Afraid to spend the Christmas holiday alone, an aging widower hires a woman to keep him company...when these two lonely souls meet, the result is a heartwarming and redeeming weekend that will change both of their lives forever. In this and other stories in The Christmas Wife, distinguished author and four-time recipient of the prestigious O. Henry Award Helen Norris expertly blends the poignant and bittersweet in moments that quietly resonate beyond the page. Emotional and moving, Norris's stories masterfully celebrate the heart and soul's triumph over loss, regret, and the nameless longings common to all. With a new introduction by Kaye Gibbons, author of Ellen Foster, A Virtuous Woman, and more, this edition also includes the DVD of the film The Christmas Wife, starring Academy Award-winning actor Jason Robards and Tony Award-winning actress Julie Harris. Book jacket.
Involves a West Virginia mountaineer family, father, mother, five sons and daughter. Their complicated rise from abject poverty to become multi-millionaires through their efforts in the coal-mining industry. From a small outcrop of coal on their unproductive farm, they eventually own thirty production mines and become the largest coal corporation in the world, controlling the coal industry in West Virginia for over sixty years. Poverty stricken but ambitious, in the year 1850, Matt Mattison secretly kills Abe, a Jewish itinerant peddler, who visits his home periodically, using Abe's money to open a small drift mine on his farm. He is assisted in the venture by his five sons who are unaware of their father's sudden source of funds. (A true story). At the birth of his daughter's illegitimate son, Matt realized that his daughter, Gem, and Abe had a clandestine love affair, planned to marry and that Abe had impregnated to comely Gem. Matt conscious-stricken becomes psychotic. Gem, suspicious of her father, grieving that the father of her child had given his life for her family's prosperity, refuses any finances earned from their mining endeavors, leaves home, adverse circumstances impel her to become proprietress of the town's bawdy house. The plot involves Gem's life, embarrassing to the family but offers amusing incidents in the bordello that becomes public. Her brothers push the mining business to great success becoming powerful financially and politically. Her bastard son (known later as "A.P." in the industry), well educated but burdened by his mother's profession, becomes president of the world's largest coal corporation. Marries a socialite, interested in breeding show horses, they build pretentious mansion on 365 acres, own private railroad train, ocean-going yacht, lavish apartment in New York City. The novel follows several generations of family, involving many complications, romances, pathos of the five brothers, threatened loss of their mines through bitterly fought union strikes and devastating mine explosions. Much of this story is true and interwoven with fiction. All character names are fictitious. Interesting coal mining facts as they effect the family are included. As well as the complete portrayal of the cruel exploration of the miners as the greedy and often inhumane madness of the coal barons to accumulate excessive wealth. Now that coal is becoming an important factor in our energy crisis, this story is timely. Readers will become educated about the problems in this important industry as the story of this once poverty stricken family unfolds.
Renowned Alabama writer Helen Norris returns with her first short-story collection in seven years, a collection filled with the delightful and diverse characters her fans have grown to love.
The burning glass of the title of Helen Norris' third book of short fiction is an archaic expression for the magnifying glass, and the metaphor is entirely appropriate. For a burning glass not only makes small things large, but focused long and precisely enough, it sets the magnified object on fire. And indeed, these nine superb stories are illuminated by the incandescence of words - and hearts - set ablaze. The characters in this collection range from young to middle-aged to old; the tone turns effortlessly from deeply serious, as in "The Wake of a Cry", the hallucinatory meditations of a soldier wounded in combat, to the cosmic burlesque of "A Bee in Amber", which Kafka himself would have admired. "Inside the Silence" tells of a woman's visit to Majdanek, a Polish concentration camp, a visit so harrowing, so stunning in its paradoxical revelation of simple decency and our common humanity, that the woman finds herself changed forever. This profound exploration of the death camp's grim legacy concludes with words whose relevance cannot be too often repeated: "We cannot take care unless we know". A number of these stories are scaffolded on themes of abandonment and adoption. In "Mirror Image", an embittered young woman, after repudiating the father who abandoned her as a child, finds a substitute parent in an unexpected encounter with a dying Mafia don. In the heart-rending "Bread upon the Waters", Elvie, a young orphan, accepts with stoic equanimity the fickle benevolence of a shallow society matron. In "Raisin Faces", Coralee, a failing old woman whose rapacious family wants her out of the way, finds her sole ally in Hattie, her black maid. "The Inglenook" presents the life of a widowin the South - a "Yankee woman with Yankee ways" - with economy, emotional veracity, and, ultimately, breathtaking beauty. In "The Cracker Man", which invites favorable comparison with the finest work of Flannery O'Connor, a woman arranges a fireworks celebration for her great-grandfather's one hundredth birthday, a celebration that ends in spectacular disaster - and budding hope. Anyone familiar with the work of Helen Norris will hardly be surprised by the richly varied textures of these stories and by Norris' astonishing ability to capture with absolute accuracy every hue along the emotional spectrum. Those lucky readers encountering this writer for the first time are to be envied.
Helen Hill Norris grew up in Horse Cove, perched high in the Southern Appalachians outside Highlands, North Carolina. For a decade starting in 1958, she wrote a weekly column for the Highlander called "Looking Backward." Drawing on her childhood and the tales her elders would tell around the fireplace, Norris conjures a bygone frontier world of covered wagons, gold miners, traveling peddlers and headstrong shopkeepers. Witness a harrowing Civil War encounter with the notorious Kirk's Raiders. Come along as a six-mule wagon carries a Steinway grand piano across the treacherous Chattooga River. Watch two uncles go to extremes to settle an argument over whether moles have teeth. Evocative, richly detailed and often laugh-out-loud funny, these stories reveal Norris to be one of the finest unsung storytellers of the American South.
Theraplay® is an attachment-focused model of parenting that helps parents to understand and relate to their child. Based on a sequence of play activities that are rooted in neuroscience, Theraplay offers a fun and easy way for parents and children to connect. Theraplay is particularly effective with looked after and adopted children. By providing an overview of Theraplay and the psychological principles that it is based on, parents and carers will gain an understanding of the basic theory of the model along with practical ideas for applying Theraplay to everyday family life. Through everyday case studies and easy language, parents will gain confidence and learn new skills for emotional bonding, empathy, and acceptance in the relationship with their child.
A coat can keep you warm, but the truth can set you free. This is a story about a Granny, her red coat, her granddaughters and a stranger they meet one cool day at the park. This book will help teach children about generosity, loving our neighbours, reaching out to those less fortunate, and having the strength and courage to share the gift of Jesus to others.
Written by an AQA moderator and based on the trusted and popular Science Foundations series, Science Support is a practical and flexible worksheet based resource to really enthuse your low attainers. A new teacher book and CD-ROM resource that offers support materials and in-depth guidance on teaching Entry Level and GCSE to lower-ability pupils for the AQA specification. Matching grids allow it to be used with OCR, WJEC and EdExcel teaching. The CD-ROM contains an interactive PDF linked to a bank of resources, including a set of simple worksheets in PDF and customisable Word file formats and Whole Class Teaching animations. The teacher book guides you on a unit-by-unit basis through the resources contained on the CD-ROM. It also includes suggestions for the teaching of practicals.
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