Long Trail Winding

Overview

An Adirondack novella and nine unusual Upstate stories are included in LONG TRAIL WINDING, the sixth book of fiction by author-artist Elisabeth Stevens, who was born in Rome, NY.


In old Upstate towns, sparsely populated villages and remote sections of the Adirondacks, past history plays a major role in the lives of long-time residents. In these fictions, those who have lived recently, or even long ago, do not die easily. These are their stories.


I. The novella

Long Trail Winding: In a remote settlement on the edge of the Adirondacks, old time residents live beside a made lake that contains a drowned village and a century old dam that entombs the body of an unlucky young construction helper. Here, where most of the residents are old, a young carpenter and a girl who can sometimes "see ahead" struggle to set the past at rest and make a future for themselves.


II. The stories

Lunch: An Upstate college professor who has just been denied tenure learns that the novel he has laboriously written is bound to fail. He has just one hope.


I Told You So: In an Upstate hamlet, the younger of two old sisters living on in their parents' house is "not quite like other people." When Muriel insists on writing letters to the dead, there is consternation, but it appears that the impossible may be possible after all.


A Rough Ride: A young girl from Utica, an orphan, hopes that the urbane couple she meets by chance in Manhattan's Gramercy Park will reconnect her to her long-dead parents and their literary life. Instead, her new friends leave her bereft.


The Other Shore: Strangers gather one evening at the shore of a remote Adirondack lake,awaiting the return of loved ones long gone. Do the dead return? If so, how can what happens afterward be explained?


The Gold Watch: A college student from Rome, NY, mourns his mother's shockingly sudden death during a vacation in Rome, Italy. He does not expect that grief, lust--and pride--will lead him to perpetrate a strange deception.


The Dark-Eyed Boy: At an old-time Adirondack resort, a young wife pregnant with her first child glimpses the vicious anger of a young boy with a fatal disease. The resort faces the dark and famous lake where a pregnant woman was murdered long ago.


The Other People: An Upstate working man wants to enjoy his peaceful Sunday picnic on an isolated Adirondack mountain with his wife and children. Instead, the unwelcome arrival of a strange downstate family precipitates sexual violence--and eventually, death.


Campfire: A little girl of five begins to learn about loss when she is sent away to Adirondack summer camp for the first time because her mother is having a miscarriage. She observes--but fails to understand--the struggles of the directors to keep the failing camp in business, the abortive love affair between two counselors and the sadness of the riding instructor who cannot go home to war-torn Europe.


The Bush: In a small, Mohawk Valley village, a stubborn old maintenance worker insists that a strange bush in the village green burned without being consumed, and even hints, to his wife's dismay, that its branches may have turned to gold.