A tabby cat turns up in a Paradise neighbor's yard, and such is the stuff of a sweet little story by Kaye D. Owens. "Turn-Up . . . . Turns Up" ($5 in paperback, including postage, self-published) "is mostly factual, with a few lines of 'author's prerogative' to fill in the unknown events." Folks in the neighborhood keep leaving, and Turn-up has to find new lodgings again and again. "She survived the horrendous Northern California fires of the summer of 2008" spending most of her evacuation "under a bed." Today, she "has her family pretty much wrapped around her paws."
Watsonville writer Al Cunha was a recent visitor to Chico's Barnes & Noble. His novel, "Dancing With Daffodil" ($10.95 in paperback from Infinity Publishing), tells the story of a homeless woman living in a cardboard box in a San Francisco alley. Befriended by a young female reporter and a French baker, Maggie May Salokavich keeps singing about "the sweetest little girl in the world--Daffodil." Daffodil "is the song that I hear . . . the dance that I dance." But Officer McGuinness is determined to get her off the street. Brutality ensues, but a surprise birthday guest changes everything.
Chico therapist George McClendon, in "Heaven's Call To Earthy Spirituality" ($14 in paper from Dog Ear Publishing), writes in intensely personal terms about leaving the Benedictine Abbey in Shawnee, Oklahoma, in the 1970s. Seeking to reconcile spiritual discipline required of a monk with the "earthy" experience of sexuality and an inclusive spirituality (his heroes include Thomas Merton and the Dalai Lama), the author finds joy in marriage and his practice of psychotherapy and spiritual guidance. It's the story of a "St. George" who meets the "Dragon Lady," an integration of opposites, of past with present. Now: "Time to move on."
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