Fiction

Orchard Park and Other Works

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Orchard Park tells the tale of one man's effort to scratch at the canvas; to peel away life’s protective layers; to decrypt meaning from the cultural artifacts by which he is surrounded -- to achieve grace through creation and redemption through imagination.
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Ted

“My biggest mistake?” “Yeah, the biggest one. The one you regret, the one that keeps you up at night, makes your throat dry,” said Duff. Ted put his foot up on the rickety wooden railing skirting the weathered deck, scratched his chin, squeezed his eyes shut and said, “My Father’s House. Writing it, taking...
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Grandchildren of Bolsheviks Delve into Past

ST. PETERSBURG – Abraham Frenkel was 12 years old when he found out his grandfather was one of the worst mass murderers in history. The gardener at his boarding school, a Kolyma survivor, beat him black and blue after hearing he was the grandson of Haifa-born Naftaly Frenkel, commandant of the Bolshevik-run death camp....
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The Plight of the Irish and other Whites

As an Irishman, I am cognizant of the shortcomings of our race; a race into which has been sown anarchy, discord and a distaste for logic; a race that was not always vacillatory, unreasoning, susceptible to the sometime paralysis that is the result of greed and trained insatiety; and additionally, enticed by the promise...
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Love, Courtesy of a Scarecrow

After the church service, minutes into the reception, A call from Roger; you can deny him nothing. Your new bride, senses piqued, eyes wide, Knows that you are leaving; that you will embarrass her, Slip out before the first dance, before the cake, For one last hurrah—overdue, you think— This last favor to Roger;...
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Hotel Ivanhoe

I was out, it was cold, I needed a ride, was shivering in front of the post-office, wasn’t wearing a jacket. It was snowing. Two girls in a Volkswagen, one an old classmate, pull up to the curb, say they will give me a ride. The car is warm. I begin to thaw. The...
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Leaving

     “Where are you going?” she says.      “Where have you been?”      She knows I am leaving her, someday. Like everyone else has left; like my father left. Leaving is in my DNA – three generations before my birth, my great-grandparents immigrated to America from Austria. As a child, I imagined they left in the panic...
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April to November, Chapter I.

I am half here, I say. I am half here. My mother died. My father died. Suddenly I was half there, not working, not sleeping, a new man. Not a worse man. I thought, ‘I am not a worse man.’ It was a bright, white world – a morning kitchen world. This made and...
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One Thing or the Other

     “If you go to Prague, Elizabeth,” Jason says, “our relationship is over.”      You can do one thing or the other with that.  Elizabeth says, “Okay,” because they both should have known from the beginning this would not end well.      Three years ago, he stumbled over her outstretched legs in the aisles of the Strand. ...
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David Whittaker: Collected Works, 2010

Brown Trout in the Last Race The smell of the swirling coffee permeated my senses as I stared into the cup. I blinked three times and looked up from my steaming beverage. The sun illuminated his olive skin from the sheer-curtained window. He always worked the sheets on Friday afternoons during his lunch hour....
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