THE
CADENCE OF GYPSIES
By
Barbara Casey
BLURB:
Three high-spirited 17 year olds, with intelligent
quotients in the genius range, accompany their teacher and mentor, Carolina
Lovel, to Frascati, Italy, a few weeks before they are to graduate from Wood
Rose Orphanage and Academy for Young Women. Carolina's purpose in planning the
trip is to remove her gifted, creative students from the Wood Rose campus
located in Raleigh, North Carolina, so they can't cause any more problems
("expressions of creativity") for the headmaster, faculty, and other
students – which they do with regularity. Carolina also wants to visit the
Villa Mondragone where the Voynich Manuscript, the most mysterious document in
the world, was first discovered and search how it is related to a paper written
in the same script she received on her 18th birthday when she was told that she
was adopted – a search that will take them into the mystical world of gypsy
tradition and magic, more exciting and dangerous than any of them could have imagined.
THE CADENCE
OF GYPSIES – Excerpt 3
The slight voice tremor was all that was needed,
but the deep, audible sigh confirmed what Carolina suspected: that she was in for another real
ass-chewing. This would be the eighth
time getting called into the headmaster's office in the same number of months
she had been teaching at Wood Rose Orphanage and Academy for Young Women. Each time it had been because her girls had
committed a serious infraction of rules or behaved in some inappropriate way
that was unacceptable within the stone walls of Wood Rose.
Her girls, the ones she had been given total
responsibility for, called themselves Females of Intellectual Genius, or
FIGs. Everyone else, however, called
them strange. Never before in the
history of Wood Rose had a student even come close to approaching genius
status. Certainly not in the time that
Dr. Harcourt had been headmaster. Then,
within the short span of one week, two seven-year-old children--Dara Roux and
Mackenzie Yarborough--were admitted, each from a different family, a different
background, and a different part of the country, but each with an intelligence
quotient well within the range of genius.
Amazingly, several years later, a third student--Jennifer Torres--was
enrolled, whose age and scores were comparable to those of the original
FIGs. What Wood Rose could do for these
gifted girls was now coming to a close, much to the relief of the
administration, faculty, and staff alike.
This would be their final year at Wood Rose Orphanage and Academy for
Young Women, for in June--less than six weeks away--they would graduate.
Carolina was still in bed, deep in thought as she
usually was whenever she had a quiet moment to herself, when the telephone
rang. For several days she had been
struggling with how best to approach the headmaster. Ever since being put in charge of the FIGs
shortly after getting hired at Wood Rose, she had been trying to come up with
innovative ways in which she could somehow excite her girls, challenge their
intellect, and, most of all, keep them out of trouble. The inherent problems of being different
extended beyond their prickly relationship with Wood Rose staff members. The multi-faceted difficulties in teaching
the FIGs frequently left the faculty with feelings of inferiority and impotency
at the very least. None of the other
residents wanted to be around them either, with the exception of the youngest
residents who didn't yet comprehend the difference between being brilliant and
normal, which brought about additional struggles of an inner psychological
nature. Carolina had tried a variety of
things, but, obviously, what she had been doing wasn't working. What had stimulated her when she was their
age? What mysteries of the universe had
intrigued her?
Then she had remembered.
Review:
I enjoyed the book. Mysteries about old boxes and sketchy familial histories are a plot line ripe with all kinds of fruit. In this case, we have a young woman who has been given a box by her adoptive parents. Inside holds much more than Carolina ever expected to find. A job at an academy for orphans leads her to take a trip with some unruly students to Italy. There, she begins the search for her birth family. There are many more twists and turns to the story that I won't give away. It was an enjoyable read and a nice book to turn in with at the end of a busy day.
4/5
AUTHOR
INFORMATION:
Originally from Carrollton,
Illinois, Barbara Casey attended the University of North Carolina, North
Carolina State University, and North Carolina Wesleyan College where she
received a BA degree, summa cum laude,
with a double major in English and history. In 1978 she left her position as
Director of Public Relations and Vice President of Development at North
Carolina Wesleyan College to write full time and develop her own manuscript
evaluation and editorial service. Since that time her award-winning articles,
short stories, and poetry for adults have appeared in several publications
including the AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY, the SPARROWGRASS POETRY
FORUM, THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF POETRY (Editor’s Choice Award),
the NORTH CAROLINA CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE MAGAZINE, THE NEW EAST MAGAZINE,
the RALEIGH (NC) NEWS AND OBSERVER, the ROCKY MOUNT (NC) SUNDAY
TELEGRAM, DOG FANCY, BYLINE, TRUE STORY and THE
CHRISTIAN RECORD. A thirty-minute television special which Ms. Casey wrote
and coordinated was broadcast on WRAL, Channel 5, in Raleigh, North
Carolina. Ms. Casey's award-winning science fiction short stories for adults
are featured in THE COSMIC UNICORN and CROSS TIME short story
anthologies. Her essays, also written for adults, appear in THE CHRYSALIS
READER, the international literary journal of the Swedenborg Foundation,
and A CUP OF COMFORT ANTHOLOGY by the Adams Media Corporation.
Her two middle-grade/young adult
novels, LEILANI ZAN and GRANDMA JOCK AND CHRISTABELLE (James
C. Winston Publishing Co.) were nominated for awards of excellence by the SCBWI
Golden Kite Award, the National Association of University Women Literary
Award and the Sir Walter Raleigh Literary Award. SHYLA'S INITIATIVE (Crossquarter
Publishing Group, 2002), a contemporary adult novel of fiction, received
the 2003 Independent Publisher Book Award and received special
recognition for literary merit by the Palm Beach County Cultural Council.
Ms. Casey’s novel THE COACH’S WIFE (ArcheBooks Publishing), a
contemporary mystery, was listed as a Publisher’s Best Seller and was
semifinalist of the Dana Award for Outstanding Novel. In 2007 her novel,
THE HOUSE OF KANE (ArcheBooks Publishing), also a contemporary
mystery, was considered for a Pulitzer nomination, and in December 2009
her novel, JUST LIKE FAMILY (Wandering Sage Publications), was
launched by the
7-Eleven stores in St. Louis, Missouri. Her young adult novel, THE CADENCE OF GYPSIES (Gauthier Publications), was released in March 2011 and considered for the Smithsonian’s Most Notable 2011 Books. It has also been selected by Amazon for its 2013 List of Best Books. THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO PRISSY (Strategic Media Books), a novel for adults, was released in March 2013 and received an IPPY Award for Best Regional Fiction. It has also been listed as a “2013 Best Summer Read” by Conversations Live Radio and has been placed in nomination for a Pulitzer Award.
7-Eleven stores in St. Louis, Missouri. Her young adult novel, THE CADENCE OF GYPSIES (Gauthier Publications), was released in March 2011 and considered for the Smithsonian’s Most Notable 2011 Books. It has also been selected by Amazon for its 2013 List of Best Books. THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO PRISSY (Strategic Media Books), a novel for adults, was released in March 2013 and received an IPPY Award for Best Regional Fiction. It has also been listed as a “2013 Best Summer Read” by Conversations Live Radio and has been placed in nomination for a Pulitzer Award.
Ms. Casey is a frequent guest
speaker at writers’ conferences and universities throughout the United States.
She is former director, guest author, and panelist of BookFest of the Palm
Beaches, Florida; and for thirteen years she served as judge for the Pathfinder
Literary Awards in Florida. She held
the position of Florida Regional Advisor for the Society of Children's Book
Writers and Illustrators from 1991 to 2003.
Ms. Casey is president of the Barbara
Casey Agency. She represents clients nationally and internationally in
fiction and nonfiction for adults. Her past and present professional
associations are numerous and include being editorial consultant for The
Jamaican Writers Circle in affiliation with the University of West Indies
and Mico Teachers College in Kingston. She also received special recognition
for her editorial work on the English translations of Albanian children’s
stories.
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