by Jessica Weible, Executive Editor of The Watershed Journal
With department stores closing across the area and small businesses struggling to survive the harsh economic landscape, being a conscientious holiday shopper is more complicated than ever. Finding something that is good quality, but doesn’t break the bank is not easy! What do we purchase for the people in our lives to show them how much we care about and appreciate them?
Personally, I love giving (and receiving) books. After ten years of marriage, my husband still says one of the best gifts I have ever given him is a book about wrist watches. Recently, a friend gave me a book by a Pittsburgh author after going to a reading in Clarion. Another friend gave me a book by an author who grew up in my hometown. (Spoiler Alert: if you’re my dad, stop reading!) And I plan to give my dad a book this Christmas that seemed just weird enough to pique his eclectic interests.
Even in the digital age, books still make the best gift. They are thoughtful, personalized and wonderful keepsakes. If you’re looking for a last minute gift for someone in your life, check out these books by local authors, which are in no particular order.
1. Wayward Son: Travels and Reflections by David Drayer
Is it better to be talented or lucky? Have you ever experienced synchronicity? What are the things you will never regret doing?
In this collection of blog posts and newspaper columns written during his time back in western Pennsylvania and while traveling around the country, novelist David Drayer explores these insightful questions and many more. You are invited to join him on open-ended motorcycle trips to peculiar small towns, late evening hikes through the woods, visits with ghosts from the past, and philosophical conversations from neighborhood bars.
At turns inspiring, hilarious, thoughtful, and always wise, these commentaries on what makes life worth living not only stimulate the mind, they encourage us to venture off the beaten path and enjoy the ride.
Wanderlust never made so much sense.
2. “The Road Back to Hell” A Memoir by Diana Lynn Farley
Life can change in an instant, and no one understands this better than Diana Lynn. Lynn recalls a blissfully happy childhood with her mother and adopted father. She felt safe, supported, and loved. Then, after her sister was born, her parents’ marriage broke down, and there was no one left but Lynn to pick up the pieces. As their family grew bigger, it became increasingly dysfunctional. Lynn was forced to grow up quickly.
The brightest points of her new life were always her four younger sisters: Judy, Kim, Linda, and Lisa. Together, the five weathered the traumas of alcoholism, instability, violence, molestation, and attempted suicide. In her new memoir, The Road Back to Hell, Lynn honors these incredible women while also revealing the tragic consequences her parents’ violent and erratic behavior had on the lives of their children.
Lynn’s work celebrates the powerful bond of sisterhood and shows that there is hope in even the darkest and most difficult times. Lynn reminds readers that no one is beyond help—taking that first step away from a terrible situation can be the beginning of a rewarding walk toward peace and closure.
3. The Indigo Scarf by PJ Piccirillo
Based on the true story of two slaves who fled their owners with white women into the wilderness of north-central Pennsylvania, The Indigo Scarf interprets the little known legacy of slavery persisting in the north during the nineteenth century. Meticulously researched, the author’s work is informed by scholars in early American slave laws and northern black codes, by experts in post-colonial folkways, and by descendants who live to this day in the fugitive settlement their forbears established. While The Indigo Scarf relates the covert workings of sympathetic Quakers, the ruthlessness of a slave catcher, and the irony of a Revolutionary War veteran forced to face his daughter’s love for the slave Jedediah James, it treats the deeper theme of the spirit-breaking impact slavery has had across generations since abolition.
Though shadowed in whiskey-making and timber-pirating, The Indigo Scarf is a paean to devotion, testing the lengths a woman will go to save her man from a burning vengeance as he confronts the privations of a wild frontier while his former owner schemes his return. On a broader scale, the story is a testament to the perseverance and vision of pioneer women who devoted themselves to planting in their offspring the seeds of hope for liberty which may only be realized by descendants they would never know.
Woven between scenes spanning a forbidden, historically based slave marriage on a plantation in Virginia’s tidewater region to a tragic liquor operation on the Susquehanna’s un-peopled and feral West Branch during the frontier decades after Pennsylvania’s last Indian purchase, the narrator’s own sub-tale culminates in her realization of how a pioneer-woman ancestor had destined her to break the generational chain of bondage.
4. What Else Do You Want? by J.V. Miller
The menu for this book of short stories, the complete works of J.V. Miller, includes: “Sunday School,” “Elemental Understanding,” “The Shake Up,” “What Time Leaves,” “Scooch,” and, of course, “What Else Do You Want?”
These stories are semi-autobiographical and often outrageous in substance and style. Miller is a prolific writer and lover of words. His prose will keep you guessing and this book promises never a dull moment.
5. The Way We Were: Brookville, Pennsylvania Through the Camera’s Lens by David Taylor
Historian and Writers Block Group participant David Taylor has just completed a 280-page book entitled “The Way We Were: Brookville, Pennsylvania through the Camera’s Lens.“ It consists of a collection of hundreds of historic photos of this remarkable historic community, most of which have never been published before. Each page profiles a particular historic building or viewshed, past or present, in Brookville and is accompanied by text explaining the context of the image.
Order forms may be secured by contacting David at 814-648-4900 or tta.david@gmail.com.
6. At My Table – Volume 2 by Judy Schwab
A conversational devotional that shares the author’s observations on daily living and the challenges and rewards that often brings. Included in this volume are color photographs, original poetry and messages that come from the author’s heart and hopefully speak to that of each reader. In an easy to read format, At My Table can be read daily or as time permits. Also included is an Advent section with a special word and message for each day in this holy season.
7. Off the Cliff: How the Making of Thelma & Louise Drove Hollywood to the Edge by Becky Aikman
In Off the Cliff, Becky Aikman tells the full extraordinary story behind this feminist sensation, which crashed through barricades and upended convention. Drawing on 130 exclusive interviews with the key players from this remarkable cast of actors, writers, and filmmakers, Aikman tells an inspiring and important underdog story about creativity, the magic of cinema, and the unjust obstacles that women in Hollywood continue to face to this day.
[B]efore icons like Davis and Sarandon got involved, Thelma & Louise was just an idea in the head of Callie Khouri, a thirty-year-old music video production manager, who was fed up with working behind the scenes on sleazy sets. At four a.m. one night, sitting in her car outside the ramshackle bungalow in Santa Monica that she shared with two friends, she had a vision: two women on a crime spree, fleeing their dull and tedious lives—lives like hers—in search of a freedom they had never before been able to realize. But in the late 1980s, Hollywood was dominated by men, both on the screen and behind the scenes. The likelihood of a script by an unheard-of screenwriter starring two women in lead roles actually getting made was remote. But Khouri had one thing going for her—she was so inexperienced she didn’t really know she would be attempting the nigh impossible.
8. Circle of Influence (Zoe Chambers Mystery Series Book 1) by Annette Dashofy
From USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR and AGATHA AWARD FINALIST, Annette Dashofy, comes the first in her successful Zoe Chambers mystery series.
Zoe Chambers, paramedic and deputy coroner in rural Pennsylvania’s tight-knit Vance Township, has been privy to a number of local secrets over the years, some of them her own. But secrets become explosive when a dead body is found in the Township Board President’s abandoned car.
As a January blizzard rages, Zoe and Police Chief Pete Adams launch a desperate search for the killer, even if it means uncovering secrets that could not only destroy Zoe and Pete, but also those closest to them.
