The Promise of Air / The Garden of Survival (Stark House Press...

THE PROMISE OF AIR “The Promise of the Air ran through him like a strain of glad spring music. Man, he felt sure again, was a cosmic, not only a planetary, being. He could know the stars. The real self was of air....The Kingdom of Air is within us…” Joseph Wimble is a vague sort of fellow, placid of temperament, indifferent to most things. His one passion is birds. So when he meets Joan, their courtship and marriage is at first full of air and fancy, and they take flight with it. But after Tom is born, and a daughter soon after, Joan comes back to Earth. But Joseph never does. His daughter, whom they also name Joan, is a creature of the air like he, and together they create their own language. Together they spread their wings and soar with the possibilities. THE GARDEN OF SURVIVAL “There was a garden in my heart, and some one walked with me therein…” Richard is composing a letter to his twin brother. It begins with the story of his brief marriage to the mysterious Marion, a woman who had touched his heart, but not his soul. After Marion’s sudden death, Richard is left with a feeling of incompleteness, and so joins the army and goes off to Africa. There he serves many years, forgetting for awhile his life with Marion. His return to England is both familiar, and disorienting. For within him is the seed of a new understanding, a burgeoning feeling he can barely understand. Marion’s final words, so long ago now, begin to haunt him. An epiphany is at hand. It begins with a walk in the garden…

From the Inside Flap

THE PROMISE OF AIR The Promise of the Air ran through him like a strain of glad spring music.Man, he felt sure again, was a cosmic, not only a planetary, being. He could know the stars. The real self was of air....The Kingdom of Air is within us Joseph Wimble is a vague sort of fellow, placid of temperament, indifferent to most things. His one passion is birds. So when he meets Joan, their courtship and marriage is at first full of air and fancy, and they take flight with it. But after Tom is born, and a daughter soon after, Joan comes back to Earth. But Joseph never does. His daughter, whom they also name Joan, is a creature of the air like he, and together they create their own language. Together they spread their wings and soar with the possibilities.THE GARDEN OF SURVIVAL There was a garden in my heart, and some one walked with me therein Richard is composing a letter to his twin brother. It begins with the story of his brief marriage to the mysterious Marion, a woman who had touched his heart, but not his soul. After Marion s sudden death, Richard is left with a feeling of incompleteness, and so joins the army and goes off to Africa. There he serves many years, forgetting for awhile his life with Marion. His return to England is both familiar, and disorienting. For within him is the seed of a new understanding, a burgeoning feeling he can barely understand. Marion s final words, so long ago now, begin to haunt him. An epiphany is at hand. It begins with a walk in the garden

About the Author

Born in London on March 14, 1869, Blackwood rebelled against his strong Catholic upbringing and began studying Oriental religions and the occult, later joining several occult societies. When he reached twenty, his father sent him to Canada. Returning to Britain in the late 1890's, he soon began turning some of his strange experiences into stories. An acquaintance sent these stories to a publisher and the result was The Empty House, soon followed by many more weird story collections and some truly strange and powerful novels. Storyteller, mystic, adventurer, radio and television personality--Algernon Blackwood had been all of these in his rich and varied lifetime. In fact, as he revealed to his friends, most of his stories were based on actual events. By the time of his death in 1951, he had become one of the greatest writers of supernatural fiction in the 20th century.

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