The Season For Moths

The Season For Moths is a work of historical fiction that spans more than eight decades.  Scott Wellinger's compilation of four short stories, The Season For Moths is composed of tangentially interconnected, sequential storylines, set in the years from the end of Prohibition -- 1933 -- to 2016.  Each story is deeply rooted in the times in which they take place, transporting the reader through the news, fashion and music, set as the backdrop for each narrative.


In story one, Anglossa Cuprina, fourteen-year-old Cuprina Blohmkowski discovers her isolated world in St. Albans, Vermont, to be the northern hub of bootlegging -- a major revenue center for organized crime.

Barritt "Bear" Kendrick, under-boss for Frankie "The Kid" Cidonese who reported to none other than Al Capone, was charged with overseeing bootlegging from Canada, through Vermont, to all major cities in the Northeast.  He and his crew set up their residency in Cuprina's hometown.

It wasn't just the Great Depression, closed banks, poverty and being a Jew in a Catholic community that Blohmkowski had to overcome.  Bear Kendrick also had her scent.


In the second story, Gerry Hutchins, a recovering drug addict and alcoholic, lives a life of solidarity in1969.  He lives in Toronto, Canada in anonymity among those in his support groups and chooses only having non-familiar relationships with his coworkers.  Until SHE came along.


Chrysiridia Rhipheus, the third story, takes place in the early nineteen-nineties.  A young student from New Orleans is beginning her final year at Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts.  She is on a scholastic scholarship and cannot afford any distractions, else she loose her chance to continue on at Harvard as a graduate student.  As the autumn leaves change, so too does Christina Bachet.  Her future is hers to squander in a time when grunge and anarchy and rage against the system that oppresses the populous is so prevalent.


In this remarkable book's denouement, winter has arrived in Lake Lure, North Carolina, where those in a senior-living community spend their remaining years.  Knowing and caring for these residents is beyond difficult.  It must be done at some remove in order not to be lured into a constant state of depression over the frequent and inevitable loss.  Old people die.  But when Nurse Logan begrudgingly begins to let them into her heart, it is beyond fathom what she discovers.


Scott Wellinger's anthology of historical fiction is a departure from the norm and will take some readers to times and places they have never been.  The Season For Moths explores times and places within the human soul, an introspection the reader will undoubtedly connect with, regardless of season in life.