A Question of Roots: A Story of Reincarnation

By Tierra Sharpe

A Question of Roots is a story of discovery when the diaries of two women collide. In the current day, one woman, in a loving relationship, keeps a random diary of her feelings as she watches the seasons change and feels a change within herself. She struggles with her art and feels frustration because she seems to have lost her creative abilities.

And Otilla, is a woman who has survived the plague in Marseilles, France in 1720. She is also an artist using her talents to beautify her surroundings. Both women have suffered the deaths of loved ones. Tierra meets Otilla, on paper, her journal yellowed and crumpled with age and as she translates it from French into English, she not only regains her enthusiasm for creating art but also discovers her soul.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781796091243

Book preview

Copyright © 2020 by Tierra Sharpe.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 02/28/2020

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Contents

Introduction

Foreword

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Epilogue

Introduction

A Question of Roots is a story of discovery when the diaries of two women collide. In the current day, one woman, in a loving relationship, keeps a random diary of her feelings as she watches the seasons change and feels a change within herself. She struggles with her art and feels frustration because she seems to have lost her creative abilities.

And Otilla, is a woman who has survived the plague in Marseilles, France in 1720. She is also an artist using her talents to beautify her surroundings. Both women have suffered the deaths of loved ones. Tierra meets Otilla, on paper, her journal yellowed and crumpled with age and as she translates it from French into English, she not only regains her enthusiasm for creating art but also discovers her soul.

Foreword

Religion dictates how we perceive what happens to us when we die. Most of us fine tune our ideas as we go through life to meet what we want, or think we want, for our eternal life.

Oxfords dictionary defines religion as the belief in a superhuman controlling power as in a God or Gods entitled to obedience and worship. Sounds a little heavy but this is religion’s job.

Before religions began inflicting control over the masses, or trying to, the world centered its beliefs on the abilities of the Moon, the Sun, the seasons and various deities designated to get them through everything from a crop harvest, to getting into the afterlife in good graces and all manner of dilemmas along the way.

Within these ancient belief systems, and there are hundreds, is where I find Tierra. Within us all is an ability to create in our minds how we would adapt to the knowledge that not only does spirit exist but what our own spirits might be capable of.

Being a Catholic there is no chance I could ever have a different belief system. According to my mother, once a catholic, always a catholic. But living with a woman who is capable of feeling freedom without guilt or restrictions and can allow herself to believe in what she feels and does not allow herself to be controlled, is very refreshing. For twenty years I’ve been celebrating holidays I never knew existed. Bonfires, incense, special meals, special nurturing and a lot of healing rituals.

Every culture has their own rituals, their own ceremonies like a Holy Communion (symbolic cannibalism turning wine into blood and bread into flesh), therapeutic interventions(you must be ‘saved’ in order to get into heaven), sacrifices (the observance of Lent for Catholics is only one), even their own exorcisms. I have been reminded on several occasions that the ‘psychic ‘vampire is very much alive today. Yes, that person or situation that literally drains the life out of you.

Tierra’s book is a work of fiction but holds far more meaningful and beautiful truths that I know gave her comfort to recall. It is an excavation of memories, some painful, but needing to be kept close in that file cabinet in her brain. We all have these essays within us that have helped make the mold that we’ve stepped out of once we really know who we are or who we want to become or in this case; where we came from.

James De Koker

Prologue

October 1968

I had surrounded myself with old photograph albums. The black pages with glued corners holding pictures of the women before me crumbling with age, with their husbands and brothers, showed me their lives in weddings, christenings and holidays. Tables were set with the dishes and glassware which now sit in my own china cupboard, having been passed down to me. I’ll be using those dishes this month. I’ll be honoring my ancestors, my roots. It’s what Samhain is about, that wonderful Pagan holiday celebrated by me. Bringing them back in remembrances while the veil between the Earth and their world is thin enough to communicate. I’ll be cooking the foods they loved, setting a place for them at my table, wearing my grandmother’s jewelry, wrapping myself in her threadbare quilt.

I was holding a legacy of love within those albums. Ribbons, and dried flowers pressed into memory now disintegrating into dust each time I handled them. I was doing my best to preserve everything that they took the time to save. My beautiful daughter sat near me looking intently and commenting on certain pages, that’s me when I grew up, pointing to my grandmother. I laughed with her while she created stories about the events of each photograph. That’s when we went to the ocean. Grandmother could not swim and held onto the ropes and let the waves crash around her knees. She screamed a lot and we all laughed. That was Christmas. Bella got a tiny china doll and I made lots of doll clothes for it. When Bella died, we put the doll in a cigar box on the attic stairs. Now you keep it in the china cupboard.

Chapter 1

There is a dangerous force

in an unfilled desire

December 2012

M y senses were heightened in a strange way, yet I relaxed into the last moments of consciousness before letting go of the day. I could feel his rhythmic cool breathe in the middle of my bare back and the pulse in his wrist of the arm which lay across my pillow as we spooned our way to sleep. Laying on my side I was aware of pain in my shoulder. It was less intense than a few months ago yet still a reminder of overworking a muscle after it tells you to stop.

When I was just a little girl my grandmother told me that my body was a Temple. I didn’t really understand what she meant then, but I do now. My body speaks to me in subtle ways if I listen. This body of mine is just