Close Calls

Close Calls: Voices of Love and Fear is a creative nonfiction memoir spanning the life of a blind woman from childhood to middle age.  

Lisa, the main character, undergoes a shock when separated from her family at age five. Totally blind since her birth in 1954, well before mainstreaming in classrooms is accepted, only a special school in Pittsburgh, a hundred miles away from her rural hometown, is suitable for her education. This separation, along with her shyness at school and her mother's preoccupation with housework when Lisa is at home, creates in Lisa a feeling of sadness that comes to permeate her life. At age seven, her grandfather dies on Good Friday. When he isn't resurrected on Easter as she innocently expects, Lisa's disillusionment with God sets her on a course of mistrust that intensifies years later after a failed love affair.  

By the time she meets Jerry, who showers her with the attention she has always craved, Lisa cannot feel secure. 

The book describes their marriage, Jerry's struggle with diabetes, the joys and challenges of being a wife and mother, and Lisa's spiritual highs and lows. Throughout the narrative, Lisa keeps asking the question: If God loves me, why does He allow me to suffer such loneliness and loss? This inquiry haunts many a heart and mind, but Close Calls delves into its depth in surprising ways. The author dares to imagine voices of those who travel with her on this journey as well as the voice of an unseen narrator.

This approach to the narrative seeks to widen the readers' perspectives as well.