This is Skalna's first book in English; until now her books have been written in her native language, Czech. After I read the book, I wanted to go back and read it again to refresh my memory about the interesting group of characters I had been introduced to, but also to simply reread certain passages for the beauty of the language, which is always very clear, very simple, and very imaginative. Realism and fantasy converge effortlessly in her stories, suggesting that there is more to reality than meets the eye and that dark, mysterious, terrible, and, yes, beautiful surprises await us foolish mortals at every turn.
Each of the twenty-one stories draws the reader into "an enchanting circle" of an ordinary or not so ordinary human being, into whose life we are allowed to peek for a few moments, before we come away with an increased appreciation for the little things in life - whether it be for the baby frogs Skalna rescues from dried-up mud, for her writing teacher, Laura, who taught her to remember three things wherever she went, and to write them together in her stories, for an imagined conversation with Papa Hemingway (an author, Skalna tells us, whom she dreams about), for watching a man fly a colorful kite at Seacliff Beach while his little dog is chasing it, for walking down Santa Cruz Avenue and falling in love with the picture of a cow called Bessie, for having a beer with the Czech poet Bohumil Hrabal, for finding a yellow cow and then seeing it jump over a silver moon, for being a nanny in a strange land and learning to get along in English, for encountering a native American playing a harmonica beneath an oak tree, for accompanying her seventy-eight-year-old friend Amy to the hospital and then finding out that the young doctor had lost the skin-sample he had taken and being told that they must come back again in two weeks, for taking a train ride to the Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco for an opening rehearsal of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, for befriending an elderly Czech woman, Sophia, and listening to her tell about the thirteen cats she has to take care of, to, well, we can go on and on.
Each of these stories is recounted with compassion, humor, wisdom, and a loving care for detail that makes the reader want to revisit them again."
—RICHARD HAMMERUD, Ph.D.
[Richard Hammerud has a Ph.D. in English from the University of California at Berkeley and a Ph.D. in Philosophical Theology from the Graduate Theological Union. He currently teaches at the College of San Mateo and at De Anza College in Northern California.]
"This is a mostly lovely series of very short stories and vignettes, some dealing with Hemingway, some with writing, some with nature, most illustrated by interesting photographs or drawings. What's most remarkable is that these are written in English, which is Skalna's second language. She has a gift for elegant phrasing. She has a command of our language that many native speakers do not have. Skalna's writing is often beautiful, and most of the stories are precisely the length they should be—a skill to be praised highly."
—WRITER'S DIGEST
[ Judge's commentary]
"...a consistently charming collection of essays and friendship tales from the heart of a writer who sees the world through gentle but honest eyes. Jarmila Marie Skalna's insights are thought-provoking, and all the more remarkable because she writes them in her second language. Ms. Skalna's work come close to home...in more ways than one."
—ROGER WELSCH
[A writer from Nebraska]