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| Gifted Hands a novel by Kenneth Fenter Coming in late September |
Available in
late September from Arborwood Press.
Charlie Kelly
Gifted Hands: 神の手
is about two gifted individuals from two different cultures. Charlie Kelly is
an artist teacher who creates paintings. His roots are the farmlands in the
foothills of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. He grows up surrounded by the
splendor of Monument Valley to the southwest and snow capped, Aspen slopes of
the LaPlata Mountains to the east. These are what he aspires to paint.
Keiko Shimamura
Keiko
Shimamura in the beginning learns to speak and communicate English so that she
can teach Japanese students to read, write and speak English do advance in
their studies at the University. She also, from elementary school age except for
a few years during the war, studies the koto a stringed instrument that sounds
much like the harp, following a famous discipline of koto on Japan. When Charlie meets her she is qualified to teach at the beginning level okoto in that discipline.
1953
Charlie
Kelly is drafted into the Army and lands on a Naval base at Sasebo, Kyushu the
southern Island of Japan. As one of the only Army enlistees on a naval base, he
wanders about town on his time off and one day goes into a cake-coffee shop. He
doesn't know how to order in a shop where no one knows English. A young English
teacher sees an opportunity to practice English with a foreign native English
speaker...
1977
Thus begins
a relationship that begins in 1953 that is interrupted three years later and in
Gifted Hands: 神の手 resumes in 1977...
Gifted Hands: 神の手
is set in Nagasaki in December of 1977 the busiest time of the year as citizens
are rushing to prepare for the end of the year New Year's holiday. Charlie
Kelly lands with only a backpack for luggage and his guidebook, the few
Japanese phrases he remembers from time in Japan 21 years before. He checks
into the Kokusai Youth Center and is thrown into a whirlwind of activities with
the young English teachers and missionaries who find that a place to drop by to
consult with the elderly Jesuit who runs the place.
Charlie isn't
there looking for Keiko Shimamura but there is always fate lurking around the
mysterious corners the ancient culture of Japan...
