Today is the first day that Letters from the Karst can be ordered from amazon or other booksellers. Here’s the amazon link. But as significant a day as that is in the life of any book, I want to talk here about its birthday.

As a Kentuckian (adopted, not by birth), I have long known that among the many beauties of my state, caves and horses may be our best features, along with bourbon, rolling hills, fickle weather, beautiful spring, bluegrass, and bar-b-que. Here, for instance, are two views of our back yard. While we don’t have any caves (that I know of), you can be sure they’re under there.

Beautiful greens, sometimes snow . . . I’m sure that back in 2001 when I got my first sabbatical, to work on a proposed collection of stories featuring caves, my love of Kentucky, the state we settled in, had been fully realized. I wanted the stories to be linked, like caves, both directly—through intimate passages that connect us to our family and friends—and indirectly—through what seems like happenstance, but may be a more subterranean process, like the erosion of what separates us.

I wanted there to be horses, not the prize-winning horses of the Derby or Keeneland, but homegrown horses, family members, the kind of animal that heals and brings us out of ourselves. So, the Collins family would be a horse family. The mother became the caver and professor of geography at the university here where we live: Western Kentucky University. Meredith is her name and the title of her chapter is “Extremophiles.” Her husband, David, is a poet and also a professor; he is bi-polar and his story is told during a manic episode. They, and their three daughters—Diana, Cecily, and Molly—each have their own chapter or story, though their story may be told by someone else, as is the case of Molly and Diana. The uncle (Meredith’s brother Ned) and her mother, Sarah, are important as well; her story goes back in time to the early 20th century when Floyd Collins was trapped in a cave just north of us. He is only a side note, however, and the “cave” featured in her story is a sinkhole. David’s cave is Plato’s Parable. And so on. . . . (Maybe more on individual stories later.)

So, Letters from the Karst was born of a big love for Kentucky—its land, its people, its animals—manifested in a family’s story of grief, betrayal, joy, and healing. Although it is fiction, there are many elements of my story here. In fact, that’s one thing my publisher wanted: if it’s fiction it needs to maintain a strong link to the author’s story.

To order Letters of the Karst, request it from your local library or order from amazon, here.