ISBN-978-1533095763
Print Retail Price: $13.95
eBook Retail Price: $4.99
Malia
is a stubbornly dissident author and bibliophile in a world where books have
ceased to matter and barely exist. She remembers how things changed through the
21st century, but after fifty years of self-imposed exile, she returns to a
world far more terrifying than the one she fled. In Dallas, Nigeria, and India
she doggedly pursues the truth her heart demands.
About the Author:
Donna
Dechen Birdwell is an anthropologist whose curiosity about what makes human
beings tick propelled her to travel widely, listening to the stories of many
different cultures and eventually coming up with a few of her own. Her debut
novel is WAY OF THE SERPENT. High on the list of countries she knows and loves
are Belize, Guatemala, Mexico, Costa Rica, Cuba, England, Ireland, Spain,
Nepal, India, and Tibet. Her work is deeply influenced by the stories and
imagery of these places. Donna is an artist, poet, and photographer as well as
a novelist. She holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from Southern Methodist
University and previously taught at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. She
now writes, paints, and photographs in Austin.
Website: https://donnadechenbirdwell.com/
Shadow of the Hare Excerpt
1.
The café was down a couple of side
streets, in an area of Dallas I hadn’t visited for decades. As soon as I sat
down I saw her and I couldn’t help but stare. It had to be Jenda. When I saw
her looking at me, I slid down off the barstool and walked over to her
table.
“You’re Jenda
Swain,” I said, smiling, hoping she’d say, And you’re Malia Poole! But
she didn’t. I hadn’t seen her in almost ninety years and it was clear she’d
been taking the age prophylaxis, the miracle drug called Chulel that kept
everyone young in our 22nd-century world. Almost everyone. She was giving me
that look—that what-the-zujo-is-an-old-woman-like-you-doing-in-my-world look—followed
by the averted eyes.
“Of course you don’t remember,” I said. I
pulled out a chair and sat across from her. “Nobody remembers much of anything
anymore.” I looked down at my wrinkled, age-splotched hands and then up into
her smooth, fresh face. It was hard to believe I was two years younger than
Jenda. “I idolized you and your boyfriend, you know. Such temerity! The things
you did…” I was hoping to elicit some of those things from her or perhaps
startle myself into recalling what some of them were.
She said
nothing, glancing around the café as if to offer an apology for my presence.
For my existence.
A memory
suddenly came to me: a full-color portrait of Jenda as she was in high school.
Not this business-suited twit, but a passionate firebrand of a girl. An artist?
“Do you still
paint?” I wasn’t giving up. “You always had your mom’s gift for art.”
Jenda was
clearly embarrassed and growing quietly angry. But I thought I detected the old
passion under the surface. Come on Jenda—show me some of the old spunk.
She avoided my
gaze. “I think you must have made some mistake.” Her tone was flat, dismissive.
“You may know my name, but you clearly don’t know me.”
Her face flushed
slightly and I thought I saw a glimmer of recognition in her eyes. Leaning
forward, I looked into those eyes. “You need to ask more questions,” I said. I
pushed my chair back and rose to go; then I looked down at her one last time.
“You’re the one who doesn’t know who Jenda Swain is.”
My tears began
to fall as soon as I was out on the street. I felt betrayed. Damn these
disconnected memories! I have more memories than most people these days,
but there’s that one year from high school—the period when I’m sure I knew
Jenda best—that’s always been a blank. At least until recently. It’s cruelly
ironic that now I’ve reached an age when normal memories start to fade, these
submerged ones begin to wash up like shards of sea glass on a beach. I write
them down, cataloging them like curios of uncertain provenance.
After I left the
café, I couldn’t stop thinking about Jenda. She felt like a key to something. I
may not remember a lot about her, but I do know that up-tight little prude with
the pressed lapels isn’t the girl I knew in high school. I’m sure that back
then she was a passionate Vintagonist. Something had happened to her; I thought
I knew what it might be. In any case, I knew it was something very different
from what happened to me.
I still identify
with Vintagonists, those people who cherish and preserve old things, not as
things in themselves but as links to our past, reminders of shared experiences,
repositories of our stories. In the late 2020s and into the ‘30s, the
Vintagonist movement was popular among young people like me and like Jenda
Swain. While the corporations pushed us toward ever-higher consumption of
infinitely recyclable short-cycle goods, Vintagonists celebrated antiques,
vintage things, and so-called mementos. To signal our nonconformity, we wore
badly mended clothes salvaged from the recycle bins, dyed our hair in shades of
sepia, and adorned ourselves with relics like lockets and watch pendants. I
still wear one of those, although mine has a more personal significance. We fed
one another’s rebelliousness in frequent meetings and acts of protest that
employed poems and songs and art. The movement dissipated after a while but
never went away. Its roots ran deep.
Almost a century
later, I feel once again the pull of those old ideas, a riptide tugging at my
foundations. I’d found a place where I could have lived out the rest of my days
in peace without having to deal with the outside world, but instead here I am,
walking around in the corporate fantasyland where everyone is young—young and
cheerful and bright. But it’s a flat white brightness—no spark, no color.
People stare at me (like Jenda did) and then they don’t see me at all. I disappear.
I don’t belong in their world and so they white me out.
I began making
my way back toward my sister Leticia’s habitat. I knew she’d organized an event
for the following night at her place. She’d told me that Jenda’s high school
boyfriend Montagne would be there. I hadn’t seen him for the better part of a
century. Maybe Montagne would have some answers. I’d told Jenda she should ask
more questions; maybe it was time for me to ask some questions of my own.
I feel like a
refugee here, uncertain about what comes next. Uncertain, too, about some of
what went before, during that blank period around the age of fifteen. The past,
for me, has generally been constructed from old novels; I adore historical
novels. But with these strange memories drifting back, I think it’s time to
reconstruct my own past, my personal history, and to find out just how much I
can recall.
