In his second collection of short stories, Of Cypress & Sunflowers, Henry Henkel sends his characters on a quest for identity as they struggle to make peace with the ghosts of the past. A young man searches for the elusive mother who abandoned him; an Italian priest is haunted by his transgressions; three social outcasts decide to reinvent themselves in a small Florida town; a little boy witnesses a battle between Good and Evil at Easter Mass; a retired Lieutenant Colonel tries to make sense of his lonely existence through a Platonic dialogue with his neighbor's guest; a young woman decides to give the man who deserted her a second chance. Henkel's stories are metaphors for the fundamental struggles of all humanity: the search for true love; the hope of reprieve from loneliness and alienation; the thirst for a place in the community; the desire to understand one's true nature. Henkel places these struggles within the greater context of free will and the choices his characters make between good and evil, trust and deception, empathy and selfishness.
Author: Henry Henkel Publisher: Other Islands Publications ( Published: 10/25/2015 Pages: 298 Binding Type: Paperback Weight: 0.88lbs Size: 9.02h x 5.98w x 0.62d ISBN: 9780974973333
About the Author Henry Henkel was born in 1955 and grew up in Seaford, New York, a small town on the South Shore of Long Island. After a life in the suburban public school system, he graduated from the State University of New York at Buffalo where he began to write short stories. Henry has a Master's Degree in Literature from New York University and spent three years as chairman of the English department at a New York private school. He currently works in the financial services industry. Henry lives with his wife and four children in Princeton Junction, New Jersey. His first collection of short stories, Bald Spots & Blue Suits: Modern Fables, was published in 2011.
