- Author LaShaundra Seale
I just didn’t need another kid at this point in my life. So when Denicio Barbier invited me to dinner just so she could tell me to my face that she was pregnant and the kid is mine I freaked out, pushed her out of my way, jumped in my car and headed straight to Gerald Ford airport, book a flight to Switzerland, and went to gate D-12 to wait for my international flight to freedom.
I stopped by the vending machine for a cold coke and Frito Lay chips before finding a quiet cozy spot near the panoramic picture window to watch the planes take off and land. My BlackBerry vibrated faster than a dildo in a porn flick and every time I glanced at the caller ID it read “Denicio Barbier”. I grew frantically paranoid thinking that perhaps she’d followed me and was now on her way to gate D-12.
(heartbeat)
“We are now boarding for Flight 932 to Denver Colorado! Please line up at gate D-13!”
The couple seated next to me collected their luggage, disposed of their trash, grabbed their laptops and moved towards the lady near the intercom system, the one in charge of taking tickets and pushing wheelchairs onto the plane ramp. I had at least an hour and a half of wait time so I decided to relax and read, and take my mind off of the pregnant and desperate Denicio Barbier.
LaShaundra Seale’s new novella, Circle of Empty Arms, is about a circle of women trying to come to terms with infertility. These fictional and diverse women teach us all a lesson or two in faith, hope, and redemption.
Jennifer and her husband are middle class, educated and successful. Through hard work, commitment, and dedication, they’ve achieved the American Dream. But they are childless and all they have come to know and love is fractured by the lovelorn desired to conceive a child. Will the marriage survive? Or will this couple come to terms with life’s unfulfilled promise?
Sara just knows she will get what she wants. The question is how. The answer will floor the reader with an unlikely solution
that’s right in front of her eyes.
Natalie has tried for five years to conceive and her life has become an endless and vicious cycle of financial and emotional sacrifice to become the thing she desires more than anything. Now in full-fledged desperado mode, she races against all odds to become pregnant and save herself and her marriage from the edge of unscrupulous self-destruction. Will she ever bore children, or will she and her husband succumb to the frightening possibility of a childless life of despair and regret?
Seale does a wonderful job developing her characters, and we feel their pain. We are forced to put ourselves in their shoes and change our own perceptions of what we think are rights we all ultimately take for granted. Circle of Empty Arms is a passionate and informative novella. This book is a must-read for anyone coping with the (often invisible) dilemma of infertility and the intrinsic difficulties associated with the Shakespearean question of whether “to be or not to be”.
Push Scale 5/5
what about the kennedys 