Fall’’s Bright Flame: A Coming of (Middle) Age Tale

An unrepentant New Englander, Cynthia Osborne Hoskin has had a long career in writing that has been an eclectic pastiche of journalism embracing profile writing; culinary and lifestyle columns; art-focused articles; and general business; as well as corporate public relations; co-writing client memoirs; and PR for corporations and not-for-profits. Despite a modestly kept footlocker of short stories, poems (well, several were published with obscure awards), and personal memoirs, this is her first full-length novel. It’s gestation and birth would rival that of any dinosaur, but now it’s here and contemporary, she is speeding up with more flights of history and fantasy that have been percolating in the wings. Hoskin’s first poem was written at age seven on a blackboard just unloaded from a moving van in Cohasset, Massachusetts and was about heaven and angels, a subject she has never had the temerity to attempt again. Hoskin lives in Northern Kentucky with the charismatic star of the book, Abigail the Scottie, and her beloved, humorous, patient and very, very smart husband, Richard, author of the magnificent The Miner & the Viscount, a rousing tale of his native Cornwall, England.