Status Updates From Fidelity: Five Stories

“A Jonquil for Mary Penn” tells of the early married life of Elton and Mary Penn, through Mary’s reflections as she suffers with a fever but won’t tell her young husband. It’s a great story about a couple who are learning what it means to be each other’s “half”. “Making it Home” follows Art Rowanberry back to Port William after the war, as he eagerly returns to a life where nothing is strange.

Feeling slump-y so adding some more Berry into my reading life.

The first story, “Pray Without Ceasing,” is a powerful near-novella-length story about the murder of Ben Feltner in the early 20th century, as retold by his great-grandson Andy Catlett in 1990, remembering the time in 1965 when his grandmother told him about those events. It’s a story about the lasting power of forgiveness and memory for friendship and community, and a kind of hymn to non-retaliation.