“They were itinerants of a sort, exiles in their own country… They had reached crossroads, where… no one would hear the voice of the other…”

A married couple from Quebec, one a francophone, the other an anglophone, find themselves on the road, estranged and displaced from their work-environment in the city. Venturing from one place to another, they encounter a long series of different people of different cultures, all divided from each other, in a land that is supposed to be united. Imprisoned in themselves, these many characters linger in their mundane spheres, only to bring on tragedy or else perpetuate inconsequence. In this world a man and a woman seek a lost unity which often beckons them to the edge of a river and a sea that seem to hold the answer to their proliferating doubts and anxieties…

John O’Meara has professed himself in his many publications a Shakespearean and a neo-Romantic, but he has always been secretly fascinated by the “modern debacle” as he has termed it, as if it held a revelation all its own. He is the author of a memoir entitled Defending Her Son. A short autobiographical sequel to this memoir, which serves as a background to the background of the present Sketches and Stories, is scheduled to appear shortly.

Visit the author's website at johnomeara.squarespace.com