The View from October

Often life is portrayed as a road that leads from the innocent Spring of childhood through the lush Summer of youth and the mellowing of the middle Autumn years into its inevitable ending in the bleakness of Winter. This collection of twenty fictional short stories meanders down an Autumn lane beneath flamboyant oaks and brazen maples, chaperoned by prim white sycamores, across quaint bridges over whispering streams, past gray leaning barns and browning haystacks, bathed in golden sunlight from a matchless blue sky. Presented here are stories of loss and grief, hope and struggle, kindness and love, joy and sorrow, surrender and rediscovery--the trials and triumphs of life as experienced by seniors and those who love them. These stories, most of which have appeared in various publications down through the years, are aimed at comforting and inspiring those who find themselves at that daunting bend in the road where they find themselves looking wistfully back at the luxuriant green of Summer or reluctantly ahead into the starkness of naked tree limbs etched across Winter's pewter skies--the View from October.