I have been looking into schedules. Even when we read physics, we inquire of each least particle, What then shall I do this morning? How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.
~Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
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On the first of each month,
a guest writer
shares
how they spend the day.
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April 1, 2025: Michele M. Feeney
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During the pandemic, living with grown children back at their Phoenix home, Michele Feeney remembered a story her grandmother had told her about the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. At the same time, I imagine Michele was also thinking wistfully of her Christmas tree farm in Michigan, where her ancestors homesteaded in 1850 and where she liked to retreat for time to herself. With all of that swirling in the air, her first novel, Like Family, was born.
Like Family is historical fiction and takes place in a rural Michigan town in 1918. Chapter One begins in June, on the first day of seven-year-old Cecilia Pokorski’s summer break. After she and her mother clean the kitchen, her mother moves the framed photo of her oldest brother, Josef, from the mantle to the table. Then her mother climbs on a stool and takes a flour sack down from “behind the heavy pots on the highest panty shelf.”
Cecilia knew the flour sack did not hold flour. Instead, the sack, weighted with a few rocks from the stream that ran behind the house, and bulked up with dried-out corn husks, was where Mamusia kept her private things–hair ribbons for Cecilia to wear to school, a savings passbook Mamusia took to the bank from time to time, and a packet of sunflower seeds like those they’d planted early last spring… ‘Foolishness,’ Father had said, when he noticed the bright blossoms nodding among the cornstalks. ‘A waste of good money.’
Cecilia’s mother pulls out something Cecilia has never seen before–a map of the United States. Her mother shows her the state of Kansas, where Josef is recuperating after being injured in the war.
At the end of August, on Cecilia’s eighth birthday, the family hitches up the horses and heads to the station to meet Josef’s train. We are now only four pages into the novel, with things happening fast but also slowly–Michele is a master at pacing. Actually, I’ll stop here so I don’t spoil the rest of the first chapter for you.
But I do want to tell you about the other main character, the town’s teacher Mollie Crowley, who is independent and spunky, as you will see as the story unfurls.
When Mollie got back to the farm after putting up her signs, she pulled her Model T up to the front path of the farmhouse rather than into the barn. On a normal Saturday, she would have put the car in its designated spot, wiped it down from stem to stern, and then sat down for a late lunch with her mother. Mollie was the only woman in the township who owned her own car. She was proud–and unashamed of being proud–to own the spunky little machine.
Michele is also a natural storyteller. I fell into this book on the first page when the sack of flour did not hold flour. And each day, I could not wait to get back to the story. Like Family is well-written and easy to read. No bells and whistles, just a wonderful story about the many different ways there are to make a family and that what’s right is worth standing up for.
Michele Feeney wrote for twenty years before she earned an MFA from Bennington College in 2022 in the genres of fiction and nonfiction. She’s also a good literary citizen–serving as an assistant editor for Narrative Magazine since 2017 and hosting other writers (like me) at her home. She’s currently working on a book of essays about a young man incarcerated in the Arizona Department of Corrections system and the second volume of Like Family, which will be a series. In addition to all this, Michele still practices law in Arizona and makes time for herself at the family farm in Michigan.
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Come back on APRIL 1st to read how MICHELE M. FEENEY spends her days.
