Pretty Chrysanthemum and Other Stories

Pretty Chrysanthemum and Other Stories
228 Pages
ISBN ISBN-13: 978-1948598316

“Pretty Chrysanthemum and Other Stories” reminds readers how family is at the core of human experience and how relationships, especially those between parent and child, rely on the power of love to overcome challenges. Endearing characters, with their flaws and strengths, persevere to make right decisions, even when the outcome is in doubt.

Five of these stories feature historical content (1897 through 1971). A hard-drinking, womanizing Irish immigrant explores both coasts until finding his life’s purpose in America in the late 1920s. In the early days of the movie industry, two children navigate a crowd of imposters, pranksters, and wannabes during a July Fourth celebration and expand their respect and developing young love for one another. A Chinese immigrant in the 1930s is forced to make the heartbreaking decision to leave his American-born son to search in China for his deported wife. A family in the 1960s learns the importance of hope on the personal, familial, and national level. A professor seeks love and marriage in the turbulent social landscape of the 1970s.

The eleven contemporary stories also pose challenging situations, including a woman getting punched in the face in Yosemite, a father and daughter on the run with an AMBER alert issued about them, a couple struggling to decide what’s best for a foster dog in their care, a school bus driver accused of inappropriate and possibly criminal behavior, a widow adjusting to a new life, a young woman hindered by her complicated relationship with her mother, a woman’s adult son missing after crashing his car in the desert. Throughout these stories, the pull of family, the power of love, and unshakable human decency prevail.

Nancy Lane

About Nancy Lane (Grants Pass, Oregon Author)

Nancy Lane

Born and raised in Los Angeles, CA, Nancy Lane graduated from UCLA with a major in Mathematics and a minor in English and continued studies in the UCLA Graduate School of Education. After years of industry related writing, Nancy decided to pursue creative writing and zeroed in on the short story form as the most immediate and exciting way to build worlds, create engaging characters, and promote positive themes.

Currently Nancy lives in Oregon where she is a member of Willamette Writers and enjoys networking within the robust presence of writers in Portland, her previous location of twenty-two years, and in the Rogue Valley of Southern Oregon, where she and her husband moved in 2019.