Fred Odom

This work of fiction tells the story of two next door neighbors unknown to each other until an accidental meeting outside of Bea's home. Alfonse is struck by her beauty and begins a series of brief correspondences with her during which they both begin to learn about each other and realize they have much in common. During their relationship's progression they each find the other partner has much to offer that "completes" themselves.

This group of poems through the use of wind and its various forms and metaphors conveys a deeper understanding of adjustment, understanding of relationships, and nature. It is a continuation of these relationships as started in its previous companion books: Ins and Outs of Ups and Downs: Inner Journeys on the Outer Path and A Walk in the Wordscape.

This book is written from the vantage of both personal adjustments to serious illnesses and as a 17 year medical social worker in an acute hospital setting and 20 years in developmental disabilities. It provides the reader a "navigation" of the hospital "foreign land" and how to develop positive supports with family and medical personnel.

This collection of poems continues the work started in Ins and Outs of Ups and Downs: Internal Journeys on the Outer Path. In five chapters, the poems address awakening one's higher understanding of spiritual growth, working through adversity, finding higher meanings in relationships and transitions, and poems written to "just feel" the journey of the images invoked in the poems.

This book of poems describes the journeys we take in life and how they affect us... and how we affect the journeys through the effects of coping with worldly and personal stresses, poems of beauty and nature, coping with physical and spiritual transitions and transformations, and poems meant to encourage the reader to "just see" the metaphors within the poems.