Wake!

Tosca Lee's second novel tells the story of Eve, the first woman. Lee's lyrical prose tells of the first man and women in the Garden, their temptation, and fall. Lee then goes on to tell their story as they wander from the Garden and struggle to live in the fallen world. Through Havah's (Eve's) eyes, the reader learns about the beginning of mankind as a family is begun, and multiplies. Then the reader weeps with Havah and Adam as they witness the first death.

This is a story that at first we think we know well, until we read Lee's story and realize we hardly know it at all. Tosca Lee left me weeping and laughing, and wondering what it would have been like to live in a world such as Adam and Havah lived in. I could hardly keep myself from reading the book all at once. I could not pry my fingers from the pages, and the beautiful story occupied my thoughts long after.

Just as Tosca Lee's first novel, Demon, changed the way I thought about the fall of angels, Havah has changed, forever, the way I will think about the fall of man, and the story that followed. This is the kind of book I dream of writing - it kept me up reading, made me think, weep, and laugh. Someday, I will write something like this, but I can only dream of writing it as well as Tosca Lee does.

Wake!

Photography

Before it got all cold and snowy here, my fiancé and I made one last trip up to the mountains. I convinced him to stop and let me take photos of a graveyard on our way back down the mountain. Maybe it's weird - I don't know - but I think the shapes and colors of the older gravestones are interesting. Plus, sometimes one finds interesting things on the stones.

I thought this design was beautiful - especially with the varying shades of gray. :)

I like the curving lines in this photo. And the stones in the background.

This next photo I did not take for its aesthetic interest, because it is not interesting at all in that sense. It was a plain headstone, a different color from all the others - light tan instead of gray. The only thing written on it were the initials S.L. I am very intrigued by this stone. Who is S.L.? Why are there no dates, and only initials on the stone? Why is it a different material than all the others? I'm so intrigued, I may just write a story about it.