s just your imagination. It’ll never get you anywhere good.”

“Tell that to Hemingway, Faulkner and the people behind Mad Magazine.”

“The odds of you being any of those people are small,” they said. “Better to stick with the real world and be a tinker, tailor, soldier or a spy. Or, perhaps you could sell insurance.”


While I fondly remember kissing Holly Golightly in the rain, I’m past that now, for my imagination moves on. This morning I was imagining riding on a flying horse about an Illinois river and this afternoon I plan to imagine fighting a nasty flock of crows in the Mountains.

I’m an author and my imagination is my stock in trade even though I could probably earn more selling insurance or being a tinker or a tailor.

Today is the the 72nd anniverary of the original publication of Thurber’s story. It was, of course, just his imagination. After all these years, I’ve got to tell you that if you think I’m not listening while you tell me about Aunt Mable’s gall blatter surgery or the number of red lights between your house and your office, you’re right.

I’m far away listening to the pounding of the cylinders increase, ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa, as my star cruiser flies in low over the trackless wastes of Mercury where a Klingon War Bird is about to decloak and fire a barrage of photon torpedos.

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire,” an imaginary story about a reporter trying to find a missing race horse in a town that doesn’t exist in real life.

The Father of Florida Folk

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Florida2 Comments

McLean in 1965 - Courtesy Florida State Archives
The sun was not shining,
The mist it was thick;
“Oh Lordy!” Tate holler’d,
“I’m lost up the crick.”
–Will McLean, “Tate’s Hell” in “Florida Sand”

Will McLean (1919-1990) wrote 3,700 songs and was often called the “Father of Florida Folk.” If you grew up in North Florida during the 1950s and 1960s and liked folk music, you knew the music of Will McLean. He sang about the swamps and piney woods, capturing forever in his music the land that he loved.

I thought of Will McLean and his 1964 collection of songs called “Florida Sand” when I set major scenes of my novel Garden of Heaven: an Odyssey in Tate’s Hell Swamp in the Florida panhandle. I couldn’t resist having my characters stop by an old store in nearby Sumatra, where McLean stopped from time to time, and hear a few lines from his ballad about a man named Tate who was stalked by a panther in that swamp over a century ago.

In The Other Florida, Gloria Jahoda of Tallahassee, wrote, “Will McLean, who grew up near Sumatra…is a folksinger in the truest sense of the word, for he has taken the legends of his childhood and woven them into music.”

This, I think, was the greatest strength of his songs. He sang of the land we knew and of the the people and stories we grew up with..Gopher John…Acre-Foot Johnson…Osceola.

McLean’s soul was a hawk, he said, and I believe him. In addition to his music, McLean is remembered and honored through the yearly Will McLean Music Festival. Held this month at Brooksville, Florida, the festival celebrated its twenty-second year.

Unfortunately, “Florida Sand” is out of print. However, you can now find its songs compiled within “The Songs and Stories of Will McLean.” McLean’s songs are available on CD from the Will McLean Foundation.

Folksinger Pete Seeger once said of Will, “His songs will be sung as long as there is a Florida.” I hope he’s right about that.

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “Jock Stewart amd the Missing Sea of Fire,” “The Sun Singer,” and “Garden of Heaven: an Odyssey.”

Crown of the Continent Resources

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Anne Truitt, conservation, ecology, environment2 Comments

The ‘Crown of the Continent’ ecosystem is one of North America’s most ecologically diverse and jurisdictionally fragmented ecosystems. Encompassing the shared Rocky Mountain region of Montana, British Columbia and Alberta, this 28,000 square mile / 72,000 square kilometre ecological complex spreads across two nations; across one state and two provinces; and across numerous aboriginal lands, municipal authorities, public land blocks, private properties, working and protected landscapes. — Crown Managers Partnership

As national headlines focus on whether a potential lack of funding at the federal level will jeopardize national parks and water quality standards, I thought I would focus on the positive work being one throughout the Alberta/Montana/British Columbia Crown of the Continent Ecosystem by listing a few of the organizations you can turn to for information, programs and advocacy.

Alberta Wilderness Association – Alberta Wilderness Association (AWA) is the oldest wilderness conservation group in Alberta dedicated to the completion of a protected areas network and the conservation of wilderness throughout the province.

Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex –Together, the Great Bear Wilderness, the Bob Marshall Wilderness and the Scapegoat Wilderness form the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, an area of more than 1.5 million acres.

Crown of the Continent Ecosystem – Encourage and support coordination and cooperation among individuals, organizations, and agencies whose purpose is to educate and inform people of all ages and backgrounds about the human and natural resources of the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem.

Citizens for a Better Flathead – To inform and empower citizens in cooperative community development that respects and encourages stewardship of the Flathead Valley’s natural beauty and resources.

Flathead National Forest – Stretching along the west side of the continental divide from the US Canadian border south approximately 120 miles lies the 2.3 million acre Flathead National Forest. The landscape is built from block fault mountain ranges sculpted by glaciers, and covered with a rich thick forest.

Headwaters Montana – We are working to secure the highest level of protection possible for pristine public lands, such as watersheds in the Swan, Mission, Whitefish and Yaak ranges and untouched Crown lands across our border with Canada.

National Park Service, Glacier National Park – Come and experience Glacier’s pristine forests, alpine meadows, rugged mountains, and spectacular lakes. With over 700 miles of trails, Glacier is a hiker’s paradise for adventurous visitors seeking wilderness and solitude.

Nature Conservancy – Montana – Our mountains, rivers, grasslands and forests make Montana a natural paradise.

Waterton Lakes National Park – Rugged, windswept mountains rise abruptly out of gentle prairie grassland in spectacular Waterton Lakes National Park.

While there’s much to be done on behalf of our environment, we can, I think, make better progress by making commitments to positive change as individuals and groups rather than standing on the sidelines and preaching to the choir about what we don’t like. We know what we need to do–or, we can learn.

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of two novels set partially within the Crown of the Continent ecosystem, “The Sun Singer” and “Garden of Heaven.” The e-book edition of his comedy/satire, “Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire,” is currently on sale for only 99 cents at Smashwords and on Kindle.

A powerful story of motherhood, seasons and snakes

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, reviews3 Comments

SnakesSnakes by Patricia Damery
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Snakes, by Patricia Damery (Farming Soul, 2010) is a beautifully written novel about a woman coming to terms with family continuity as small farms are packed up and sold off at auctions to those who will never know who once lived there and made of them enduring homes.

Angela leaves the Midwestern farm her family has worked for generations because the roads and fields and traditions are, in spite of their deep values, confining to her coming-of-a-age soul. She attends college in California, receives a degree in biology, becomes a teacher, marries, and has a family. When teaching proves to be an unsatisfactory career, she focuses on her new and all-consuming avocation of weaving.

Snakes is a poetic meditation about the intertwined cycles of life and farming. It is also an evolving letter of love from Angela to her recently deceased father about life as it was, mundane and unexpected daily events, and, of course, the snakes. Snakes and the cycles of life are constant images throughout the book; snakes in the corn crib, snakes in the garden, snakes in the kitchen. We fear snakes, yet we also see them as protectors of the land and as symbols of the natural stages of everlasting life.

For Angela to come to terms with herself and the disintegration of families and farms, she must come to terms with snakes. Her weavings become her medium and her message, the storyboard of her life as it was and as it is, all the memories, dreams and reflections of a nurturing mother claiming her authentic role within the natural order of children and husbands, kitchens and bedrooms, warm tidal pools and freshly ploughed fields, and gardens where snakes live amongst the flowers.

View all my reviews

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “Garden of Heaven: an Odyssey,” the story of an alchemist and shaman who journeys between heaven and hell in a world where each place can be mistaken for the other.

The Shadow Knows – Books for the Journey

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn heropath, Joseph Campbell, writing3 Comments

‘Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!’ — “The Shadow,” 1930s CBS Radio Detective Serial

‘Sad that I love the darkness so much and I’ve never knew it.’ — Maggie Evans in “Dark Shadows” (1966).

Whether it’s an old radio drama about a crime fighter or a Gothic soap opera, writers like what they can do with shadows and the purported evil they conceal. In Jungian psychotherapy—and, consequently—in the hero’s journey, the shadow is a major concern.

As Daryl Sharp writes in Digesting Jung: Food for the Journey, “everything about ourselves that we are not conscious of is the shadow.”

The shadow is said to contain a muddle of resentments, inferior notions, infantile fantasies, aggressive feelings, and other things about ourselves we’re not willing to openly admit to. On the other hand, as Robert Bly suggests, the shadow also contains everything about ourselves that society (parents, teachers, etc.) brainwashed us to get rid of because “it wasn’t proper” or “wasn’t fitting.”

The Hero’s Journey

The hero’s journey is impossible to understand, much less use as a structure in writing fiction, without confronting the shadow, first as a concept, and then within ourselves. The writer knows himself by making that which is not conscious, conscious, and then he brings his revelations into the lives of his fictional characters.

In Enemy, Cripple & Beggar: Shadows in the Hero’s Path, Erel Shalit, calls the shadow a crucial image in the hero cycle, the blood of the hero’s soul:

Without a shadow, there are no dangers to overcome, no struggles to endure, no weaknesses to suffer that make us human, no rewards of consciousness to be gained, and no depth of soul to be treasured.

Three Helpful Books

In addition to such standard hero’s journey references as Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Christopher Vogler’s The Writers Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, Stephen Larsen’s The Mythic Imagination, and Jean Houston’s The Hero and the Goddess: The Odyssey as Mystery and Initiation, these three books will help you explore the shadow:

Enemy, Cripple & Beggar: Shadows in the Hero’s Path, by Erel Shait, Fisher King Press, 2008.

FROM THE PUBLISHER: The Hero is that aspect of our psyche, or in society, who dares to venture into the unknown, into the shadow of the unconscious, bringing us in touch with the darker aspects in our soul and in the world. In fact, it is the hero whom we send each night into the land of dreams to bring home the treasures of the unconscious. He, or no less she, will have to struggle with the Enemy that so often is mis-projected onto the detested Other, learn to care and attend to the Cripple who carries our crippling complexes and weaknesses, and develop respect for the shabby Beggar to whom we so often turn our backs – for it is the ‘beggar in need’ who holds the key to our inner Self.

A Little Book on the Human Shadow, by Robert Bly, edited by William Booth, Harper and Row, 1988.

FROM THE PUBLISHER: Robert Bly, renowned poet and author of the ground-breaking bestseller Iron John, mingles essay and verse to explore the Shadow — the dark side of the human personality — and the importance of confronting it.

Romancing the Shadow: Illuminating the Dark Side of the Soul, by Connie Zweig and Steve Wolf, Ballantine Books, 1997.

FROM THE PUBLISHER: According to authors Connie Zweig and Steve Wolf, each of us has shadows that hold forbidden feelings such as shame, jealousy, greed, lust, and rage. Left to their own devices these shadows will become destructive saboteurs–causing us to betray our loved ones as well as ourselves. It is not within our power to choose whether or not to have these shadows; however, Zweig and Wolf believe that it is within our power to take responsibility for our shadows and put them to productive use. Chapter by chapter Zweig and Wolf reveal the shadow side of love, parenthood, siblings, friendships, midlife, and work. Rather than deny or destroy these shadows, the authors show readers how to confront and “romance” them in order to access the energy, vitality, and creativity that usually lie dormant within our dark sides.

Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. – Carl Jung

–

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of two hero’s journey novels, The Sun Singer and Garden of Heaven: an Odyssey.