Fall's Bright Flame: A Coming of (Middle) Age Tale

Coming of Age" as an idea pitches us into a magical time when summer lasts forever, and our bodies nudge our minds into turbulent backwaters. But wait, what age? If at fifty years old or thereabouts, the analogy holds; if the uniformity of life that precedes upheaval resembles those early rhythms, well, what then? Where we find Elise von Sturnheim as Fall's Bright Flame opens is surely another sort of coming of age, a thrilling and perplexing shape-shifting of all things familiar and predictable. The simple act of leaving her husband and home for a trip north to attend to the details of her mother's funeral carries Elise through the looking glass and into a vortex of conflicting loyalties. There she will test not only the depth of her own integrity but also her capacity for loyalty; not only her susceptibility to passion but also her ability to trust herself and the unfolding future.The story begins with a chance encounter with her mother's doctor, who ignites her antipathy and much more. The bright flame that grows illuminates a world inhabited by the generation born after WWII and endowed with cultural advantages, long held principles, and biases.Action sprints from Maryland to Massachusetts, Washington to New York, and hence to London, Cornwall and Paris. In the fall of the year and the fall of life - that bright flame before winter - Elise's tale is of family, friends and how coming of age is not anchored in chronology.