Postmarks and Tea With Sister Anna
Jul 1, 2011
and Tea with Sister Anna
Author: Susan Gilbert Harvey
Publisher: Golden Apple Press
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What the Press Releases Say:
Tea With Sister Anna:
When artist Susan Gilbert Harvey opens her great-aunt’s steamer trunk, she discovers a kindred spirit. In 1898 she was alone in Paris, drawing from life in famous studios while medicating her chronic cough.
Susan goes to Paris in 1998 to find Anna’s pensions and studios and to relive her own college year abroad. Paris is a catalyst for transformation.In this work of creative nonfiction, Susan Gilbert Harvey interlaces the lives of two women in two centuries.
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Postmarks:
In the summer of 1998, Susan Gilbert Harvey reads the letters her grandmother and great-aunt wrote in the summer of 1898. Edith and Anna Lester are ambitious young women who veered from the southern lady stereotypes of Rome, Georgia, to seek artistic freedom in Europe.
Rome, Georgia, is the cauldron for Harvey's summer of transition as she moves from sculptor to writer, from daughter to orphan, and from lethargy to creative rebirth. Harvey, a non-traditional visual and performance artist, introduces other Rome women who have found identity in eccentricity. their stories and the city of Rome provide a backdrop for Susan Gilbert Harvey's pivotal summer of 1998.
______________________________What Idgie says:
These books are lovely just to look at. Pen and ink drawings, recycled covering and pages. The words inside are just as lovely. They are filled with letters from the late1800s by the women in the books and they definitely set a sense of place. Very descriptive, both of the locations and the attitudes and emotions of the times.
Tea with Sister Anna stays centered in the late 1800s on the whole, with the memoir revolving around two sisters - one in America and the other in Paris. Anna is suffering from TB and living life to it's fullest in Paris, while her sister remains on the home front.
The second book, Postmarks, deals with Susan herself learning and taking strength from the women in her family to grow her artistic passions into a fulfilling life's work. She describes her work, how it came about and how she evolved from sculptress to author.
Both books have a wry sense of humor and lightheartedness, even when dealing with the difficulties life throws at us all.
I enjoyed both. :)
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To Order these books:
susan@susanharvey.com
www.susanharvey.com
