Listen: Prologue
Author Interview
The Cremation of Sam McGee
A Family Story of Grief, Gratitude, and Grace
In 2009, radio journalist Joe McHugh set out on a journey to find the family of an African-American woman named Helen who cared for him when he was a young child and who helped his family survive a terrible tragedy. Armed only with her first name and a passing reference to a house fire in a letter written in 1952, he visited the places that shaped the early lives of his parents, interviewed family members and historians, and searched through archives in hopes of uncovering a clue that might lead him to his goal.
This is the chronicle of that quest. It is also a meditation on how relationships, especially those during early childhood, determine the physical structure and health of our brains and how love and faith, even during the darkest of times, can transform our lives in ways beyond imagining.
The formal reciting of narrative poems at family gatherings and other social events is a tradition with a long and cherished history but one that, alas, is fast disappearing in this high-tech, helter-skelter world of ours. Noted storyteller Joe McHugh has decided to revive this venerable tradition by offering a selection of such tried-and-true poems that each tells a story. They are recited in the old style with only the sound of the human voice to give them life. And perhaps you and your family and friends will find as much delight in their retelling as they once brought to those who came before us.
$14.95
Product Description
The Cremation of Sam McGee and Other Classic Story Poems contains 2 enjoyable hours, 32 recitations performed by Master storyteller Joe McHugh.
Become transported back to a grass-covered baseball field in the small town of Mudville listening to Ernest Thayer’s poem, Casey at the Bat, a haunted fishing hole tucked away in the Berkshire Mountains, Joyce Kilmer’s poem Dave Lilly, the stage of a fiddling contest in the hill country of Georgia, Stephen Vincent Benet’s poem The Mountain Whippoorwill, or, perhaps Robert Service’s poem about a raucous miner’s saloon in the shadow of the Arctic Circle, The Shooting of Dan McGrew. Or Myra Brooks Welch’s poem about how a worn and discarded violin at auction is magically brought back life by a gray-haired stranger, The Master’s Hand or a favorite from England written by Marriott Edgar, Albert and the Lion, of a precocious child while visiting the zoo is eaten by a toothless old lion only to return unharmed in the next poem. Plus many more!
These recitations so rich in imagery and word play and brimming with emotions of surprise, humor, love, and longing were a veritable feast for the mind and heart.
