From Our House is the luminous and uniquely American memoir of Lee Martin, born into a farming family the same year his father unexpectedly lost both hands. Lee?s father, once known for ?doing a good turn for his neighbors,? changed that afternoon in the cornfields, becoming an embittered, hardened man. ?All our lives have private truths,? Martin writes, ?and the truth about my father was that after his accident he brought a deep and abiding rage into our home. I knew his hooks as intimately as I ever knew anything about my father.? ?How easily our bodies become us, our souls bound to the material, to the joy or grief or pain we feel through our skin,? Martin muses. Ultimately it is his mother?s quiet compassion that accounts for the grace that Lee and his father finally discover both within themselves and within their small family. Learning to live by the seasons and to fall asleep to the rumble of his father?s tractor, braving snowstorms to sell hogs or to visit an ailing grandmother, playing basketball, listening to baseball games, and stealing records, Lee endures the anger and shame that haunt his family?yet grows up to tell his tale with rare beauty and remarkable forbearance.
Lee Martin tells us in his memoir, “I was never meant to come along. My parents married late. My father was thirty-eight, my mother forty-one. When he found out she was pregnant, he asked the doctor, ‘Can you get rid of it?’” From such an inauspicious beginning, Martin began collecting impressions that, through the tincture of time and the magic of his narrative gift, have become the finely wrought pieces of Such a Life. Whether recounting the observations of a solemn child, understood only much later, or exploring the intricacies of neighborhood politics at middle age, Martin offers us a richly detailed, highly personal view that effortlessly expands to illuminate our world. At a tender age Martin moved to a new level of complexity, of negotiating silences and sadness, when his father lost both of his hands in a farming accident. His stories of youth (from a first kiss to a first hangover) and his reflections on age (as a vegan recalling the farm food of his childhood or as a writer contemplating the manual labor of his father and grandfather) bear witness to the observant child he was and the insightful and irresistible storyteller he’s become. His meditations on family form a highly evocative portrait of the relationships at the heart of our lives.
A prolific and award-winning writer, Lee Martin has put pen to paper to offer his wisdom, honed during thirty years of teaching the oh-so-elusive art of writing. Telling Stories is intended for anyone interested in thinking more about the elements of storytelling in short stories, novels, and memoirs. Martin clearly delineates helpful and practical techniques for demystifying the writing process and providestools for perfecting the art of the scene, characterization, detail, point of view, language, and revision--in short, the art of writing. His discussion of the craft in his own life draws from experiences, memories, and stories to provide a more personal perspective on the elements of writing. Martin provides encouragement by sharing what he's learned from his journey through frustrations, challenges, and successes. Most important, Telling Stories emphasizes that you are not alone on this journey and that writers must remain focused on what they love: the process of moving words on the page. By focusing on that purpose, Martin contends, the journey will always take you where you're meant to go."--
Count your blessings," his mother told him, "Think of everything good in your life." Pulitzer Prize finalist Lee Martin has done it again. Building from his acclaimed first memoir, From Our House, which recounts the farming accident that cost his father both his hands, Gone the Hard Road is the story of Beulah Martin's endurance and sacrifice as a mother, and the gift of imagination she offered her son. Martin unfolds the world she created for him within their unsettled family life, from the first time she read to him in a doctor's office waiting room, to enrolling him in a children's book club, to the books she bought him in high school. Gone the Hard Road portrays Beulah's selflessness as the family moved around the Midwest, sometimes in the face of her husband's opposition, to show her son a different way of being. Rather than concentrate on the life his father threatened to destroy, as Martin's previous memoirs do, Gone the Hard Road offers the counternarrative of a loving mother and the creative life she made possible, in spite of the eventual cost to herself. A poignant, honest, and moving read, Gone the Hard Road will stay with anyone who has ever struggled to find their place in the world.
The mysterious death of an old-time Fort Worth postal worker and a child's disappearance send Detective Deb Ralston on a search through old cars and older grudges in an effort to find a killer
On a night no one will ever forget, Della Black and three of her seven children are killed in a horrific fire in their trailer. As the surviving children are caught in the middle of a custody battle between their well-intentioned neighbor and their father and his pregnant mistress, new truths about what really happened the night of the fire come to light. When the fire marshal determines the cause - arson - rumors quickly circulate as the townspeople search for answers. Ronnie Black is the kind of man who can leave his wife and children for a younger woman, but is he capable of something more sinister? Ronnie and his girlfriend, Brandi Tate, maintain his innocence - he's a loving, caring father who wants to do everything he can to protect his family. But as the gossip continues, Ronnie feels his children (and, eventually, Brandi) pulling away from him. Soon enough, he finds himself at a crossroads - should he allow gossipmongers to seal his fate, or should he fight to prove that he's not the monster people paint him to be? In Late One Night, Lee Martin examines the devastating effect of rumors and the resilience of one family in the face of the ultimate tragedy. "--
Using scant historical and personal records as a starting place, the author recreates the lives of his great-grandparents-farmers who traveled West to settle in Illinois-reconstructing six generations of family history in the process. (Biography)
Deb Ralston faces her most personally harrowing case when she is assigned to the Fort Worth Sex Crimes Unit and finds herself recalling her own childhood sexual abuse at the hands of her father.
River Current is a story set in the 1950s small town of Westfall, Missouri. Ray, Lydia, Shane, and Sam-seemingly inseparable friends-share the joys and pains of growing up in an idyllic setting along the powerful and mysterious Current River. But all is not as it seems in the small town, as secret undercurrents run dark. Ray suffers at the hands of his abusive alcoholic father; they all suffer at the hands of The self-important, mean-spirited and bigoted deputy sheriff, Westley Culpepper; and they eventually despair as friendships and love crumble from betrayal, lies, and suspicions. One after another they all leave the town and each other behind, going their separate ways, vowing never to return. But eighteen years later, the town on the clear cold Current River that was the scene of some of their happiest childhood memories draws them back home. Some who return bring happiness, others bring the weight of the past that bears trouble for all. Lydia alone, with her luminous soul and forgiving heart, is strong enough to bring the friends to grips with their shared past and set the stage for the healing that must take place. The story is surprising, gratifying, and very memorable. Written in lyrical prose with irony and gentle humor, M. Lee Martin gives us a story of passion, hate, love and regret set against a beautifully described 1950s America.
While spending a relaxing weekend with her friend's eccentric mother, former screen star Margali Bowman, pregnant police detective Deb Ralston finds herself embroiled in an inheritance scam and murder
“You have to know the rest of my story, the part I can’t yet bring myself to say. A story of a boy I knew a long time ago and a brother I loved and then lost.” Past and present collide in Lee Martin’s highly anticipated novel of a man, his brother, and the dark secret that both connects and divides them. Haunting and beautifully wrought, River of Heaven weaves a story of love and loss, confession and redemption, and the mystery buried with a boy named Dewey Finn. On an April evening in 1955, Dewey died on the railroad tracks outside Mt. Gilead, Illinois, and the mystery of his death still confounds the people of this small town. River of Heaven begins some fifty years later and centers on the story of Dewey’s boyhood friend Sam Brady, whose solitary adult life is much formed by what really went on in the days leading up to that evening at the tracks. It’s a story he’d do anything to keep from telling, but when his brother, Cal, returns to Mt. Gilead after decades of self-exile, it threatens to come to the surface. A Pulitzer Prize finalist for The Bright Forever, Lee Martin masterfully conveys, with a voice that is at once distinct and lyrical, one man’s struggle to come to terms with the outcome of his life. Powerful and captivating, River of Heaven is about the high cost of living a lie, the chains that bind us to our past, and the obligations we have to those we love.
To celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, Harry and Deb Ralston go out to dinner at the Bird Cage, a restaurant in downtown Fort Worth. Its fancy dinners are complemented by a floor show featuring a young woman on a flying trapeze, reminding Deb nostalgically of the three-ring circus she and her family visited when she was a girl. The romance of the evening is ruined, however, when the performer plummets to her death - an "accident" caused by deliberate cuts in the ropes suspending her in midair forty feet above the tables. Once again, Deb Ralston - Detective Deb Ralston - must put her personal life on hold because duty calls. Well, sort of on hold: Another murder only means this working mother must juggle taking care of the baby, the teenager, and the pit bull (not to mention the husband and the recently divorced partner, who confesses he's developed a crush on Deb) with her increasingly time-consuming and dangerous job.
A fic[ti]tious account of ... one of Charleston's famous characters, Lavinia Fisher, who stood accused as the first female mass murderer in America"--Publisher's Web site.
Who is Jake Dumas? Intelligent, well-read and articulate, New Hope High School's custodian is an enigmatic man of mystery. Often scorned or ignored by students and faculty alike, he is, however, befriended by two people: the lovely and feisty school librarian, Rosie Green, who seems to have developed a romantic interest in him, and the previous year's All-State, high school All-American quarterback, Blaise Honeycutt, who after finding himself in academic trouble turns to Jake of all people to help him bring up his grades. Jake then finds that it is not all about grades. His protégé is hiding a loathsome secret. But then again, so is Jake. It will be a dismal, even chaotic year for New Hope High. As Blaise and two of his all-star buddies were suspended by the former, hated principal, Horatio Sharpe, for a senseless prank, last year's State Football Champs will experience their first losing season. Adding insult to injury, Cecil Meadows, a Negro, is appointed the new principal of the school during a hot bed of racial tension in 1963 Alabama. And then the Town of New Hope learns that its beloved high school will close at the end of the school year because a new school is being built in the next county. But as all that should be enough to shake up the town, it seems that somebody has been found murdered at the school. And it is Jake who discovers the body. In this compelling story of murder, romance, unimaginable heartache and unfailing encouragement, two valiant men, one older and one younger, struggle with life's disappointments, tragedies and secret haunts in their fight to overcome adversity.
Is tai chi a stretching exercise, deep-breathing program, martial art, dance or prayer? Yes, it's all those and more.Tai chi, like many ancient Eastern practices, does not fit strict Western categories. Tai chi, together with the extraordinary self-healing method developed by Dr Lee, offers relief for stress, breathing disorders, muscular ailments, chronic headaches, and a variety of modern office- and sports-related complaints, as well as for deep emotional distress.Few today are as well positioned to explain the healing powers of tai chi as Dr. Martin Lee, a renowned engineering physicist and tai chi master. He and his wife, Emily, also a tai chi master, are the only Americans to have studied with Yu Pen-Shih, one of China's foremost ch'i kung masters. Dr. Lee has developed a groundbreaking practical program that combines Eastern and Western approaches to wellness, which he calls 'physical philosophy.' Its goal is to help people become 'one with nature,' a Buddhist term for the natural restoration of true health.The rewards of one-with-nature tai chi are inner happiness, self-control, self-realization, and self-healing. Each one of these benefits receives individual attention, complete with the 64 tai chi forms, thoroughly illustrated with photographs and diagrams. The central focus is on the flow of energy — the chi, or 'inner breath' — that tai chi evokes through Lee's four basic instructions: Relax. Breathe. Feel the earth. Do nothing extra. Here is a valuable health, exercise, and meditation program that combines ancient spiritual insights with advanced scientific knowledge and important original discoveries.
In the eleventh case of the series, Fort Worth detective Deb Ralston deals with danger and domestic chaos when a young trapeze artist mysteriously falls to her death--and it is definitely murder--but no one has a motive.
On a night no one will ever forget, Della Black and three of her seven children are killed in a horrific fire in their trailer. As the surviving children are caught in the middle of a custody battle between their well-intentioned neighbor and their father and his pregnant mistress, new truths about what really happened the night of the fire come to light. When the fire marshal determines the cause - arson - rumors quickly circulate as the townspeople search for answers. Ronnie Black is the kind of man who can leave his wife and children for a younger woman, but is he capable of something more sinister? Ronnie and his girlfriend, Brandi Tate, maintain his innocence - he's a loving, caring father who wants to do everything he can to protect his family. But as the gossip continues, Ronnie feels his children (and, eventually, Brandi) pulling away from him. Soon enough, he finds himself at a crossroads - should he allow gossipmongers to seal his fate, or should he fight to prove that he's not the monster people paint him to be? In Late One Night, Lee Martin examines the devastating effect of rumors and the resilience of one family in the face of the ultimate tragedy.
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