Main Street by Darlene O'Dell

“Main Street lives through the eyes of this gifted, sharp-eyed, and sensitive observer who wraps inhabitants in atmospheric mystery, exposes their eccentricities, and captures their joy in finding small treasures at the Five and Dime store. Darlene O’Dell’s words glide in smooth, rhythmic cadences that can break with shocking unexpected slap-in-the-face revelations. Three flashy flapper dresses in an unlikely place. Old stores and mills with their ghosts from a lost past. Lamplit rooms. Broken glass, rusted locks. Main Street is everywhere, each a small universe unto itself.”

— Pamela Blevins, Author of Song of Pain and Beauty & Beyond the Hand of God

“This evocative collection of poetry and prose explores the strangeness that lingers in personal and family memory. Vivid story fragments rise from everyday scenes—a neighbor’s estate sale, a walk down Main Street, a dime store, Sunday afternoons in church, a raucous bridge game downstairs. Two haiga at the book’s beginning and end open portals to individual and collective experience.”

— Dave Russo, founding member of The Haiku Foundation

About the Author:

Darlene O’Dell is the author of the chapbook Raised in the World of Everyday Poets and the creative nonfiction book The Story of the Philadelphia Eleven. She has published in multiple venues, and her work was selected for Contemporary Haibun’s yearly anthology, volumes 17 and 18. Recently, she was named a featured artist in MacQueen’s Quinterly, Issue 28. She lives in western North Carolina.