Hard to Read/Impossible to Put Down: Thoughts on the Release of A Lucky Breath

This Forgotten Commodity

A Lucky Breath is my third memoir. It met the world in December of 2023 after having lived in my notebooks and my computers for over 20 years.  When a book exists with you for that long, it becomes a member of the family. Its completion and “departure,” for as much as it is joyous, also unlocks nostalgia. The house feels a little too quiet, afterward. There is a sense of accomplishment and pride. A delicious wave of relief. An odd and unfamiliar sort of loneliness.  

A Lucky Breath wasn’t always kind to me in its journey from the universe to the page. It grabbed me by the ear and dragged me, kicking and protesting, to the desk to work on it. When I had time.

When I didn’t have time. When I wanted to do nothing or do something else. When I needed rest. A Lucky Breath had a mind of its own from the beginning, and the months following its release have been an adjustment period for me. I couldn’t wait to have such a demanding book finished and out of my hair, but now that it’s gone, I miss it. I’ve found myself with this forgotten commodity called “free time.”  

Hard/Impossible

This memoir is not like the previous two that I published. This one rattles my readers. My first memoir, When the Roll is Called a Pyonder, shares my early childhood memories of growing up on a farm in a Mennonite community. It’s charming, funny, sometimes poignant, and easy to identify with even if you didn’t grow up on a farm and are not a Mennonite. The second memoir, Marry a Mennonite Boy and Make Pie, is a coming-of-age story, and deals with the struggles of beginning to make your way in the world.  It’s set in a ratty college apartment and, again, is funny, often poignant, and easy to identify with if you grew up to leave the first world that you knew.

A Lucky Breath is a bittersweet memoir of a love affair with a village in Costa Rica and my doomed marriage to an abusive husband there.  It’s a divorce story. There is very little to laugh at, and, unless you have also been frightened by your husband and found yourself nearly homeless, it does not give voice to your experiences.  I’ve been told it’s both hard to read and impossible to put down. 

After the release of both When the Roll is Called a Pyonder and Marry a Mennonite Boy and Make Pie, delighted readers who are also friends, created Zoom chat groups with me to talk about the books, to share their feelings, and their experiences of growing up (first book) and leaving home (second book). Let’s just say that this time nobody jumped up to put together a Zoom call about domestic violence, intercultural marriage challenges, or how we sometimes make the same mistake over and over. 

I did, however, privately receive moving responses from readers who found themselves gripped by a tale they were not expecting. Nobody wanted to call me up to talk, though. We love to laugh together but we do not prefer to share our shame face to face.

Riveting and Important

“So, when is the next one coming out?” This is what my readers have wanted to know. As if the fact that I have something else riveting and important to say is a given. I love that. It terrifies me. There’s nothing more fulfilling than hooked readers who want more.

I’m certain that I have something else riveting and important to say.  I wonder what it is.

All My Worlds

All of my stories are true. The innocent Mennonite world of the first book, When the Roll is Called a Pyonder, all this time later, is still where I come from. It’s still right where I left it, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. You can go visit it. I can go visit it too, and I do. I feel a deep compulsion to protect that world and the people in it from the world of A Lucky Breath.  They are all my worlds, but they do not overlap anywhere except inside this head, inside this body. And so, as I have wished and attempted to promote A Lucky Breath and offer it the possibility of success that it deserves, I have also hidden it.  

This isn’t normal. But it is real. In this way, I am this book’s own worst enemy, and it is mine. We’re working on our relationship. 

Wise and Wonderful

In the stillness left by this book that has left the nest are the voices that urge me to continue. “The Work. You must do The Work,” they say. “Come back to The Work.” The Work is writing, my work. The thing that, to live well and be happy in this world, I must do.  

I obey. I’ve begun haphazardly working on another project. I call it a “project” because, at present, it is a pile of mishmash, ideas, and many blanks. I am collecting fragments, writing scenes, and drawing the bones that will give shape to this creature. There will be plenty of time later to overthink everything—this is the time for the jumble of ideas and impressions that roll all over each other like puppies at play.

If I am brave, clever, and do not give up, something coherent may materialize though all this. If my other books are any indication, this one may take me until I am 70 to finish, so it ought to be wise and wonderful.  

Champagne, anyone?

Cheers!

—

Diana Zimmerman, author of A Lucky Breath (2023, Workplay Publishing), is a USA-born poet and memoirist who resides in Costa Rica.  Her works blend English, Spanish, and Italian.  Diana’s previous memoirs are: When the Roll Is Called a Pyonder (2014, Electio Publishing) and Marry a Marry a Mennonite Boy and Make Pie (2018, Workplay Publishing).  Diana’s poetry collections include Tell Me About the Telaraña (2012) and Certain as Afternoon/Certa Come il Pomeriggio (2019).

A LUCKY BREATH

On the day she runs away from her husband, everything goes just as Diana has planned. It won’t be long, however, until her careful design unravels to the point where she finds herself nearly homeless in Costa Rica’s capital city.

Time fragments in this book, and travels in two directions at once. Spliced together with a harrowing series of events that leave her stunned and in danger, Diana relives her romance with the home she loved in the village of Los Rios and the man she married there.

Spartan prose poetry relates the story moving forward, while an image-dense presentation of life in rural Costa Rica takes us back further and further in time, unfolding layers of depth that make this book impossible to put down.

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Category: On Writing