Ann Putnam, author of Full Moon at Noontide: A Daughter's Last Goodbye, visits a bit about her thoughts on life and writing. Ms. Putnam has published short fiction, personal essays, literary criticism, and book reviews in various anthologies such as Hemingway and Women: Female Critics and the Female Voice and in journals, including the Hemingway Review, Western American Literature, and the South Dakota Review. In addition to writing, Ann Putnam teaches creative writing and women’s studies at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington. You can visit the author at her website to keep up-to-date on current happenings and news on past and present works.
First of all, could you tell us a bit about Full Moon at Noontide: A Daughter’s Last Goodbye? What is the story about, who are the characters, etc.?
Full Moon at Noontide: A Daughter’s Last Goodbye is a memoir about my mother and father and my father’s brother, his identical twin, and how they lived together with their courage and stumblings, as they made their way into old age and then into death. It’s the story of the journey from one twin’s death to the other, of what happened along the way and what it means to lose the other who is also oneself. It takes the reader through the journey of the end of life with all its comedies and sorrows, joys and terrors. Finally it asks: what consolation is there in growing old, in such loss? And what interest might there be in reading of this inevitable journey taken by such ordinary people? Turned to the light just so, the beauty and laughter of the telling transcend the darkness of the tale.
Do you have a favorite excerpt from Full Moon at Noontide? Could you share that with us, please?
Yes, I believe I do. I wrote this little “epilogue” when I was doing final revisions for the memoir, and while my husband was dying of cancer. It’s kind of a love poem in prose to him:
“Writing this now in a rainy light after loss upon loss, a memory comes to me. When I was a teenager, I took voice lessons from Ruth Havstad Almandinger, who gave me exercises and songs I hardly ever practiced. I have wondered why this memory has so suddenly come to me now, and why this, the only song I remember, comes back to me whole and complete:
'Oh! my lover is a fisherman/ and sails on the bright blue river
In his little boat with the crimson sail/ sets he out on the dawn each morning
With his net so strong/ he fishes all the day long
And many are the fish he gathers
Oh! My lover is a fisherman
And he’ll come for me very soon!'
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