Imperfect Beauty

Alasdair Buchanan has crossed the pond of the great Atlantic to visit his cousin, Trevor. Alasdair, a native Scot, is a long way from home in a place he cannot see, though the sounds are familiar at the Highland games being held in Fort Wayne, Indiana. When Trevor abandons Alasdair to his own devises, Trisha Wright captivatingly enters the scene. Alasdair finds the lilt of her voice and her kind laughter beautiful. Trisha willingly leads Alasdair through the sights with skill while seeing past his blindness. Yet she believes he can never see past what he cannot behold.

This short story is cleanly written without skipping a single Highland beat. E.A. West balances the showing of a good storyteller with the necessary telling to keep the manuscript brief and the depictions tight. The characters are distinct both in description and dialogue without the reader being told what to think of each. When West smoothly changes the story setting to Scotland, the Scottish verbiage changes fittingly, without pulling the reader out of the story. Yet with the story length, one is left wondering why the author did not show us more of the Highland games. A wonderful story that leaves the reader wanting more!

Erin Murdock