Aunt Kay’s novel, “Felice”
A heartfelt thanks to all who showed support for the plight facing my 88-year-old Aunt Kay, who finally did get vaccinated after many more enterprising New Yorkers. At her age, she feels she has little left to live for, and has been consumed with her sole legacy, her only “child”: a novel, twenty years in the making, and facing the same struggles of countless authors. Worse, my Aunt Kay is hopelessly vexed by technology, including her answering machine that sounds nothing like her, and her VCR that will always blink 12:00. She has no mobile phone, no internet, and never will.
When Aunt Kay finished her novel, and we as a family knew precious little about it for so many years, she insisted on lugging physical copies to the post office to send to various publishing houses. Within each package was a pre-paid return envelope in the likely event that the manuscript would not find resonance. And yet none were ever returned. I picture Aunt Kay in her tiny five-foot frame, carrying a package that was surely a sizeable fraction of her own weight.
After her full failure to reach a willing publisher, I managed to convince Aunt Kay to send me an electronic copy of her novel, so that I could publish it on Amazon. I think she would have been happier to land any kind of shelf space at Barnes and Nobel or the Strand, but she agreed to let me submit the book.
What is the novel about? Good question. I have read the novel three times, and am struck by its breadth, detail, scope, and ambition. But to distill it down to a paragraph, that is tough. And yet I needed to do this since all books require a description. Here goes:
Felice is mystified about her identity and the relentless downward trajectory of her life. Important clues are locked up within the mind of Mimi, Felice’s paternal grandmother who journeyed with Felice’s infant father from post-WWI Prague to live in America. Part 1 of this novel narrates Felice’s descent as she chases love, or the idea of love, across the continent in search of her lover’s lover. Part 2 takes us back to a time and place that Felice will never know, the beautiful city of Prague, a near-idyllic sanctuary of music, philosophy, and artistic expression that ultimately disintegrates under the stress of war and disease, funneling a select few into the New World. Lost forever are many secrets left behind.
Felice is now published on Amazon, and available at all times for free for those who subscribe to Kindle Unlimited. We are not allowed to share the content to everyone for free, but every 90 days it is possible to make it freely available for a few days as a promotion. So that is what I just enabled. It should free for downloading by anyone in the date range 5/24–5/28.
I hope you all enjoy this novel by my Aunt Kay (Michaels)! If you like it, please reply in comments below or in the Amazon comments. She won’t be able to read them herself, but I will share feedback over the phone.