NOW AVAILABLE
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The HUNGRY i:
a Work Book for partners of men with eating disorders
at greenebarkpress.com, amazon.com,
through GURZE Books, and on this site
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Please see below for back cover and reviews
Thank you for visiting my site. Here you'll find my writing about education and eating disorders, and a link to my rental cottages in Seal Cove, Maine on Mount Desert Island, which is the home of Acadia National Park.
I know this is an odd combination! I've enjoyed diverse opportunities including teaching in universities for 11 years, running a real estate and construction company in Maine, and I was married for a long time to a man who was eating disordered. I've also worked for the Rural School and Community Trust as a policy analyst and led research teams looking at the cost-effectiveness of small schools.My first book, Bitter Ice: a memoir of love, food, and obsession was published by Wm. Morrow/Rob Weisbach Books in late 1999. ERIC/CRESS published my second book, The Hermit Crab Solution about small schools. The Rural School and Community Trust and KnowledgeWorks Foundation published Dollars & Sense: the cost-effectiveness of small schools, and Dollars & Sense 2: Lessons from good, cost-effective small schools, two in-depth reports about small schools. My academic writing has appeared in many journals including KAPPAN, Journal for Maine Education, and the Journal for the Education of the Gifted. In November 2010 Greene Bark Press published The Hungry i: a Work Book for partners of men with eating disorders, and I just finished the final draft of my first novel, Islands of Time, about forgiveness and love. For the past two years I've been researching the story of my British family during World War II, for a book currently titled: Both Sides of the Pond. You can find information about these projects on this site by clicking the pictures above.I hope what I've learned can be as useful to you as writing about it has been to me.My best to you,Barbara
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I never loved my husbands. I loved Ben. I was fourteen when I fell in love with Ben Bunker. When I heard his voice. It wasn't that he said anything special - but his voice reverberated though me. Instantly. Beyond logic. I was standing next to Ben, so close I could smell the salt on his clothes. I looked up into his eyes - bues of the sea and sky flecked with sunlight and I was drawn into them. Totally. It was just a moment but, so powerful it still lives in me.
I did what I always did, when an emotion threatened me. I froze. I was used to guarding against pain, not to accepting love.
I couldn't trust love, trust myself or even the idea of love. Rachel's death and then later my father dying too, too soon too young.
How can you trust in love when everyone you love, or you think loves you , disappears?. How can you trust yourself when everyone you love leaves and you know it is your fault? I was
so broken I destroyed what I most loved and I thought I'd lost him forever.
from Islands of Time: a love story
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BOTH SIDES OF THE POND: My family during World War II I've been doing research at the Kennedy LIbrary over the past two years, and the Archivist recently asked me to contribute to their Blog. You can read the result at: http://archiveblog.jfklibrary.org/2011/11/scholar-at-work-2/
ISLANDS OF TIME: a love story
Thanks to writer Lucy Sprague-Frederiksen and the Hamilton-Wenham Chronicle (please see link below), for letting people in my home town know that draft copies of my new novel, Islands of Time: a love story are available at our library for comment. At least they were - I'm delighted that they are all out currently! I hope readers will comment on the story, so I can learn from their reactions as I finish the final draft.
http://www.wickedlocal.com/hamilton/fun/entertainment/books/x1622882843/Hamilton-author-takes-novel-approach-to-getting-feedback#axzz1fZgRYe7O
Islands of Time: a love story grew out of my experience living as a "Year-round" summer person in coastal Maine. I began to see that people came from at least four cultures: descendents of Mainers who had lived in Maine all their lives there, people "from away" like myself who had moved there recently, Summer People, and Tourists. People in group one group often eyed those in another with distrust and relied on stereotypes to interpret their behavior. It took me about ten years to begin to see through the stereotypes, and to feel accepted. I was honored to move comfortably between these groups, which led to my interest in returning to school to earn a doctoral degree in education, and to writing my dissertation: Working memory: The influence of culture on aspirations, about Maine communities I knew well. Writing about the history and culture of Coastal Maine made me care about it even more, and Islands of Time is in many ways a love song to a place and people I cherish. Going back to school myself helped me grow, and Islands is also a story of growth and forgiveness, first of oneself.
Is the story fiction or non-fiction? Of course, it's both. Like any writer, I've blended things that actually happened, though to people I may have read about or met in passing, with my deep feelings for specific people and places, and a re-visioning of my own experience. And, I've made up events and people, and made some things come out the way I wished they had instead of the way they did.
BOTH SIDES OF THE POND: a family history of World War II
In November 2009 I was getting ready to have knee replacement surgery - again - and knew I needed to find an interesting project I could work on while relatively immobilized. This photograph of my mother and uncle, who were British, had haunted me for many years. I thought it must have been taken just before he went to war in France, and was later rescued from Dunkirk. I didn't know what uniform my mother was wearing, though obviously she served in some capacity with the British Red Cross. My mother died in 1973, long before I was interested in knowing who she was before she married my father, or later my stepfather. I wish I had known her better, thought to ask the questions I ask now and struggle to answer, or never will. But I didn't, so writing this book is my way of getting to know her better.
