jeeze julia
Cover image
Synopsis
In a very small New England town in 1965, a story unfolds; Margo, a young woman learning to be a seamstress, and Oliver, a bibliophile without the use of his legs, forge a friendship beyond either of their expectations. With the world at her fingertips, Margo must choose to either stay behind in this town where time stands still to give Oliver a reason to live, or move forward with her own life and accept a very generous and beneficial opportunity in the city.
Excerpt
Mrs. Brown bent her neck in a very odd way, and Margo immediately set down the tea tin that she had just opened, changing focus entirely to her boss.
“Mrs. Brown?”
“—SHH!” The old woman stood and her eyes paced back and forth across the store.
“What is it?” Margo disobeyed.
“There’s a cricket in here, don’t you hear it?” Margo hadn’t heard it. Over the crackle of the fire, and an automobile rambling through the centre of town, she hadn’t heard the miniscule sound of the very tired cricket that currently hid out in their shop.
“I didn’t hear it – are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure, dear, it’s in here somewhere, probably in one of my baskets.” She knelt to the ground like a child, and dug through a basket of yarn, spreading it out on the floor in front of her and shaking the basket upside down until the black little body fell out into the woolly pile.
“Ah, ha! There you are little one.” She gathered it up in both hands, and asked her assistant to get the door.
“It’ll die out here, won’t it?” Margo asked, crossing her arms once the door was opened to defend against the cold.
“But it’ll ruin the furniture in there. That is the way of things.” And she released the cricket into the grass at the edge of the road, then sped quickly up the stairs and back inside. Closing the door behind her and staring blankly into the room, she said,
“Ho hum. Now, what was I doing?”
