Rena, A Late Journey

This is the story of an ninety-year-old woman, Rena, who happens into a contemporary catastrophe that causes her to integrate the pieces of her life. Rena, a completely open person whose name means rebirth narrates the story from the fishing peer, a posthumous story, one in which she reconciles the conflicts of a long life that spanned and paralleled the conflicts of our century. Gulf wind blows her literarly off the bus, across the street to buy a scarf at Kresss and the story is off. She meets a young man, Renato Santos, who helps her find a fishing pole. Her first husband had liked fishing. He told her in a dream to get on the bus and go to Corpus Christi. She did it. She and Renato become friends which gets her eventually shot by a crack cocaine dealer who turns out to be his twin brother. The troubles of the Santos family parallel the troubles of Renas own family. Their healing is her own. The dialectic of the story is a weaving together of past and present. The narrator is looking back at life, scenes inside of scenes create a continuity that transcends the individual, but is for everyone.