The misty sea spray caressing Catherine’s face portends the unclear path ahead as she contemplates the beginning of her new life in California. Her ten-year journey will include a new relationship, a trek to the highest summit in the contiguous United States, and a poignant hospice experience that will challenge her to rise from the ashes of despair. Catherine decides to leave Boston when a … when a company from the Silicon Valley presents an offer for her very successful website design company. After accepting the buyout, she signs a contract with a Los Angeles based health care corporation to work as a consultant and thus begins her decade-long stay on the west coast. As time passes in her sunny new environment, Catherine grows increasingly homesick despite the thrill of falling in love and her passion for hiking the Southern California trails. Conflicts arise when the desire to return to her native New England dominates her thoughts and she meets Kenny, a young man who is facing his final days. As Catherine sits at Kenny’s bedside, she helps him work through his struggles to understand love and devotion while facing the fear of a completed life’s journey. Their conversations inspire her to reflect deeply upon her own life, the decisions she has made, and the path she must follow.
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Autumn is a time of beautiful, magical transformation, but also a time of death to the leaves that will soon cover the ground. Likewise, The Ways of Autumn by William Graney rotates between the life of a wealthy, retired woman Catherine (Kat) and a boy/teenager Kenny. Their lives change and they face success and times of defeat. Kat has vowed she would leave California and return to the East coast in the autumn, though her boyfriend, Keith, doubts she will leave him. Kenny has Nicole and a love that will last a lifetime. Autumn also finds him leaving her.
The Ways of Autumn is charming as William Graney steadily brings Kat and Kenny to where they meet. The lessons Kat learns as she gets older is inspirational. She learns to make each day count and boldly challenges herself. As a teenager, Kenny teaches Kat lessons about life and herself that allows her to grasp the goals she set for herself. The lessons about love, devotion, and friendship are stimulating. Though I felt I should get up and exercise with all the running, hiking, kayaking, and climbing the characters take part in. I would highly recommend this novel for those who enjoy a book that is stimulating and reflective, but isn’t afraid to cry over the ending.
The Ways of Autumn by William Graney showcases the author’s gentle take on writing. The book starts out rather slow, but the developing story about Catherine is thoughtful and engrossing. This is not a true coming of age story, but for Catherine, her life and personal story changes radically when she moves to California. After selling her company back East, she ventures forth to create a new life for herself, finding love along the way, and a better understanding of the human condition, and the need for compassion. As you read, two stories will coalesce, and that coming together of two story lines makes for impressive and sensitive writing. While not a fast paced story or one with huge amounts of action or suspense, this is a thought provoking and sensitive book that will stay with you long after you finish reading. Highly recommend.
This is a ‘coming of age’ story. Despite not resonating with the belief portrayed in the book that life experiences decide when a person comes of age, I still enjoyed the development of the story. The character of Catherine is very realistic and you will feel like you know her personally by the time you get to the last page of the book. I particularly enjoyed how the author narrated the recollection of Catherine’s past life with a detailed description of the serenity of the town she left behind.
The parallel narration of Catherine’s story and that of a young William creates a powerful story, and you will neb intrigued at how these two characters from miles apart come together. The book has a slow start but gains momentum as you read through making for a great read on a relaxed atmosphere.
Catherine (Kat for short) is always on the lookout for adventures. First she goes to Las Vegas to become a dancer there, then she moves from the East coast to California for a better opportunity, and then she befriends great people who help her with her bouts with loneliness. Kat carves out a business for herself that makes her financially independent and successful. One of her new friends, Rhonda joins her for numerous nights of movies and dinner at Catherine’s place, then they frequent a local bar/restaurant around the Southern California area for beer and more food and then they also go out kayaking at sea near an ocean resort-like community where Rhonda holds and manages a business that sells kayaks, swim gear and such. This was the storyline for Catherine. But the book also has a subplot (second storyline) involving a young male by the name of Kenny and his family. Kenny was once full of promise and life, but he gets diagnosed with leukemia and this makes his family agitated and fearful of the day that will come when Kenny succumbs to this cancer.
I found this book very inspiring and entertaining and emotional. I cried at one time, laughed out loud at another and felt blissful at the way life seems to be a blessing for Kat. It also is relatable as I could not help but find similarities to it and my own personal story and the people around me on facebook and back home in the islands. I felt like this story was so clean and safe even though there are incidents where foul language would be uttered. Everything about this book is unpredictable for me. In this day and age of sex and deviation, this book just laughs at all that and makes it a family-oriented book for me. I also have to mention here that this is William Graney’s second book for me as the first one was Mountain Time and the Legend of La Societe which was also a clean and safe book with Catholic elements. This book did not directly have Catholic references but I felt like it was a great book for church people and people who are not worldly and indecent.
I would recommend this book to the types of people I mentioned above. I hope this book and this author makes it to the bestseller lists out there because they are bestseller material to me.
The blended narrative of Catherine and Kenny’s stories make for quite an interesting novel that after a while I did find myself utterly immersed in. The early story was a little slow for my taste but once I settled into the book I found it very enjoyable. Catherine’s character especially was very layered and I found myself wanting to know more and more about her.
Graney’s writing is very eloquent and scenes were described with brush-stroke ease painting a beautiful background. I’d definitely class myself as a fan of Graney now, and look forward to his future offerings.