Stories Fiction & True of People Around the World

These are stories about people around the world, some fictional, some real. The fiction starts in Ireland. The Deaf Widow Dunphy is a woman in the town of Ballybrook whose sharp tongued, gossiping neighbor has designs on the Widow's house until she finally gets her comeuppance. In Scared Sober a world class drinker is, well, scared sober. The Love Lamb is a love story about two shepherds who are pushed apart by a bet over sheep, but come together over a lamb.
In the Caribbean, For Love of a Boat is about a woman's intense bonding with the charter sailboat she and her husband crew, and how her love is tested. In Rebecca's Cave, the ghost of a little girl is stuck alone in a cave on an island until a bereft grandfather comes to visit. In Berber Boy Seeks First Wife, Must Like Camels, a Moroccan camel herder presses his Mother to arrange a marriage for him, and tastes his first love.
In The Watchmaker and the Soccer Player an old man and a young boy in Dubrovnic, Croatia find a way for both to benefit. The Street of Blood tells the story of a Texan's visit to a Mexican village while on the run. In Grandma and the Rainmaker, set in a dairy farm in Wisconsin, Grandma tries to resolve her conflict between being a teetotaler and her desire to look her best for the social event of the year.
In The Lady of the Lake, set in Pennsylvania, a divorcee devises a novel way to drive away prospective vacation house buyers after her divorce. In A Romance With Directions, which could be anywhere in the U. S., a man falls in love with Mona, his car's GPS. Then she turned to the dark side. Turning to non-fiction, in The Beautiful People of Kauai we meet an expat "surfer dudette", a Zodiac captain, a modern version of the ancient Kauai warriors, a war widow and a great-great-grandmother hula dance.
Two tourists are also included to illustrate that family and spirit are not limited to any one place. The Pioneer Piano Player tells the life story of Aria Sachs, a musician famous in Israel, heard in New York City. A soldier in transit on a plane delayed in the U. S. A. told me his story in Afghanistan Leave. A mother in Massachusetts told me the story of her son Glenn Doherty in A Warrior and His Mother.
Glen was killed defending the Ambassador in Benghazi. Uncertain, Texas is about an uncertain town and how it got its name. Finally, since travel inspired many of the stories in this book the last story, The Incredible Lightness of Lost Luggage, is about learning from lost luggage on a trip to Morocco via Paris