Hannah's House

Hannah's House
by Joyce Allen

A copy of Hannah's House is on its way to me by way of the generosity of author Joyce Allen and I am really looking forward to reading it. Anyone who has explored old houses or land where significant events seem to have soaked into the soil will understand how echoes of the past can be felt today.

From Ms. Allen's web page: “For quite a lot of years I lived in a very small house in the woods of western Orange County - one of those environmentally conscious non-standard communities that sprang up around here in the seventies and early eighties. There were the remains of an old house on my land - just a couple of rotting tiers of logs, a big hearth made of large stones fitted neatly together, and a stone chimney that was mostly fallen down. From the size of a couple of trees that butted into one corner I guessed the house must have been abandoned around the late nineteenth or very early twentieth century. I was never able to find out who had lived there - although I tried - but I spent a lot of time back in there and kept trying to imagine who it might have been and what they might have been like. Eventually Hannah emerged"