“For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.” – T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
“[Everyone] ‘writes’ in a way; that is, each person has a ‘story’—a personal narrative—which is constantly being replayed, revised, taken apart and put together again. The significant points in this narrative change as a person ages—what may have been tragedy at 20 is seen as comedy or nostalgia at 40.” — Margaret Atwood, from a 1990 interview with The Paris Review
An Abolitionist Family; a novel of the Civil War Era covers the years 1854-1866. It is divided into three sections: Antebellum, Civil War, and Postbellum. Each year represents a chapter in the Spencer family’s life and the concurrent events happening in the country.
The Spencer family engage in abolitionist activities; their home becomes a stop on the Underground Railroad. The story is told in third person but focuses on the thoughts and actions of Marty Spencer, the youngest son who is 10 years old at the beginning of the story. The Spencers live near Worthington, Ohio, but.after the oldest son becomes an apprentice to his uncle, a furniture maker in Ripley, Ohio, they move to that town. Ripley is located on the Ohio River, which runaway slaves often cross to seek their freedom.
Actual historical figures, such as abolitionists Ozem Gardner, William Hanby, John Rankin, Levi Coffin, and John Parker, figure in the story and are sometimes portrayed in fictional situations in which they interact with imagined characters.
The music and literature of the age (e.g. the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Reverend John Rankin’s letters on the evils of slavery, Benjamin Hanby’s song, “Darling Nellie Gray,” and John Greenleaf Whittier’s poetry) are used to enhance the abolitionist theme and show the temper of the times.
Although the novella is a work of fiction, it attempts to give an accurate account of historical events before and during the war.
Photographs of the present-day John Rankin House, John Parker house, the Hanby House, and Ozem Gardner House are included at the end of the story.
An Abolitiomist Family should be available by October 15, 2025.
Portrait of Annie is a fictional biography. Ann Elizabeth Richards, born in rural Ohio in 1943 to a family of limited means, wins an art scholarship to the Ohio State University. The novel begins as she starts her academic career on the cusp of the Sixties, a decade that was dominated by controversy over the Vietnam War, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and civil rights struggles.
She develops romantic entanglements with a graduate student and a charismatic poet who is involved in counterculture activities.
Annie bears witness as protest on the OSU campus reaches anarchic proportions and the Ohio National Guard is called in to quell the violence with tear gas and Billy clubs. The situation culminates with the closing of the University for a two-week period to prevent rioting after the Ohio National Guard opens fire on student protestors at Kent State University.
She goes to the infamous 1969 Woodstock Festival and participates in the March on Washington. At the end of the decade, Annie decides to make portraiture her life work. She embarks on a stable existence, but her life is yet to be rocked by personal tragedies.
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At its heart, Portrait of Annie is about coping with loss, enduring, and eventually finding a measure of contentment.
Ballroom dancing is the motif of “The Merlin Subsidiary,” a novella that portrays the lives and relationships of five women. They meet at a dance studio and form a social group that they call a “subsidiary.” They are all single, either widowed or divorced, and range in age from 43 to 58. Each has an individual story of how they came to dance. Their relationships are like a group of sisters who regard each other with affection but also have rivalries and frictions from personality differences. There are surprises and crises.
Other short stories in this collection depict a grandmother who becomes a schoolyard vigilante; a former district attorney who, in a sense, also becomes a vigilante when he investigates the murder of a family member; two middle-aged, closeted Lesbian librarians dealing with a personal crisis; a young woman conflicted about her father’s remarriage after the death of her mother; an older woman adjusting to living with her daughter and son-in-law after heart surgery; and ‘the dullest man in the world’—an eccentric country man—as described by a young woman with whom her family has close ties.
Many of the poems are quite personal about grief and autism. Others are lighter on subjects such as dancing and napping at the public library.
Barbara Kussow’s stories usually feature people who are middle or late age, demographic groups that she finds interesting and feels are too often ignored in fiction.
Barbara Kussow, Writer 