The Secret Side of Jaya: Three surreal and fantastic encounter...

Embracing three distinct novellas, this collection tells of Jaya's paranormal encounters in each of the three places she inhabits after leaving the ashram. In the first, Bible translator John Wycliffe (born 1384) meets up with surrealist painter Hieronymous Bosch (born 1450) in the railroad-siding town where she's living somewhere out on the prairie. Who knows what will erupt, especially when modern-dance pioneer Isadora Duncan (born 1877) joins the action? Who says great genius doesn't continue, even in the most out-of-the-way places? Jaya plays along with their subversive operation out of an old warehouse owned by Virgil and Homer plus a Laundromat. It's my wildest prose to date — a work that has already bitterly split one competition jury that awarded publication to another author. So be warned, you'll either hate or love it. The second novella focuses on a woman miller who makes flour and cornmeal the old way — with waterpower and granite millstones. With each visit into the spring-fed ravine, Jaya finds there's more in these Ozark mountain backwoods than she's imagined. Even the wildlife's magical, or at least the critters she comes to understand. The third novella introduces the legendary hunchbacked Native piper Kokopelli, who soon has Jaya fiddling beside him as he takes flight through the desert interior of the Pacific Northwest. And then the characters engage in a round of reflections.

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