Of Cypress & Sunflowers

In his second collection of short stories, Of Cypress & Sunflowers, Henry Henkel sends his characters on a quest for identity as they struggle to make peace with the ghosts of the past. A young man searches for the elusive mother who abandoned him; an Italian priest is haunted by his transgressions; three social outcasts decide to reinvent themselves in a small Florida town; a little boy witnesses a battle between Good and Evil at Easter Mass; a retired Lieutenant Colonel tries to make sense of his lonely existence through a Platonic dialogue with his neighbor's guest; a young woman decides to give the man who deserted her a second chance. Henkel's stories are metaphors for the fundamental struggles of all humanity: the search for true love; the hope of reprieve from loneliness and alienation; the thirst for a place in the community; the desire to understand one's true nature. Henkel places these struggles within the greater context of free will and the choices his characters make between good and evil, trust and deception, empathy and selfishness.