Diana K. Perkins

Singing Her Alive is a love story set in two time periods, presented as a fictional memoir.  The story takes place in Willimantic and Merrow.
The primary story begins in the late 1800s when fate throws two young women together as roommates – in a shared bed – at a textile mill boarding house where they have gone to work, far from home and family.  Two generations later their
secret story comes to light when a granddaughter, narrator of the story, finds their personal journals hidden in a closet as she helps her mother clean out their family homestead to sell.  The discovery of these family secrets sets the narrator on her
own journey towards identity and place. Love and sacrifice, choices and consequences, are strong themes in this story.  

Excerpt:
“Occasionally a girl will shriek with wild laughter, knowing that my concentration on, and immersion in my book will be broken.  These girls, once so kind, have turned into nasty little agents of morality.  I am beginning to hate some of them, especially the ones who seem so bent on meanness.  But I maintain my dignified demeanor throughout, which seems to serve to bring them to new levels of cruelty.”