When the Parallel Converge

When the Parallel Converge spans the author’s spiritual pilgrimage. It begins with her childhood under the care of her indomitable grandmother in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, site of the Great Flood in which ancestors died. From there, the reader shares a dark night of the soul when the author is marooned at a major airport after missing a connection from Dublin following a Celtic pilgrimage. Last, the author writes of her hospitalization and recovery from a nearly fatal infection, when she was much older, which tested her soul. Several poems on related themes also are included. The author learns lessons of life, loss, grief, faith, hope, charity, and grace, along with laughter and joy.

Laura Dabundo is Professor of English, Emerita, at Kennesaw State University. She is the author of Jane Austen: A Companion (in press) and The Marriage of Faith: Christianity in Jane Austen and William Wordsworth (2012). She is a lifelong Episcopalian and a lay companion of the Anamchara Fellowship, a Celtic-inflected monastic community of the Episcopal Church.