Ulf Wolf

Flannery's Bear (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Once upon a time there were three children who meant to save the world.

The first, and the oldest of the threeand whose name was Flanneryknew this on arrival: the world was in terrible trouble. The Great War, still less than seven years past, had left the world in a darkness that for all the optimistic political rhetoricand the noble aims of the League of Nationsnever quite lifted and which was soon to return fully fledged with a small mustache and renewed violence.

The second childwhose name was Heather, and who was the youngest of the threearrived in Ridgefield, Connecticut, in December of 1950, just a little over five years after the Second World War finally ended, and on the very day that her sister Flannery left Ridgefield for her painful and prolonged audience with death. When in her seventh year, Heather's Irish Catholic father beat her younger brother senseless with his fists, and then killed him by tossing the lifeless five-year-old boy down a set of stairsdeemed an accident by the local Irish Catholic investigator, and grandly forgiven by the local Irish Catholic priestHeather knew that evil roamed freely in this world and that God seemed to turn a blind eye. She did, however, not remember that she was meant to give God a hand.

The third child, Gabriel, was born on the 9th of August, 1945. He took his first breath the very instant that the atom bomb over Nagasaki, Japan, detonated. He was later to muse that his first lungful of air contained the souls of 40,000 Japanese children. He (like Heather) had no notion about his purpose on this Earth until one summer morning when 40,000 dust motes, shimmering in the slotted sunshine of an abandoned attic (where a man recently had hanged himself), suddenly began to sing.

Then there was the fourth child: Netoniel.
Siblings all.

:

Gabriel was half-way up the dilapidated ladder. The day was Saturday and the date was July 23rd, 1960. The time was a little after ten in the morning. The rungs showed evidence of age or rot or both so he proceeded up them slowly, taking care to place his feet close to the sides where they would be the strongest. The ladder groaned softly under his weight, but didn't seem to mind him.

A perverse curiosity had brought him here. A few years agono one had been very specific about exactly whena man had hanged himself in this very attic. If the truth be told, Gabriel didn't know that for a fact, he hadn't even asked his parents or other such authority to confirm it, but it was rumored, and quite widelycommon knowledge, as it wereespecially among the kids (and as yet he was not much more than one himself).

So, in essence, a fact.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Ulf Wolf
• Erscheinungstermin: 19. Oktober 2012
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781301182619
• Artikelnr.: 56533232

Autorenporträt

Ulf is a Swedish name that once meant Wolf. So, yes, Wolf Wolf, that's me.

I was born Ulf Ronnquist one snowy night in late October, in one of those northern Swedish towns that are little more than a clearing in the forest.

Fast forward through twenty Swedish years, ten or so English ones, and another twenty-four in the US and you'll find me in front of an immigrations officer conducting the final citizenship interview, at the end of which he asks me, "What name would you like on your passport?"

And here I recall what a friend had told me, that you can pick just about any name you want at this point, and I heard me say "Ulf Wolf."

That's how it happened. Scout's honor.

Of course, I had been using Ulf Wolf as a pen name for some time before this interview, but I hadn't really planned to adopt that as my official U.S. name. But I did.

I have written stories all my life. Initially in Swedish, but for the last twenty or so years in English. To date I have written six novels, four novellas and two scores of stories; along with many songs and poems.

My writing focus these days is on life's important questions (in my view): Who are we? What are we doing here? And how do we break out of this prison?