A Perfect Book for an Imperfect Father’s Day

Having last blogged for Mother’s Day (on my author blog), it seems only fair to blog here for Father’s Day. Not too much direct experience with the mother thing, granted, but I do have experience with being a father. In 2014, I launched my novel AIKO, about a man who discovers he is a father. However, before he can celebrate Father’s Day, he must overcome a lot of obstacles to claim his child. Perhaps it is a simple story. The details make it special. And yet, it is strangely similar to one of the grand opera stories of my youth: Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini. (Here is the Metropolitan Opera’s synopsis.)

As a music student in college, I was not averse to attending an opera or two. Some were more interesting than others. My mother, who always promoted my musical interests, took me to my first opera when I was a boy: Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, about a ghost ship doomed to sail the seas forever. (Why is there no movie version today? It would make a great paranormal film.) But it was Madama Butterfly that became my favorite, and the only opera I can enjoy just listening to without having to see the stage production.

In the opera, an American naval officer visits Japan and because he is staying there a while on business, he arranges to have a “temporary” wife. The inevitable happens: his business is concluded and he leaves, promising to return, and later she discovers a child will be born. He does eventually return, but with his American wife in tow. He is surprised to find his Japanese lover has a child but he is determined to bring the child home to America. The Japanese woman is so distraught over that verdict that she commits suicide in one of opera’s most tragic scenes.

While I was living in Japan in the late 1980s and early 90s, teaching English to the students of a small city, I wrote the story of an American man who meets a Japanese woman. They have a relationship then must inevitably part. A child is born. Eventually the man learns of the child’s existence and wants to do the right thing. Despite his American wife’s objection, he goes to Japan to check things out. I’m skipping over a lot of details, of course, but you see how the plot is similar to the Madama Butterfly story. That was purely unintentional.

Seeing that similarity, I decided to exploit it and revised my story to use some elements of Madama Butterfly more overtly. First, I wanted to tell the story from the man’s point of view. The opera is all from her side. Before I knew much about Japanese history and customs, I had always wondered why Cho-Cho-san (literally “Madame Butterfly”) decided to kill herself to solve the problem. She should have killed him for trying to take away her child! Not to say killing is acceptable, of course. In my Western mindset, I could not understand her motivations. Now I do. So in telling the story from his side, I would need to show him as a rational, responsible, do-the-right thing kind of guy who has all the best intentions while dealing with the situation.
The next thing I wanted to change was the time period. The opera is set at the turn-of-the-century when American naval forces first begin to rule the Pacific. In changing the setting to the late 1980s and early 1990s (the same time period I wrote it), I could exploit the new “internationalization” focus of Japan. Because of a booming economy and criticism of Japan’s unfair trade practices, the government initiated (among other acts) the importing of foreign English teachers from the USA, UK, Canada, and Australia. I was part of that influx of teachers who went to Japan. I was there at the exact time of the story, and I described the clash of generations: the older World War II seniors and the pop culture youth who knew little about the war. It was an interesting yet awkward time. And it fit perfectly for my version of the story.

So there you have it: Art imitating a life which imitates art.

Being a guy, of course I wanted my male protagonist to not be a jerk, to do the right thing. But he is human and thus has flaws. He also faces the clash of customs, lost among people who think differently, where the acts that make no sense to him seem perfectly logical to the local folk. Japan in the 1990s is a modern place, but in inaka (the rural, “backwoods” regions), the old, traditional ways still hold sway. So our hero, Benjamin Pinkerton (yes, I borrowed the name from the character in the opera, just to make the connection more obvious), tries to do the right thing: save a child he never knew he had while risking everything in his life back home. It is another stranger in a strange land scenario I like to write.

A Girl Called Wolf by Stephen Swartz

The inspiring true story of the poor Inuit orphan girl from Greenland who grows up and saves the world!

A GIRL CALLED WOLF
by Stephen Swartz
(December 2015)

A Girl Called Wolf (paper)
A Girl Called Wolf (Kindle)

Ice and snow are all 12 year old Anuka knows outside the hut in Greenland where she was born. When her mama dies, Anuka struggles to survive. The harsh winter forces her to finally journey across the frozen island to the village her mama always feared.

But the people of the village don’t know what to do with this girl. They try to educate and bring her into the modern world, but Anuka won’t make it easy for them. She sees dangers at every turn and every day hears her fate echoing in her mama’s voice.

Her mama gave her that name for a reason. She is A GIRL CALLED WOLF, forever searching for the place where she belongs, a destination always just out of reach, on a path she will always make her own.

Based on the amazing coming-of-age and adult adventures of librarian, boxer, and Canadian soldier Anna Good!

Elmer Left by Kate Bitters

ELMER LEFT

By Kate Bitters

Kindle Cover“At the age of seventy-eight, Elmer Heartland packed up his things, kissed his sleeping wife on the forehead, and left. For good.” So begins the journey of Elmer, a man in his twilight years who has spent most of his life simply doing what he was told. After year upon year of empty conversations, meaningless actions, and endless Lions Club meetings, Elmer decides that he has had enough. He packs up a duffel bag, tip-toes into the night, and hops on the the 4 a.m train to the city of There. As the train gathers speed and leaves his hometown in the dust, Elmer wonders where the road will take him and what adventures his new life has in store. He is ill-prepared for what will come next. Elmer adventures across country, seeking personal meaning as he attempts to make peace with his past and grapple with his identity. Along the way, he encounters a quirky collection of people and places including two dueling soup kitchens, a pack of new-age collectivists, and a rainbow-colored meditation tower. Elmer’s tale shows us it’s never too late to come-of-age.

Available on Amazon.

Heart Search 2: Found | Love and Vampires…

Pageflex Persona [document: PRS0000040_00009]One bite started it all . . .

Another mysterious disappearance sparks a frightening chain of events for Remy and her family. Events foretold come to pass, and more strange and alarming occurrences assail her life. Where can she turn?

Coven politics continue to threaten Joshua’s existence, but an even bigger menace looms . . .

And Remy’s life hangs in the balance – can Joshua save her?

Fate still toys with mortals and immortals alike, as hearts torn apart by darkness confront perils which could lead to their doom.

Now available on Amazon for Kindle

 

 

Silent No More | Romance and Adventure in WWII Germany

Trapped in the nightmarish world of 1942 Munich by a freak twist in time, two strangers must navigate their way to safety with only each other and the help of a rag-tag group of university kids hell-bent on taking down Adolf Hitler and the entire Third Reich. Silent No More is a riveting story of historical fiction based on the true-to-life courage of one small band of Germans – The White Rose – who refused to remain silent in the face of Nazi barbarism. An inspiring and action-packed tale, Silent No More will command your attention until you turn the very last page.

Available on Kindle

Chinese Lolita | Chinese generational survival

Three generations of women in Baiyun’s family (grandma, who worked as a prostitute in Shanghai, mother, who grew up in her grandmother’s brothel and later lived through the communist China, and Baiyun, who grew up in the communist China and a dysfunctional family, and later came here as a graduate student) who strives to live normally despite  harsh reality.

After Ilium | A young man fresh from college meets a mysterious older woman

After-Ilium-Stephen-SwartzFour years of college has not taught Alex as much as he will learn in a month on the Turkish coast!

Fresh from college, Alex Parris, naïve History major and innocent computer geek, claims his reward from his proud parents: a tour of the Classical world. Most of all, Alex longs to visit the site of ancient Troy (Ilium) and walk the same pathways as the Greek and Trojan warriors did nearly 3000 years ago.

While sailing from Greece to Istanbul on a cruise ship, Alex meets an older woman, Eléna, who he indulgently fantasizes as the mythic Helen to his Paris. She, with her own mysterious background, toys with him and draws him into an affair. Eléna leads Alex through their sacrilegious journey through Istanbul and he is happy to try on the confident, adult role he has long desired. Alex sees Eléna as the perfect woman for him and he can see a future together.

The culmination of Alex’s tour is the visit to the site of ancient Troy, a place that is finally more important to him than sex. There, bored with Alex’s history lesson, Eléna sparks a confrontation with some Turkish men. Seeing his lover accosted, Alex must save her, even as he knows he is no match for them. Fortunately for Alex, there are three off-duty Navy men who join him in the fight. When they escape from the local jail, a new Odyssey begins for Alex, making their way across the Turkish countryside. Alex must return for Eléna. But what is he willing to do, how much will he have to endure to be reunited with his lover?

After Ilium is available on Amazon for Kindle, here. 

Charm City Chronicles [Book 1]: Ednor Scardens | Romance and coming of age…

Growing up in an Irish Catholic neighborhood in Baltimore in the 1960’s was hard enough when everything went right. Kate Fitzgerald wasn’t that lucky.

Struggling to cope with unwanted attention from older boys and men, Kate’s childhood friendship with shy classmate Gabe Kelsey begins to blossom, but quickly becomes tangled when she falls hard for his darkly handsome older brother, Michael.

As the brothers vie for Kate’s affections, she doesn’t know how to choose between them without tearing their family apart. She looks to her girlfriends for advice, but the tragic death of a classmate brings them face-to-face with mortality, shattering their facade of invincibility.

Her dilemma deepens when a predatory priest with a hidden past arrives at Holy Sacrament School. And when she silently witnesses a frightening scene between Gabe and Fr. O’Conner, Kate unknowingly becomes O’Conner’s intended next victim.