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September 02, 2008

Toni Frissell... Bill Evans... This Ascension... Osvaldo Golijov... Amy MacKinnon

One of my all-time favorite photographs is the one above: Weeki Wachee Spring, Florida, 1947, taken by the late fashion photographer (and lookalike of "Little Edie" Bouvier Beale from the sublime Grey Gardens), Toni Frissell. [Quite a few years back, when I was getting my art history degree with an emphasis in photography, I almost wrote a final-project paper concerning the Frissell image and the equally stunning Barbara Morgan photo of Martha Graham (below)].

The Frissell photo has been used a few times before--in 1963, as the cover of the album Undercurrent by jazz pianist Bill Evans; in the late '80s, for Tears In Rain, the debut from the goth/darkwave band This Ascension; and, most recently, Oceana, by Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov.

Now the image appears once again, colorized this time, on the front cover of the debut novel by an excellent writer, my friend, Amy MacKinnon. The novel is called TETHERED, and is published by Shaye Areheart Books/Random House. It's a tough book to describe in a quick blog entry, but I will say that it's part literary novel, part suspense, part police procedural. It's also spooky, gorgeous, and a total thrill to read. I'm proud and honored to call Amy a friend. (Also: Amy is one-fourth of a great group of writers who produce an online blog called The Writers' Group. I was lucky enough to get my photo taken with all four of them at this year's Muse & the Marketplace conference, which you can see in Writers' Group entry.) For more information about TETHERED, read the promotional copy for the book, which I've copied below the cover and photo of Amy:

"Clara Marsh is an undertaker who doesn't believe in God. She spends her solitary life among the dead, preparing their last baths and bidding them farewell with a bouquet from her own garden. Her carefully structured life shifts when she discovers a neglected little girl, Trecie, playing in the funeral parlor, desperate for a friend.... It changes even more when Detective Mike Sullivan starts questioning her again about a body she prepared three years ago, an unidentified girl found murdered in a nearby strip of woods. Unclaimed by family, the community christened her Precious Doe. When Clara and Mike learn Trecie may be involved with the same people who killed Precious Doe, Clara must choose between the steadfast existence of loneliness and the perils of binding one's life to another."