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MWSA Review
A time-honored philosophical maxim states, “An unexamined life is not worth living.”
Colored Pebbles is an intensely personal memoir that, based solely on its title and cover, is modest to a fault. A near-fatal health scare confronted award-winning writer Del Staecker with the challenge to reflect on the many meaningful connections he had with others and to gather them into a personal memoir.
He has collected the stories of his encounters with an array of significant people in his life, ranging from family members and friends to nationally known and world-renowned figures. Inspiration for the title stems from the courtship rituals of penguins, which instinctively gather colorful stones and present them as gifts to their prospective mates.
Individual vignettes can stand alone, and the order of presentation does not follow a chronological arc. Each story focuses on the author’s interaction with a particular individual and their impact on him at a specific time of his life. He provides his personal thoughts about how each encounter influenced him at the time.
A dedicated reader will be rewarded with a compelling, cohesive narrative that emerges as a literary equivalent of a photomosaic portrait—a moving retrospective image formed by the diverse fragments of the author’s multifaceted life.
This memoir will appeal to readers who appreciate the lasting influences of others on an individual’s life story.
Review by Peter Adams Young
Author's Synopsis
Del Staecker is an American writer of novels, novellas, short stories, and non-fiction in a number of genres, including suspense, crime, philosophical fiction, satire, and memoir. He is a Life Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (London) and Knight of Honor, Order of St. John (Malta). He was educated at The Citadel, Wheaton College, and The University of Puget Sound.
Format(s) for review: Paper and Kindle
Review genre: Nonfiction—Memoir/Biography
Pages/Word count: 306 / 65,000