Overview

When the Parallel Converge spans the author's spiritual pilgrimage. It begins with her childhood under the care of her indomitable grandmother in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, site of the Great Flood in which ancestors died. From there, the reader shares a dark night of the soul when the author is marooned at a major airport after missing a connection from Dublin following a Celtic pilgrimage. Last, the author writes of her hospitalization and recovery from a nearly fatal infection, when she was much older, which tested her soul. Several poems on related themes also are included. The author learns lessons of life, loss, grief, faith, hope, charity, and grace, along with laughter and joy.

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9781725297609

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Reviews

Laura Dabundo's collection of essays and poems are enjoyable because they are well-observed and beautifully written. But they are also joyous, full of the discoveries of memory, of human connections and of the difficult journey to the fullness of gratitude and salvation. --Anthony Grooms, author of Bombingham and The Vain Conversation Laura Dabundo's beautiful narrative--a childhood shaped by her grandmother's faith, as well as her rigorous (sometimes amusing) adherence to grammatical exactness, and an adulthood shaped by travel to Celtic spiritual sites--converges to sustain and deepen her through her later physical crises. In elegant language worthy of her grandmother, Dabundo describes her growing discernment of 'the divine light that lingers on the edge of our lives.' --Fleda Brown, author of Flying through a Hole in the Storm A captivating example of thought and identity emerging from the writing process. Very beautiful and evocative memoir of the author's western Pennsylvania childhood, an adult pilgrimage to Ireland, and an inward journey through illness to recovery. The bringing to life of the author's grandmother, who raised her in a hauntingly Victorian setting, is particularly beautifully realized. --Linda G. Niemann, author of Cosas: Folk Art Travels in Mexico and Boomer: Railroad Memoirs Reading Laura Dabundo's poems and essays is like a visit with a wise and humorous friend. She details the challenges of her unique upbringing by a singular grandmother, her personal faith journey, and the losses in her own life with searing honesty and poignant humor, finding 'thin places' between the spiritual and material realms in unexpected events. In sum, she presents a moving testimony that the trajectory of an individual life constitutes a spiritual pilgrimage. --Linda W. McFadden, author of In Brigid's Footsteps: The Return of the Divine Feminine This is an illuminating portrait of an extraordinary and passionate woman. She offers us not only the important difference between being reared and being raised--she was reared by her grandmother--but also how much richer life is when one uses language properly. Descriptions of persons and places come alive through a colorful panoply of words. Her journeys, on which the reader is given the pleasure of joining along, include reflections on the evolving role of faith and an exploration of the importance of relationships. --Barbara Jean Brown, cofounder of Anamchara Fellowship

Laura Dabundo's collection of essays and poems are enjoyable because they are well-observed and beautifully written. But they are also joyous, full of the discoveries of memory, of human connections and of the difficult journey to the fullness of gratitude and salvation. --Anthony Grooms, author of Bombingham and The Vain Conversation Laura Dabundo's beautiful narrative--a childhood shaped by her grandmother's faith, as well as her rigorous (sometimes amusing) adherence to grammatical exactness, and an adulthood shaped by travel to Celtic spiritual sites--converges to sustain and deepen her through her later physical crises. In elegant language worthy of her grandmother, Dabundo describes her growing discernment of 'the divine light that lingers on the edge of our lives.' --Fleda Brown, author of Flying through a Hole in the Storm A captivating example of thought and identity emerging from the writing process. Very beautiful and evocative memoir of the author's western Pennsylvania childhood, an adult pilgrimage to Ireland, and an inward journey through illness to recovery. The bringing to life of the author's grandmother, who raised her in a hauntingly Victorian setting, is particularly beautifully realized. --Linda G. Niemann, author of Cosas: Folk Art Travels in Mexico and Boomer: Railroad Memoirs Reading Laura Dabundo's poems and essays is like a visit with a wise and humorous friend. She details the challenges of her unique upbringing by a singular grandmother, her personal faith journey, and the losses in her own life with searing honesty and poignant humor, finding 'thin places' between the spiritual and material realms in unexpected events. In sum, she presents a moving testimony that the trajectory of an individual life constitutes a spiritual pilgrimage. --Linda W. McFadden, author of In Brigid's Footsteps: The Return of the Divine Feminine This is an illuminating portrait of an extraordinary and passionate woman. She offers us not only the important difference between being reared and being raised--she was reared by her grandmother--but also how much richer life is when one uses language properly. Descriptions of persons and places come alive through a colorful panoply of words. Her journeys, on which the reader is given the pleasure of joining along, include reflections on the evolving role of faith and an exploration of the importance of relationships. --Barbara Jean Brown, cofounder of Anamchara Fellowship

Author Information

Laura Dabundo is Professor of English, Emerita, at Kennesaw State University. She is the author of Jane Austen: A Companion (in press) and The Marriage of Faith: Christianity in Jane Austen and William Wordsworth (2012). She is a lifelong Episcopalian and a lay companion of the Anamchara Fellowship, a Celtic-inflected monastic community of the Episcopal Church.

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