Genevieve Beltran

Shortly before my terminally ill husband began hospice care at home, I began writing my memoir in micro-flash, A Remnant of a Shattered Vase. Wrestling with loss, longing, and the fear of the unknown, I decided to chart my emotional landscape in a series of kaleidoscopic vignettes which interweave the painful present with echoes from the past. What began as a memoir centered around cancer and caregiving expanded into an examination of the forces that had impacted my interracial union: generational dysfunction, patriarchal Catholicism, and my growing resolve to view myself as a writer despite my husband’s inability to see beyond my role as his wife. Married thirty-eight years to an alcoholic, I battle relief and despair as I try to come to terms with the person I once was and the one I will become when the only man I’ve ever loved is no longer among the living. 

Her days full of never-ending obligations, an aging Eleanor Roosevelt feels like Atlas, forever forced to carry the worries of the world upon her shoulders. Concerned she’ll become a burden to her children, she decides to fulfill the promise she made long ago to her lover, Lorena Hickok. After all these years, they’ll finally run away to live in blissful anonymity. When Eleanor learns that President Kennedy arranged for her friend Marilyn Monroe’s supposed suicide in order for the troubled movie star to find happiness out of the limelight, she uses the information to plot her own escape.