Editor’s Introduction

When reading the openings featured in this issue of Embark, I kept thinking of the ties and tensions between parents and children. As always, each of the ten openings featured in this issue was chosen on its own merits, independent of any of the others, and yet, as often happens, a common theme seemed to emerge by chance: the deep bond between parents and offspring, contrasted with the visceral conflicts that can build up between them, all the more devastating because of that primal, life-giving connection.

In the ominous opening of Annie Weeks’ novel STORIES FROM HOME, set in a small Dutch town in the 1930s, we see with nostalgic immediacy the child-parent bond being tested, perhaps for the first time. Anton, a Dutch boy, is experiencing the initial stirrings of curiosity and rebellion—a widening of his world, beyond the parameters his parents have set for him. Yet, as the newspaper clipping that opens the book reminds the reader, terrible threats are rising in that wider world. And when we see Anton’s father, at the end of the excerpt, dancing with disturbing joy over the prospect of a Dutch alliance with the Nazis, those threats—to Europe and to these particular characters—come into chilling focus.

In Gautam Sen’s novel HOWLS, we also see a teenager straining against parental reins, in very different circumstances. Raktim, a student in Calcutta, finds excitement and inspiration in the Shakespeare plays he reads and recites. But his stern father, with his eyes on his son’s future, insists that Raktim focus on mathematics. The ties between them are inescapable, the clashes equally so. Raktim waits in mounting trepidation for his father to discover his low marks in math, while simultaneously fantasizing about performing in Macbeth. As the novel’s prologue hints, such different values and interests will lead to a dramatic divergence in lifestyle and outlook between father and son.

BEYOND THE BURNING BLUE, by Bill Swiggs, begins with the initial moments of parenthood, in Australia’s gold fields in the 1890s, when a prospector’s beloved wife dies in childbirth. Devastated by the loss, the man drunkenly abandons his newborn daughter in the bush. She is discovered and rescued by an older man who makes a living selling water to the gold-miners. The earlier loss of his own daughter makes the old man willing, even eager, to care for another child—and in this way the novel’s opening shows, with evocative detail and intense emotion, one man’s terrible grief and another man’s unexpected joy, each sparked by the same hapless baby, who will reshape both their lives.

Elizabeth Murphy offers us the other side of the coin in her novel THE RELUCTANT FORTUNE-TELLER, when a young Thai man named Sunti discovers that his adored mother has been killed by a motorcycle on the streets of Bangkok. Mired in grief but also struggling with his own debts and hers, he reluctantly takes over her profession—fortune-telling—despite not believing in his own powers. His existence seems to have lost all meaning, yet one of his first customers, a Canadian woman named Joanna, becomes his friend, his lover, and his escape from the looming loan-sharks—demonstrating, perhaps ironically, the unknowable nature of fortune and its deep importance in our lives.

The first line of Emmaline Paige Bennett’s novel, THE HUMAN FAMILY, establishes the story’s stakes: “Mothers aren’t supposed to hate their children. But Ada hated hers.” In this immersive, moving narrative of an enslaved woman who gives birth to the son of the man who claims ownership of her, Bennett shows the irreparable and widespread damage that slavery incurs. Desperate to avoid an intolerable life of degradation, Ada runs away with the infant she both loathes and loves. But, for all her ferocity, she faces the crushing force of a society built on oppression, and at the end of the excerpt, she remains inches away from a terrible death, or an even more terrible existence.

Traveling much further back in time, KNIGHT OF SHERWOOD, by Jay Ruud, opens with devoted parental love being brutally cut short, in the joint murder of an infant and his mother in medieval England. This brief, shocking scene is so vivid that it’s a relief when the narrative switches to a roadside hold-up, targeting a group of Knights Templar and led by a familiar figure: Will Scarlet, one of Robin Hood’s legendary good-hearted bandits. As Ruud reveals in his Author’s Statement, this novel is part of a mystery series, each one focusing on a different member of Robin Hood’s band, and the opening’s spirited portrayal of Will and the other characters makes the reader eager for the whole series.

Mark Sergeyevich, the reclusive young man who narrates Sabina Tussupova’s novel KRONOS, translated by Shelley Fairweather-Vega, scarcely mentions his parents as he describes his surreal daily activities in war-torn Kazakhstan. It soon becomes clear that his next-door neighbor, a woman he calls “Auntie Lola,” serves as the parental figure in his life. Mark feels betrayed when she takes in a student boarder, a man fleeing from a wave of deadly fighting in the nearest city. Nevertheless, Mark obeys when Lola orders him to ask their neighbors for help, supplies, and firearms—at which point the reader discovers both the power of these two people’s connection and the fragility of their current lives.

EXALTED OBJECTS, by Jane Cairns, explores the troubles that arise when one sibling must act as a parent to another. George Stark, a nineteenth-century railroad magnate in New Hampshire—and a real-life historical figure—faces a wrenching choice: to continue caring at home for his eccentric brother, William, or to consign him to professional care at the McLean Asylum in Boston. George wants to run for office, and William’s behavior is growing more erratic by the day. But what does one owe to a beloved brother, or, for that matter, to the illustrious legacy of one’s forebears? George’s family pride and conflicting loyalties lead to a decision that will haunt him no matter what choice he makes.

Imani Parker, in ALWAYS BUT NOT FOREVER, reminds us of a fact children often forget: that parents have histories of their own, full of passion, longing, and uncertainty. Nia, the mother of a toddler, receives a wedding invitation from her college roommate, Gardenia, and finds herself thrown off-kilter. As Nia drifts back into heart-tugging memories of their first meeting, when each girl was fascinated and charmed by the other, Parker conveys in lyrical, plangent prose the transformative love that can spring up between two teenagers, and the way that those emotions can last for decades. Nia’s strongest bond in adulthood is with her daughter, yet Gardenia remains the person she can’t give up.

What happens when a child has no parents at all? That question is raised by THE PLAGUE SHIP, a YA sci-fi novel by Denise Granniss that thrusts readers from its very first paragraphs into gripping action. The story centers on Lissa, a fugitive girl living in the crawlspaces of a vast spaceship. Deaf from the noise in the ducts, parentless, unable to trust anyone, she fights fiercely for her survival. Only gradually does the reader learn the full terror of her situation: as a plague-carrier, she must dodge both the ship’s Security and “the Immunes,” who dread the carriers. But her vulnerability reaches its greatest intensity when, at the peak of danger, Lissa remembers and yearns for her lost mother.

Showcasing a multiplicity of themes, settings, and characters, as well the endless variations of the parent-child relationship, these ten openings held my attention from start to finish. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did!

— Ursula DeYoung

Table of Contents

THE HUMAN FAMILY – Emmaline Paige Bennett
EXALTED OBJECTS – Jane Cairns
THE PLAGUE SHIP – Denise Granniss
THE RELUCTANT FORTUNE-TELLER – Elizabeth Murphy
ALWAYS BUT NOT FOREVER – Imani Parker
KNIGHT OF SHERWOOD – Jay Ruud
HOWLS – Gautam Sen
BEYOND THE BURNING BLUE – Bill Swiggs
KRONOS – Sabina Tussupova (translated by Shelley Fairweather-Vega)
STORIES FROM HOME – Annie Weeks