The Secret of Hurricanes

by Theresa Williams and Theresa Williams

Pearl Starling is forty-five, a hermit with a "colorful past" – a past filled with treachery and desire, death and survival – who makes her living weaving rugs in a North Carolina military town. For... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1931561109
• ISBN13: 9781931561105
• Release Date: September 2002
• Publisher: MacAdam/Cage Publishing
• Length: 209 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A troubled Life!

It seemed that Peral could go through life and deal with so much turmoil. I believe it was because she knew of nothing else. Looking for love in all the wrong places. Her self esteam was so low that she just took what she could get. What she got was trouble and grief. Looking back on her life, hindsight is 20/20. I can defintely relate to that. I will recomend this book to many people. Thanks Daniel Kellenbarger Veovus79

A Phoenix in North Carolina

In her book, THE SECRET OF HURRICANES, author Theresa Williams weaves her story together like her protagonist, Pearl Starling, creates the rag rugs she sells. Bits and pieces from broken lives, rich and poor, edgy and sad, cross over and under each other in this tale of innocence and shame. Pearl is a survivor, huddling in the eye of the hurricanes that batter and rage all around her. From the dingy and loveless trailer that serves as her home from childhood to the present, Pearl rises like a phoenix again and again from circumstances that destroy or wear down her family and neighbors. We first meet the mysteriously pregnant Pearl as an adult, the town eccentric. The mystery of her pregnancy ("who's the father?") intrigues the whole neighborhood. Set in a gray, characterless community surrounding a North Carolina military base, with the menace of the Vietnam War hovering in the background, the story traces Pearl's budding adolescence and teen years. We see the misery of her home life, the inevitable attraction to the wealthy family that lives on the other side of the highway. We watch her making seemingly self-destructive choices in an attempt to escape a brutal father and helpless mother. Although she scarcely knows it as a child, she is trying to grasp onto life and to find some kind of connection with another human being. Instead, her choices take her farther and farther from the solace she is seeking. Pearl travels a solitary path, parallel to the paths of other lost souls, a way that leads to a life-changing explosion that lives on in community gossip for years. But still our Pearl survives, ultimately telling her tale to the unborn daughter in her womb. Pearl finally knows who she is and is at peace with it. Williams writes with a dark clarity and flashes of brilliance in her descriptions of Pearl and her town. She has a powerful ability to draw pictures with words ("...I noticed how paint was peeling off the walls, like dead skin" and "That day Daddy's life looked like the bent chair he was sitting in.") She draws in her readers inexorably as we trudge with Pearl along her painful trail. We find ourselves rooting for this lost waif, grubby and forlorn though she is, cheering her moments of boldness and anger, wincing as she dances into yet another hopeless quest for acceptance. We end up admiring this woman who has been through the fires and who has emerged wise and strong to live again and to deliver a new life from the ashes of her own. This is a book for language connoisseurs, for poets, for mothers and fathers, for readers who like to get their teeth into a good story, for women, for soldiers, for all who have fought against great odds. Ultimately it is a "Rocky" story. Against all odds, our little girl survives.

a pearl of a novel

I'm not much taken with female contemporary writers. They aren't often brave enough for me. So I was excited to come across this very courageous, eloquent, profound coming-of-age novel. The main charcter, Pearl, says, "I know what it's like being young." The most talented writers remember each nuance, as does Williams. But her talent goes beyond writing about youth. I look forward to reading more from this writer, who is able to encapsulate the most profound, internal truths into a simple, poetic insight that will burst through your conventional thought barriers.

Forgiving the Sky

"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it." That was Holden Caulfield in *The Catcher in the Rye* and that's exactly how I feel about The *Secret of Hurricanes.* After reading the book, I wanted to call Theresa Williams up on the phone and ask her stuff and tell her stuff. It's not that the story itself is so very unusual - reminds me a little of *Them* by Joyce Carol Oates or with her clipped, terse sentences, Williams is somewhat like a female Hemmingway, but after reading this book, as well as a short story by Theresa Williams called "Blue Velvis" published in *The Sun Magazine*, I guarantee that you could hand me a pile of manuscripts, all by different unnamed authors, and after reading them, I could pick out hers as soon as I got to it. She's that unusual. I mean, as my 8th grade English teacher used to say, she has a "voice." "I like to be able to reach out and feel life's edges," says Pearl, (the main character), and that's what this book does - plumbs the edges. The whole narrative is a dialogue with Pearl's unborn daughter (Pearl just KNOWS her child will be female). The voice of Pearl Starling, is authentic and unique. Pearl would be dubbed "trailer trash" by many in our society and she knows it, but she doesn't let that kill her soul. She is, as Shakespeare mused, - "a lady more sinned against than sinning." Her narrative isn't a litany of sins against her, however; they're only noted. What she went through changed, shaped and informed her life - but that's all. She hasn't been snuffed out mentally, physically or emotionally. Her pregnancy at the age of 45 is a personal triumph and source of delight for her, and she especially relishes the unsatisfied curiosity of her neighbors as to the identity of the father of her child. The Pentecostals tried to pry the info out of her in the guise of a witnessing call. Pearl had been involved with them when she was 16 and suddenly alone in the world but for an abusive father and a next-door neighbor, father of three daughters in her age range, who gave her guidance and attention when she needed it. In Pearl's memory, a woman of the Pentecostals that she already knew, "...put her hand on my back, raised her other hand, tilted her face heavenward. The old man touched my shoulder and prayed in tongues, that obscure language. I stayed, let them beseach, but told myself, `After this, no more of this touching.' I felt no comfort in it. Just a vast emptiness. Like the daytime sky was inside me. Limitless. Blank. `Just leave me,' I was thinking. `Leave me to this vacancy'". Talking to this unborn daughter, she tells her that "One night, not long ago, I dreamed about your birth. You were a red moon slipped out from some dark corner of the sky. A real piece of sky I could hold. It made me want to forgive the sky. F

A JOURNEY OF PAIN AND HEALING

I stumbled across this book quite by accident a few days ago - and I'm so very glad I did. After reading it (it's a short but amazingly fulfilling read) I've placed it with the books that have touched me the deepest in the last few years. This is an incredibly moving account of the pain - and the healing - experienced by the narrator. It's a story that should be read widely - it's one that can illuminate and inspire, as well as `simply' entertain.I won't go into the plot of the novel too deeply - the book is a short one, and I don't want to rob the reader of experiencing it firsthand. Set in the South, the story is told by Pearl Starling, a woman who is considered to be `odd' by those who live near her - she's pretty much a hermit, living in a trailer in the woods, weaving rugs out of scraps of clothing to support herself. She narrates the story of her life to her unborn daughter - she knows intuitively, she feels, that the child is female. There is much speculation in the minds of her neighbors as to the father of the child - and she's not telling. The life that she has led, as it unfolds in her narrative, is a tragic and painful one. Starved for love by her callous father - who continually reminds everyone how much he wanted a son - and by her mother, whose spirit has been crushed by living with a man who cares only for himself and his own needs, Pearl seeks love in other places. She soon comes to discover that the lives into which she has stepped are far from the perfection she seeks.The language in which the book is written is perfectly in tune with the narrator's situation, as well as with the time and place. Through simple, uncluttered speech, Pearl tells her story to her daughter within her - and in doing so, allows the reader to glimpse her soul on a much deeper level. The story of hurt laid out on these pages is a sad one - but the opportunity for the reader to see and experience the courage and fortitude with which Pearl faces her pain and reclaim her life as her own is a precious gift and an inspiration.There are people in `real life' who face the pain and trauma with which Pearl is forced to deal - and there are those among them who possess all of her strength and courage and determination, and more. I've been blessed to know one of them in my life, to love her and be amazed by her - this is one of the most moving depictions of that sort of courage I've ever seen. Theresa Williams has written a first novel that has the power and ability to touch the reader's soul - I hope she writes many more, but this first offering is a precious gift.