Pat Garber's Blog: Winter at Ocracoke

The past year has for me, as for so many people, been a trying time. Hurricane Dorian laid waste my home on Ocracoke Island in September of 2019 and it is still not habitable. As I struggled to find a way forward Covid struck. The Black Lives Matter movement brought forth a new awareness of how racially divided and unjust our country has been, along with the incentive that we might in the near future change that. Then there is the election, still in peril...
Through it all the one silver lining for me has been that I have had time and inspiration to write, and that is what I have done and am doing. I am thrilled to say that I have published several new books, including "Birchbark Chronicles," which combines journal entries from a year I spent living in a log cabin in the Adirondack Mountains and stories from my life. "Letters from Old Bone; An Unsolved Civil War Mystery," is the true account of letters found in the lap of a dead Confederate soldier and their 75 year journey to return home. "My Shining Palace.; a love song to Ocracoke Island 1985 and 2019" describes the first year I lived there and the struggles the island and I have had since the hurricane and now in the pandemic. I am now working on another book about the three years I lived and taught on the Havasupai Indian Reservation at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
Re-living these experiences has been very moving, recreating both their joys and sorrows for myself and my readers.