Cary and John

by Neil Ellis Orts

Overview

In the early 1970s, during a time when their families lived in separate cities, Cary and John kept in touch with each other through letters that were kept secret from their wives and daughters. Forty years later, those daughters, Gloria and Cathy, still the closest of friends, discover these letters. Their fathers now deceased, they learn of a life they never imagined their fathers having. Shifting between the present and the story the letters tell, two families struggle with their religion, their morals, and the question of what it means to be faithful.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781725251885
Publisher:	Wipf & Stock Publishers
Publication date:	01/29/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	130
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Neil Ellis Orts is a native Texan, a farm boy from the south central part of the state and a city man currently living in Houston. His interests have taken him to study theater and performance and theology as well as to dabble in endeavors that don't fit neatly under those headers. He is a generally curious individual.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Neil Ellis Orts’s beautiful novella tells a powerful story of family and friendship, love and loyalty, faith and fidelity in their various incarnations. The letters exchanged between Cary and John are spare and true, poignant in the things that are said as well as left unsaid. The fateful confrontation between the daughters of these good men is both harrowing and a tonic for the truth. Orts creates an opera of ordinary voices, skillfully interweaving present-day narrative with the voices of the past until the two separate stories become one. A fine novella by a fine writer, its music stays with you well after the book is closed.

Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, author of Lovers’ Almanac and Still Pilgrim

Faithfulness is the engine of love. It drives us toward our choices. It steers us over complicated roads. What we feel and fear, what we long for, who we pray to. Through parallel, intergenerational stories Neil Ellis Orts explores the many ways that hearts entangle, and how we survive those entanglements: we love.

Jill Alexander Essbaum, author of Hausfrau

Editorial Reviews

Neil Ellis Orts’s beautiful novella tells a powerful story of family and friendship, love and loyalty, faith and fidelity in their various incarnations. The letters exchanged between Cary and John are spare and true, poignant in the things that are said as well as left unsaid. The fateful confrontation between the daughters of these good men is both harrowing and a tonic for the truth. Orts creates an opera of ordinary voices, skillfully interweaving present-day narrative with the voices of the past until the two separate stories become one. A fine novella by a fine writer, its music stays with you well after the book is closed.

Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, author of Lovers’ Almanac and Still Pilgrim

Faithfulness is the engine of love. It drives us toward our choices. It steers us over complicated roads. What we feel and fear, what we long for, who we pray to. Through parallel, intergenerational stories Neil Ellis Orts explores the many ways that hearts entangle, and how we survive those entanglements: we love.

Jill Alexander Essbaum, author of Hausfrau

From the Publisher