Cameo ~ A Profile In Courage

De: Dana Walker Lindley

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

In Cameo ~ A Profile In Courage, Mary McMahon, a Cornell University student in the year1900, mourns her lover, Casey, who dies when a wagon wheel crushes his neck. Her ashamed parents demand their pregnant daughter remain hidden until they can arrange a marriage. Mary rehearses the attitude of a lonely wife before fleeing to New York City. She lives with cockroaches in Una's tenement and rolls tobacco into cigars in Kezrat Carr's sweatshop. Checkmated by Casey who died and a child who lives, Mary trades the cameo Casey carved for her in exchange for an illegal abortion performed by Mrs. Martell.

To heal her, Guadalupe challenges Mary to live a passionate life. She learns photography, and Coleman Kelly, editor of the Irish Times, hires her to report on the 15-feet tidal waves that swallowed 8000 citizens in aGalveston, TX hurricane. She joins Clara Barton's Red Cross to console the children orphaned by the twin towers of wind and water, shielding them from the ashes of the funeral fires. She reports on the nuns and children, bound together with clothesline, who drowned at St. Mary's orphanage and on Mrs. Heideman, who sailed into the lucky lasso of her rescuers. Captain Noe Estrada's Mayan folk tale teaches Mary the power of transforming her wound into wisdom to create gallantry and grace. Mary returns to Ithaca with young Anna to reunite with her family and conclude her odyssey.

Cameo combines fiction with history to explore the themes of alienation, renewal and reconciliation. Granddaughter Chloe tells this story after she reads Casey's obituary, found in the maple box that Mary kept. Chloe is the heroine of the third book in the series, The Kinship Of All Creatures.