About The Devil’s Pulpit & Other Mostly True Scottish Misadventures:
Georgia—"Part travel journal, part memoir, part story about a friendship, The Devil’s Pulpit & Other Mostly True Scottish Misadventures seamlessly weaves together prose and poetry like a harmonic musical chord," says Marjory Wentworth, former South Carolina Poet Laureate and author of One River, One Boat: Occasional Poems and Other Stories.
"Rooted by a mutual longing for information about family history, poet E.J. Wade and prose writer Karen Spears Zacharias travel to Scotland, 'where myth and legend riddle reality' to discover fundamental truths about where they come from and who they are in the world. Both writers bring an anthropological perspective to every encounter, creating a text that resonates far beyond these pages."
On the heels of a global pandemic, two post-menopausal Appalachian women, one black, one white, abandoned hearth, home, and spouses shrugging in dubious wonderment to live and study abroad together in a university flat along Scotland's River Ayr.
Poet E.J. Wade and author Karen Spears Zacharias roamed from the depths of Finnich Glen to the outcroppings of Dunure Castle. Sometimes wishing they'd been raised by Buddhist Monks instead of by foul-mouthed chain-smoking Appalachian mothers, these two University of the West of Scotland grad students embraced the wandering spirits of their matriarchal ancestors and left no ScotRail ticket unused.
In Glasgow's Sloans Ballroom, as musicians reimagined the compositions of writer and abolitionist Ignatius Sancho, they danced a cèilidh. Along Edinburgh's High Street, Wade performed a salsa. Hiking past windsurfers and golfers, they went in search of fairies and unearthed magical moments. They snuzzled Highland coos in Stranraer and stood gap-mouthed before the Falkirk Kelpies. Somewhere along Scotland's northernmost tip to its southernmost brigs, they forged a friendship that defies generations of racial animosity. At its heart, this collection is the rediscovery of friendships first formed through studying and mucking about.
Author bio:
Karen Spears Zacharias is an American writer whose work focuses on women and justice. She holds an MA in Appalachian Studies from Shepherd University and an MA in Creative Media Practice from the University of the West of Scotland. She lives at the foot of the Cascade Mountains in Deschutes County, Oregon, where she volunteers with the League of Women Voters. Zacharias taught First-Amendment Rights at Central Washington University and continues to teach at writing workshops around the country. Learn more about her at www.karenzach.com.