Coming soon--A FAMILY SAGA
MEMORY'S
COMPASS​
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Sharyn Talbert
"One summer morning, they vanished. Afterwards, whether sunset, daybreak, or the dead time in between, echoes pinged through her head: did it really happen? --just a nightmare? But Sylvie knew the truth. They weren’t hiding. They hadn’t run away. They were gone in the permanent sense. Hard evidence said so. And when they vanished, other things vanished, too. Jolly friends quit joking. Chatterboxes shut up. Blood relations turned brittle, maybe because all of them were guilty. Summers would never again seem ripe and promising. No. After the vanishing, every new summer taunted them. Somebody called it a cosmic crime. Yes. They thought the precious ones were here to stay until the absence shriveled them to nothingness, like salt on a snail."
Advance Praise
"Heartbreaking and heart lifting, the book will grip readers with its searing portrayal of devastating loss and the subsequent reconstruction of life and family by embracing memories and searching for connections in unforeseen places."
Susan Hartmann
Distinguished Arts and Humanities Professor of History Emerita, The Ohio State University
"The children are impossible to forget. All of the characters come alive in a spectrum of anguish and joy. The depiction of the harrowing events defy the imagination. Must reading."
Ronda Griffith Bivens
MSW, Educator, Vinton County Schools
"Totally engrossing. A gifted writer with a wonderful sense of rhythm and pacing, Sharyn Talbert should be teaching our students. I was especially interested in how the Church affected the life of her protagonist, Sylvie."
Christopher Highley
Professor of English; Director, Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, The Ohio State University, Author, Blackfriars in Early Modern London: Theater, Church, and Neighborhood, Oxford University Press, 2022
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"An indelible account of one woman's determination to embrace life in the wake of shattering loss. Talbert's keenly observed, tenderly rendered portraits of her characters (both human and nonhuman) stay with the reader. The story is a testament to the transfiguring power of love."
Charlotte Weber
PhD, Scholar's Touch Editing
"Sharyn Talbert has written a wonderful book about every family's greatest fear. With a sharp eye for grief and a killing turn of phrase, Memory's Compass will stay as long in the memory as the work of Emily Dickinson. Talbert shows us a heartbreaking new America, a world that, for all its sunlight, is in deep pain. At the same time, her book has an arc of grace, taking us to an improbable place of light and healing. This is a profound work of real importance."
Sebastian D. G. Knowles
Professor of English Emeritus, The Ohio State University