Novel COMING IN 2023 FROM WATER'S EDGE PRESS

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Bess is  the daughter of Eastern European immigrants and an aspiring pianist.  She struggles with her family to survive the Depression and the Great Flood of the Ohio River of 1937.  This novel is based on the memories of Barr's mother, Ethel Cooper Baer.

At left is Barr's grandfather Sol Cooper in his tailor shop on East Broadway in Louisville in 1928.

Sample stories at Jewish Literary Journal:

"The Substitution"

"Mrs. Parmenter's Dress"

Why does General Francisco Franco's wife have the love letters of Spanish realist  Benito Pérez Galdós (in photo at left) to Countess Emilia Pardo Bazán, a  novelist, critic, and a married woman?

Barr has researched and taught about these iconic figures, and now she is reimagining them in ultrashort stories  about saints, sinners, prelates, pícaros, painters and poets from Spain and beyond.   

You'll find St. Teresa of Avila, the grand niece of dictator Anastasio Somoza, the daughter of prolific playwright  Lope de Vega, Frida Kahlo, and the guru of molecular gastronomy Ferrán Adriá. 

120 page manuscript available as is 200 page Spanish-English version.

Sample a story in English at Ekphrasis:

"Still Life with Lemons" 

Or in Spanish at Letralia:

"Está linda la mar"

"La esposa del generalísimo"