Machine Without Horses Author:Helen Humphreys What is an ordinary life worth? A seasoned writer stumbles across an obituary of a famous stranger and imagination is sparked. The brief words of memoriam describe a woman who was both extraordinary -- eccentric, revered in her field, a renowned expert -- but also utterly ordinary. How does a writer, intrigued by all that isn't said, create ... more »a story? Capture an unknowable woman and all the secret passions, choices and compromises that make up a life?
In Machine Without Horses, Helen Humphreys explores the real life and imagined internal life of the famous and famously private salmon-fly dresser, Megan Boyd, a craftswoman who worked for sixty years out of a bare-bones cottage in a small village in the north of Scotland. Was she happy? Who did she love? How did or didn't she change as the world around her shifted?
Humphreys, both present in the story and its architect, reveals in her inimitable style the complicated emotional landscape that can exist under even the most constant surface.« less