Florence Festival 2017

Same place, another year.

We just wrapped up another Florence Festival of Books, and my writer friend Lynn Ash took a picture for the record (She graciously declined when I offered to take a photo of her).

The book stacks had lowered a little and our heads were spinning with stories.

She highlighted her new book, Eugeneana, and also brought The Route from Cultus Lake and Vagabonda. I brought my two, A Place of Her Own and The Shifting Winds.

This annual festival on the Oregon coast brings authors from around the state and beyond, and we’d been talking and selling and signing for six hours. Lots of good book talk, but Lynn and I were ready to check out a local restaurant.

We headed for the Waterfront Depot right on the river, recommended by my neighbor, Todd Hannah, a local fishing guide. Good choice, Todd. Thanks.

Inside the restaurant’s rustic interior we gazed out the broad bay window and watched the late afternoon sun twinkle on stirring blue water while we feasted on exquisite seafood. Can’t beat that for a finale.

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Going Home Again

Who says you can’t go home again? Well, some of us do return, and my friend A. Lynn Ash writes about that in her new book Eugeneana.

Born in Eugene, Oregon, Lynn grew up there in a home over the grocery store pictured on the book cover. Then she left.

Eugeneana is a story of the hometown she came back to.

I wonder how many people take the words to heart that they can’t go home again. Do they look with longing on a past they fear can never illuminate the future? An opening theme that cannot repeat in the coda?

Lynn dared to test that when she returned to her hometown.

The book will definitely speak to people of Eugene, those who share the city’s history, as well as newcomers who want to know more.

But I think the book will also speak to those who’ve contemplated going back to other hometowns. Maybe they haven’t tried–yet. Maybe they did and it didn’t work out. Or it worked out fine and they want to link arms with Lynn and share her triumph.

I’m guessing Lynn would say you can’t go home and find it as you left it. But life’s repetition isn’t so much a circle as a spiral, each round offering a different perspective.

In a collection of vignettes, she’ll draw you into her story, but more. She’ll draw you into Eugene’s story in this memoir of her hometown, a story more poignant because she dared the return.

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