Linda Annas Ferguson
Author
New Release
Before the debut of What the Mirrors Knew, Linda Annas Ferguson was known for her five books of poetry that whispered longing and transcendence. The same lyrical quality of her award-winning poems breathes life into her fiction that expands into the realms of mystery, the elusive, and the liminal.
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In this novel, Anna Grace O’Neill’s journey from Charleston, South Carolina, to the wild Atlantic coast of Ireland is more than travel. With every mile, she drifts deeper into myth, memory, and subtle but undeniable transformation. The natural landscape isn’t just a backdrop - it’s a character. It isn’t about just crossing oceans. It’s about honoring the universal threads that pull us where we need to be.
Whether you’re a fan of literary fiction or magical realism or crave a story that stirs your spirit, you’ll find a kindred voice here. The language resonates with anyone who has faced a personal crossroads. Let it stir something silent inside you. It’s meant to be read slowly, like sipping tea.
Poetry
If I could put it in one word, the theme of Dirt Sandwich is “impermanence,” and how transient we are in the world. The intrinsic idea that we all came from dirt and return to dirt is a thread throughout the book, as well as water, an elementary and essential substance of our corporeal being. The poems take us from Adam and Eve to the natural entropic demise of all things that live in time. Along the way, we stop to weigh all that we hold and release but can never keep.”
—Linda Annas Ferguson
Stepping on Cracks in the Sidewalk
Sample poem from Dirt Sandwich
Journey
I see the world from behind two blades,
windshield wipers that never quite clean
the crust of an insect or let go
of a piece of leaf caught in the hinge.
The clock on the dashboard is wrong.
Music from the radio keeps time
with the rain, never breaking rhythm,
raspy song of rubber, fast on the highway.
On my journey, you are a distant place,
the road empty of others. I pass the dark
buildings, vacant lots; listen to my breath,
block out the pounding sounds
on the pavement, hear my own heart beat.
I know the feeling of being inside,
inside the lamplights beginning to burn
as I turn the corner of your street, inside
the cool walls of your bedroom, inside
the heat of the 40-watt bulb by your head
inside the skin of your sheets, inside
the space between desire and sleep, where
all that is fragile has entered you, spread
across your flesh like wrinkles, wound
through your hair like gray. You whisper
“stay,” to the small of my palm, my cheek,
to all I thought was without need.