Portion of Heart

"This is a collection of short stories, very ""southern"" stories. The first section relates family tragedies and triumphs and touches on race relations as they existed in the decade of the 1940s. The second section consists of Christmas stories. The author has tried to select narratives that speak to most problem of the elderly person in the home, jealousy over family properties, love affairs, unrequited love, young dreams and ambition, greed. Yet most of the stories dramatize at least one character trying to give back to the world a portion of its broken heart."

Nell Suttles Abbott began writing poems and short stories at age ten. Published in The National Beta Club Journal while in high school, she served as an associate editor for the campus magazine, The Georgia Cracker, when at the University of Georgia. Later work appeared in magazines and literary journals. For seventeen years she wrote a weekly column, book reviews and articles for various newspapers as well as contributing Little Sunshine Books to American Greetings. In 2000 her poetry collection, "Life Songs", won the Charles B. Dickson Memorial Chapbook Award and publication through the Georgia Poetry Society. Her plays, written for First Presbyterian Church, Marietta, Georgia, were also performed at other churches and on several college campuses acrosss the country. Mrs. Abbott has taught inspirational and fiction writing. She is a member of The National League of American Pen Women. Nell and her husband Joe live in Metter, Georgia. They have three grown children, Katherine Ann Womack, with Wycliffe Bible Translators, Joe M. Abbott, PhD and Manuscript Editor of Davis, California, and Martin Edward Abbott, a professional musician of Dallas, Georgia. Nell and Joe have six grandchildren and three cats.