“What’s in a word,” an English teacher once asked me as I sought just the right expression for the thoughts I wished to convey in a composition assignment. The editors of “Legacy: An Anthology” [1] have assembled an insightful, absorbing – and entertaining! – answer to that question.
“Legacy,” they tell us in an opening note to this collection of short stories, “is anchored in our daily lives from our first breath to well beyond our last. Present in our collective memories, it is inevitable.” Sometimes, the book that follows will struggle to live-up to its foreword … but such was not the case here, where authors with diverse backgrounds and writing styles share their take on the idea of legacy.
Some, such as Vickie Lesage’s “Apfelstrudel,” draw upon recent history while others, such as Stephanie Carrol’s “Forget Me Not,” delve lightly into the supernatural. There are others, such as Regina Calcaterra’s “A Forever Home,” that are not at all works of fiction … not creative, but expository expressions of fact in today’s world.
And that’s just a sampling. Be advised, though … with so many different writers, styles and subjects, there’s bound to be some stories the reader enjoys more – or less – than others. Me, I didn’t enjoy Kristopher Jansma’s “The Uraniums” or Lizzie Harwood’s “How to Raise Cats in a Paris Apartment” so much as the stories I listed in the previous paragraph … but I am glad I read them, nonetheless. They contributed to a better understanding and appreciation I now have for the word “legacy” and what that word can mean for different people, in different times and different settings …
… and a realization that our legacy may not take the form of a grand mausoleum or a prominent place in the history books – but it is something that will have meaning, and will resonate with those who follow … a statue alongside a river, a special evening of music, a notebook, a quilt or a crop of forget-me-nots.
Through this book, that is what’s now in the word “legacy” for me. I strongly recommend you give it a read as well, and find out for yourself what’s in a word.
__________
NOTE: I received a copy of this work through LibraryThing [2] in exchange for a review.
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Jeff McDonald [5]
Latest posts by Jeff McDonald (Posts [6])
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