The Work of Edie Clark

Journey into the Heart of Lyme Disease
In July of 2002, having spent an idyllic week’s vacation on one of the Elizabeth Islands off Cape Cod, I returned home. The island, a glorious wild place marked by its ancient beech forests, its kettles ponds, its open grasslands, is also crawling with ticks, seemingly a minor obstacle to the other and abundant gifts it offers. Like everyone else who visits there, I was bitten by a tick, more than once. A week after my return, on a very hot July day, I felt cold.

Andre's Odyssey
On a hot night in July of 1986, while driving on Interstate 93 outside of Boston, Andre Dubus stopped to help two people injured in an accident. As a result, he was hit by an oncoming car and lost one leg and the use of the other. Years passed in recovery and a transformation of the writer's life. What happened to Andre could have happened to any of us. He was grateful for his writing, for what his writing was able to do for his injury. (Ed. note: Andre Dubus died in February of 1999.)

Finding Sophie
Sophie, my mother’s childhood nurse, came to America from Poland in 1921. Tricked into returning home, Sophie never forgot my mother who kept in touch with her for nearly seventy years, sending clothes and soap and aspirin to Sophie, whose husband died of starvation in WWII and whose sister was burned at Auschwitz. Sophie often wrote my mother to say the only good years of her life were when she was in America. In 1991, I traveled to Poland on other matters. My mother pleaded with me to find Sophie, who we were not even sure was still alive. If she were, she would be well into her nineties. This is the story of the journey to find Sophie.

Eight Seasons, or Three
In February of 1999, Andre Dubus, one of the most passionate short story writers of this century, died alone in his home in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Having lost one leg and the use of the other in a bizarre accident on I-95 outside of Boston in 1986, Andre transformed into another kind of writer, an essayist with much to say about the condition of being handicapped in America. He was grateful for his life. This is a remembrance of a good friend.

First Foliage
Fall comes early in Aroostook County, the northernmost reach of the United States, a county famous for “potatoes and pine.” This odyssey meanders through the territory, finding pockets of candy-colored beauty, two dollar bags of potatoes, red or white, and Italian Wedding Soup.

Audrey's Story
In a coma since the age of 2, Audrey Santos, now 16, has become a kind of sacred shrine. Visitors from all over the country come to Worcester, Massachusetts, in hopes of seeing her, maybe even touching her. They are convinced she can give them the miracle of healing.

The Mother Everyone Called Crazy
When Jimmy Anderson died of leukemia in 1972, his distraught mother seemed to think it was the water that had killed him. On her own and against pressures from town officials, Anne Anderson conducted a survey of her wide neighborhood and found a cluster of cancer that seemed to stem from one municipal well. The effort to close this well became her obsession and she succeeded. She still receives hate mail.

Bibliography
A listing of magazine articles, travel articles, essays and multiple part series published in various publications since 1978.

What There Was Not To Tell
My parents died in 1994, leaving me more than two thousand letters, written during World War II. To some extent, I knew the story of Tom but the letters allowed me to understand him within the context of that war, which I had never understood nor known much about. The name of the book comes from the fact that, whenever I asked my father to tell me about the war, he would answer, “There’s nothing much to tell.” The letters told me a great deal that my parents did not, not only about themselves but about that war and war, in general. Through reading the letters, I came to believe that my generation was deeply affected by World War II, without ever really knowing it. The silence of our fathers (and mothers) may be from unprocessed grief and the famous “generation gap” may have been a direct effect of our fathers’ service coupled with their inability to articulate what that had meant and how much (many) had been lost to accomplish what they did.
The book is in the form of an odyssey, finding not only Tom’s final (of four) resting place but also the description of his death, reconstructed from Air Corps records and memories of those who fought nearby. I use extracts of the letters to give voice to both my father and mother, as well as to Tom. These extracts interspersed with my memories, thoughts and revelations as I make this journey into a past I never knew.

Completed manuscript available to interested editors or agents.