Who by Fire is told by Robert, Lena’s husband, as he attempts to understand her affair with Isaac, an affair that he has become aware of after her death. He imagines the story of his wife and her lover.
Robert the narrator is trying to know himself in the story he is writing as he tells his imagined version of his wife’s betrayal. The story becomes a paradoxical tale of his own undoing that he comes to realize by telling it.
In the epigraph to the novel, Robert says, “Life has a way of raveling. Story discovers how it happened. That is the fiction.” This is the reader’s first introduction to Robert’s persona, a man who must control the world he inhabits. The telling of the story as he imagines it, reveals more than he would have wished and as this occurs, his telling moves into real time, for there is no way for him to deal with what he discovers except to report what is actually happening versus what he has imagined.
Pre-publication praise:
Michael Johnson, foreign correspondent and writer for The International Herald Tribune, American Spectator and The Washington Times: Mary Tabor’s captivating story of love and death tackles the tangle of relationships within and outside the bonds of marriage. Her eye-popping knowledge of men’s and women’s behavior is effortlessly recounted as couples face their anguished choices. Set in a world of art, music, anthropology and science, her novel enlightens the mind while it stirs the emotions. She does all this in a confident style of prose that ranks her alongside the finest novelists working today.
Paperback: 248 pages
ISBN: 978-0-988299-314-9
Language: English
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.5 inches
Publication Date: November 2012
So you wanna get published, right? So you think only a big house can get you anywhere worth getting, right? So, you think you need an agent first thing, right? I thought all these things and have the credentials to prove that Ive been on a literary journey: English major, Phi Beta Kappa, teacher, professor, MFA degree, literary journal editor, literary prize winner. But no big house and no agent.
Instead, I did what some may think is crazy. I went with a product development company that dabbled in publishing. But my book got out. And I went to work. I have an active public page that is linked to my account, a always under revision as new stuff happens and I write a where I try to post at least once a week.
Todays post that you are reading would have been this essay. But this site begged for it and its theirs. But later you may see this post on my . Go check out this: .
I dont tweet about my memoir (Re)Making Love: a sex after sixty story much, though some. I dont blog about my book much, but some: actually, I blogged the book while I lived itthats the first crazy-some-say thing I did before the product development company found meand that accounts for the banner of a blog that deals not with erotica but with literary thought, interviews and essays on writing and books.
Now youd think a book with this sordid, unconventional history wouldnt be doing very well, right? And, indeed, Im not getting rich. But is that what we artists are really about? Okay, a girl could hope but thats never been the goal: The work will out.
But get this: The small print in the visual of my book on Amazon says, #7 top rated in the Kindle store for Non-Fiction, Biographies & Memoirs, Arts &literature, Authors. The week before it was #5 behind The Diary of Anne Frank and Steven Kings On Writing.
And guess what: The book party at Upstairs on 7th (aka: How to buy a dress and get a book party) resulted in the promise of another book party by one of the women who came. Then I went to dinner with a banker-friend I know and told him what happened. He called his wife and is planning another book party in another dress shop and hell be providing the wine.
Is there a moral? Aint no good here at morals. But I will say this: If you put your heart and soul into your book and youve edited it like crazy with a cool eye, had others eyeball it and critique it, then find a reputable publisher and workyes that means youto sell one book at a time. Because like the memoir I wrote, its all personal.
PS: Another piece of good news: A new and much more experienced indie publisher has taken my memoir. Be sure to check out the second edition (more edits and a prologue) now from .
(Re)MAKING LOVE: a sex after sixty story, second edition, is available on , the , Barnes & Noble, the Nook, iBook, Sony ereader, the and in other electronic formats from .