On the shores of Consecration Pond, a burn victim begs her husband’s ghost for forgiveness for failing to save him, a retired teacher counsels a reporter seeking easy answers to the cause of his neighbor’s death, and a boy’s self-imposed rite of passage nearly costs him his life.

The eleven linked short stories in Laura Bonazzoli’s collection take place in and around the same pond in rural Maine. Together, these stories offer a meditation on the nature of wisdom, the risks and gifts of allowing ourselves to be seen, and the challenge of creating meaning in the wake of loss.

( from the publishing house)

“Consecration Pond is about the experience of being human. It’s about people who are haunted by guilt or regret or unresolved grief. People who love deeply, but can’t act on their love. People who carry a darkness so deep that it breaks them. And people who, while overcome with gratitude for their life, acquiesce to their death. It’s about you and me and everyone.”

(author Laura Bonazzoli, quote from from the press kit)

Note: This book can be ordered directly from Toad Hall Editions.

More about this collection

Laura Bonazzoli’s website and blog

The full press Kit (contains, inter alia, a short interview with the author)

News about this collection

Below is a list of upcoming readings and book signings that I received from the author, so if you are in the area by any chance – drop in and treat yourself to a literary break!

Laura will be joined by two other fiction authors in a joint reading as part of the 3X3 Reading Series at the Trinity Episcopal Church on 580 Forest Avenue in Portland, Maine, on Wednesday, March 22, 2023, at 6:00 p.m.

All times are Eastern Standard Time (GMT-4)

If you can’t attend a live event there is a recording of a reading from 28 August 2022 you might want to check out – here.

Quote

It was after dusk when I heard it.  I was fixing dinner. I figured it was the spring ice cracking, and I thought of Thoreau. Thirty-five years teaching American Lit, I made the kids read Walden. I still take out The Maine Woods every now and again when I feel my bearings start to slip. So when I heard the sound I thought of how Thoreau describes the spring ice cracking on rivers and ponds, loud as artillery, he said, and sure enough, it sounded like gunshot, so I came out onto the back deck and listened some more. As I said, it was this same week, second week in March, but the winter had been so warm I thought, I’ll be darned if the ice isn’t breaking before spring even. And then I heard their voices, the boys, two or three of them, shouting, and I knew it wasn’t spring ice breaking. Not breaking on its own, I mean. 

– from Consecration Pond by Laura Bonazzoli