Lake Okeechobee at dusk, sugarcane in the foreground and a moon over the water

A memoir · Ryan S. Mann

A Star Seedand a Witch

Name: A Star Seed and A Witch
Author: Ryan S. Mann

He ran until the land named the cost. The official house of the work — sample, first printing, and rights.

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The sentence

“Carry the load, or lose the house.”

A vision. A warning. A job.

A Star Seed

and a Witch

Ryan S. Mann

The first volume

A life interrupted by the other world

A Star Seed and A Witch is the first volume — a Star Seed through a Glades boyhood, a grandma named Willie Mae, a family shop, and a warning that arrived like a job. Chapter 1 is the door. The rest is the bound work.

The full manuscript is not on the open web. What you can do here: read the authorized sample, join the first-printing list, or ask for rights in writing.

Inside the book How the rights are held

Boyhood

Brothers, a shop, a Saturday

The ordinary life was never only ordinary. An office at the edge of town. A shop close to the house. Sheet metal. A cracked court at dusk. Lights wild enough to make a boy feel free. Then the cane road, the truck, the field, the fire.

A small boy drawing at a wooden desk while his grandmother watches, cane outside the screen — The office

A dirty-blond boy holding a sheet of metal in a family shop, a basketball hoop outside at dusk — The Shop

Three boys playing basketball on a cracked outdoor court at sunset — The court

A boy bowling while his brother watches at a small-town alley — The lanes

Two boys sitting on a rug with game controllers, watching the television, pizza open on the floor — The den

A boy in a white Jams T-shirt skating in brown quads with orange wheels — The rink

A small boy standing at the edge of a sugarcane road at sunset — The road

A boy’s hand on a cane stalk, the field repeating behind it — The patterns

A barefoot boy at the edge of the cane, the lake and moon beyond — The path

A boy in a gifted classroom, light on the chalkboard behind him — GATE

A muddy pickup truck on a Florida backroad between cane fields at night — The truck

A boy riding a bicycle down a cane path under a full moon — The bike

Two teenagers on bicycles in a cane row at night, one window lit behind them — The window

Three muddy boys laughing in a golf cart tearing through a cane row — The cart

The field

A muddy linebacker under Friday lights, a cart and a fire in the cane behind him — The lights

Three boys around a campfire by the water, a football memory hanging in the air — The fire

A young man sitting apart from the fire, a ripple on the lake, the house empty behind him — The embers

Four boys sitting on a jungle gym with their backs to the sky — The perch

A boy watching an old television in a dark room — The screen

The first temptation

A warning that would not stay a joke

A cabin. Candles. A whisper in a city. A warning a boy was not ready to hear.

A young man and a woman at a candlelit table outside a cabin in the pines — The cabin

A young man on an observation deck above the city, an older stranger whispering at his ear — The city

The land

The Glades, the river, the old city, the islands

Pahokee, Belle Glade, South Bay. The land remembers 1928. Cane and orange groves. The Kissimmee and Big Cypress Preserve. Lake Okeechobee. Saint Augustine, Big Pine Island, Sanibel and Captiva. Many possible grounds. The work could stand on any of them.

Luminous figures moving down a wet Pahokee street at night, cane at the edge of town — Pahokee

Black muck and sugarcane under a mill sky at Belle Glade — Belle Glade

The southern shore of Lake Okeechobee at South Bay, dusk over the water — South Bay

Tall Florida sugarcane moving in the wind on black muck soil — Cane fields

Rows of a Florida orange grove at dusk, fruit catching the last light — Orange groves

The Kissimmee River winding through bald cypress and black water — Kissimmee River

Bald cypress standing in dark water at Big Cypress Preserve — Big Cypress Preserve

A quiet colonial street in Saint Augustine at night, lanterns and palmettos — Saint Augustine

Mangrove shoreline and a weathered dock on Big Pine Island at dusk — Big Pine Island

A Sanibel gulf beach at dusk, sea oats and a pale moon over still water — Sanibel / Captiva

The Wound

Chapter 1 is Willie Mae. He was five in Pahokee — third boy, dirty-blond, eyes light blue with shades of green. Heat came off the roads in waves. Green cane. Black muck. The iron memory of the lake. She met him in the office. The wound was older than he was. The land had never closed.

The Seed

After the first light the days were still long. A shop close to the house. Sheet metal. A small job. Brothers on a cracked court. Letters that would not hold still. One room that did. The cane had patterns a page could not. He was a Star Seed only in the way a bruise is a color. He did not yet know what the land would ask.

An outdoor gathering at dusk in a Florida orange grove, string lights hung in the citrus trees

III

The Gathering

Family found him again. Lights in the trees. A gathering that felt like a return. He mistook a shine for permission. The land was watching. It always had been.

A man standing in the Gulf surf at Sanibel at night, a pale moon over the water and a faint star of light at his chest

The Sentence

The old life could not hold. A sentence arrived that was not quite a curse and not quite a kindness — a job, if he would take it. Carry the load, or lose the house.

From the sample

As I recall, the year was 1981, and on that day, the heat rose from the roads in slow, heavy waves. I could taste green sugarcane, wet black earth, and underneath them the older iron of the lake’s long memory. The air was dense and unforgiving, but with summer on the way it seemed to matter a little less that day.

I was the third boy in the family, only five, with dirty-blond hair and eyes light blue with shades of green.

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