FRAGRANCE OF THYME is a unique expression of ineffable leaps of joy experienced by Charlotte FIELDEN. A master of language and soul travel, she takes you on a mystical flight of ‘star-studded light.’ There you are graciously introduced to angels in the sky, ‘African nights striped in black’, ‘dew-kissed rampant weeds’ and ‘salamanders shining on moon-washed walls’. Yes, Charlotte has taken nature by surprise to create a poetic frenzy of delight as she ‘banishes barriers to hidden mysteries’ of the cosmos and leaves us in a state of wonder. I have known Charlotte as a mystic and writer, but I was not aware of her ecstatic poetry where she overflows with both mundane as well as mystical experiences. I suggest that you indulge yourself in Fragrance of Thyme, Charlotte FIELDEN’s poetic expression of life.

Each night before I retire, I relax by reading one of your poems and think about it, jot down a few notes, and then fall asleep. You can see from this, that I find your poetry very relaxing, and at the present time, this is good. What wonderful advice you have given to your grandsons. Condensed, when you wrote 'feel the power of your wings" It is like the mother bird with the fledglings in the nest, still unsure of their flight. It is also as the old adage says, "Know Thyself." For years men have been trying to fly to the moon and outer space, but were limited. The Greek legend of Daedelus and his son Icarus was just about that. Daedelus had wings of wax, but their attempts failed because they went too close to the sun and the wings melted. You gave the warning, "not too close to the sun." Your spiritual qualities were showing forth as you told them to "proliferate your special gifts," and one of them is the gift of love, which has to be given away and shared, as do our other gifts. This is truly beautiful.

"Fragrance of Thyme" is casual yet accomplished, lyrical as well as spiritual. It’s a lovely package, airy and sweet-smelling. You use the phrase "to be my style." You have succeeded. Yeats talks about the dancer and the dance. Here the person and the poet are one with the words. I keep coming upon references to the weather, the atmosphere, and to the natural world of graceful organic forms, less to inorganic hunks and chunks. The tone is consistent: lyrical, sweet. Like thyme. One feature that has always impressed me about your writing, whether in prose form, poetic form, or dramatic form, is the feeling for words based not on their incantatory quality as much as on their traditional quality. I seem to sense a love of literature, especially what used to be called "English Lang & Lit."

While there is a continuity of experience and expression that runs between the very early poems and the latest ones, I am pleased to note that by far the most impressive ones are those written in the 2000s. Throughout one is aware of the passage of time, with emotion, but without regret or dismay. SILENCE IN THE ABSENCE OF MATTER in memory of Thomas Merton on page 64 is a classic and should be widely reprinted, especially in feminist publications. A high point is "Mountains" which inverts the paradisal imagery and turns Toronto’s trail of ravines into a range of mythic mountains! "Imprints of a different kind" is marvellous (especially when read in conjunction with "Shifting Sands," the next poem).

Without drawing attention to it, you introduce invention into the collection. "My Flora Friends" is really quite remarkable. Playfulness is also part of your repertory of effects. The casual reader will overlook a phrase like "the naked I," but the discerning reader will note it. Very fine is "between the pause that makes night day" which is simply there, without asking, like a grace note; indeed, like grace itself.

Without drawing attention to it, you introduce invention into the collection. "My Flora Friends" is really quite remarkable. Playfulness is also part of your repertory of effects. The casual reader will overlook a phrase like "the naked I," but the discerning reader will note it. Very fine is "between the pause that makes night day" which is simply there, without asking, like a grace note; indeed, like grace itself.

Fragrance of Thyme: a poetic gift from the soul of an artist.

Fielden, a Canadian literary and theatrical icon, has just released Fragrance of Thyme, an anthology of her poetic works covering the period from the mid-1950s through to the present day. She has provided her fans with an open door to her life, inviting them inside to be embraced by her hospitality, her wisdom, and her considerable insight into the human condition.

What follows in Fragrance of Thyme is poetry from an extraordinarily reflective period in Fielden’s life. She writes of the weather, the cycle of life, her garden, the kindness of strangers, her perspective on life itself. The poetry clearly comes from the soul of a woman who has loved, who has lost, and who has persevered through all of life’s countless challenges.

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Fragrance of Time is Charlotte Fielden’s eighth published book, her sixth in the past four years. Her artistic career has spanned the theatrical stage (she played in The Merchant of Venice, under Tyrone Guthrie, at the Canadian Stratford Festival), and television (she starred as Susie the mouse in the CBC series Chez Helene). Fielden has also enjoyed a lengthy, recognized career as a novelist and playwright. She is a founding member of both the Playwrights Guild of Canada and The Writers Union of Canada.

John Robert Colombo, author and anthologist has this to say about Charlotte Fielden's third and final novel of the Weil Trilogy:

"An Age Without a Name" is the third and last part of your "Commedia." I now see "Crying As She Ran" as your "Inferno," "Messages like Memories" as your "Purgatorio," and "An Age Without a Name" as your "Paradiso." You have come through! Congratulations!

In CHARLOTTE FIELDEN’S An Age Without A Name I enjoyed the mystery unfolding of Sarah Weil’s life, Charlotte playing with the time lines, her use of dreams — their importance in the lives of the characters. The connections of the afterlife and life on earth are intriguing. The novel begins dramatically and the ending is no less exciting. In between these pages there’s a fascinating story of family dynamics peopled by powerful characters.

From reviews for CRYING AS SHE RAN (1970) - Fielden’s first novel of the Weil Trilogy: THE TAMARACK REVIEW - …an experimental novel that in several respects outdoes even Catcher in the Rye.

KINGSTON WHIG STANDARD - Charlotte FIELDEN varies a poetic, staccato style when expressing Sarah’s thoughts, with an astute sense of dialogue, when speaking for the two generations. She’ll be compared to Bernard Malamud…leaving the reader with sufficient curiosity to read the next instalment

THE ST. CATHERINE STANDARD - The author has a gleefully childlike approach to life as evidenced in this book and at its best, the writing approaches poetry.

THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR - …found the story to be a well-organized, at time stunningly-poetic account of three little girls growing up in a well-to-do Jewish family of Toronto.

THE MONTREAL GAZETTE - The book is episodic, but only as the mind and remembrances are so. Memory is easy as it roams over the young…unhurriedly, telling us all we need to know. You were there and so was I when it was. Love, marriage, sex, joy and sorrow are to be encompassed in our lives and make us what others see and love. Charlotte has gently taken all of us on a journey into our hidden by-ways and secret thoughts and made the remembrance of them fresh and full of joy. Crying as she Ran is the first in a projected trilogy and it augurs well for the future.

In An Age Without A Name, this new novel by Charlotte Fielden, she displays yet again her charming ability to handle characters, their emotions, and their passage through time. A delightful new novel.

An Age Without A Name is the best thing that Charlotte Fielden has written. I don't know what else to say...it's too good for words

Saving Angel is a beautiful piece of work. It shows the connection that Charlotte Fielden has with Madame Blavatsky, the one that myself and so many others share with her. This play is long overdue and welcomed by many who applause Charlotte’s ability to convey and share the controversy and the wisdom of Theosophy. Now, many have this new opportunity of either being introduced or reintroduced to Madame Blavatsky and the significant body of work she left for humanity to open consciousness in a significant way. I look forward to being in the front row of the next performance. Thanks you dear Angel for who you are and what you've become.

I just finished reading Messages Like Memories. What a wonderful story. I was so impressed with the seamless flow of this story that travelled back and forth in time. I went through a range of emotions while reading it and even had a happy little cry. I am thankful for this excellent story. Charlotte Fielden is a great writer .

Enjoyed Palatine Hill. I have been doing some family research and was shocked when I recently discovered my connection to Niagara-on-the-Lake. John Whitmore is related to me through his sister Mary Whitmore Hoople. It would be wonderful to make a connection to the family after all these years.

Your book was fascinating!

Saving Angel is an interesting and mystical play where magical, subtle reality becomes apparent through the powerful personality of Helena Blavatsky. In fact, in my opinion, the Blavatsky character in this book is developed and presented so well, that I couldn’t help but having a constant impression that is was not a fictional character, but real Blavatsky on the last day of her profound, altruistic and very important life as a messenger of the timeless wisdom of theosophy.

Saving Angel is an eloquent and poetic work. Butler is a poet by heart and it is shown that every poet should be spontaneous and fearless. Butler’s character is romantic, curious, open-minded, heartfelt and sensitive. He seems to be an emotional catalyst in the play. His presence and his poetry fill the dark clinic cell with the mystery of far away lands, the freshness of sea breeze, with sweet memories of something deeply intimate and sacred…

Then there is Saurat, a man of logic, experiment and order. His logic though is multi-dimensional and his soul is an ancient one as well. Blavatsky knew that and therefore asked him to fulfil a role of a mediator of the Saving Angel process. And he performs his duty really well. He is a man of a big heart and inquiring mind.

And what can I say of Angel? An innocent, “divinely inspired” child, a wonderful soul forced into confinement by narrow-minded inquisitors of modern times who call themselves educated and knowledgeable doctors. Some of them stubbornly refuse to let go of their fixation on material limitations. In reality they are the ones who require help, and not Angel. They need to be saved from their own tensions and conditioning, and Blavatsky attempts in doing that as well. And her magic worked on doctor Flynn through whom we witness the wonderful power of transformation from a denier to an awakened spirit.

Saving Angel is one deep and well-crafted play and I cannot wait to see it performed on stage.

...In the play the description of what happened to my father Denis Saurat during the war is as if Charlotte Fielden knew. I expect she read 'Death in the Dreamer' where he describes what happened to him. His part in the play is like him...at times he sounds like Agatha Christie's Hector Poirot. But it is good. I enjoyed reading it...Strange how walking over hot coals and no burns until analyzed when painful blisters appear...

I am very grateful to you for sending me Saving Angel which I have read with great interest and pleasure. Also it has touched me personally since my mother`s eldest sister was the wife of Denis Saurat, and he was also the professor at King`s College London under whom I studied when young. I admire the invention of your work and the inter-weaving of different themes to make a whole.

George and I have just returned from our weekend at Niagara on the Lake. We had a wonderful time. I took your book, Palatine Hill with me and am almost finished it.

It was the perfect book to take for this weekend. Everywhere we went, I saw markers of places in the book. We drove down Four Mile Creek Road and walked by the sign explaining about Butler’s Rangers. I looked out on the lake and envisioned the rebels coming across. We stayed at an inn in Virgil, called the Lawrenceville Guesthouse. Next to it was a small cemetery with tombstones dating back to the 1800’s.

Reading your book added a wonderful dimension to the weekend. Thank you for that

...Fielden is a serious writer who, at least for the time being, has chosen to self-publish.

Why? Because, depending on the publishing house, production quality, promotion and market accessibility it can approach that of traditional industry players —I know because I asked her — the author retains control over the work’s artistic vision.

Vision is something Fielden possesses aplenty. Occasionally macabre, always ethereal, frequently dark yet inevitably tinged with humour, the stories in A Thin Place do not simply ripple reality’s surface, but hammer the doors of perception, revealing a world where the familiar remains, yet is transformed.

How so? Check the following.

A heritage journey to Ireland turns travelogue to past lives. An Autistic girl-child who yips like a wolf is telepathically life-connected to the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. A silent woman of flawless beauty, dreamlike as a wood nymph, drives men to destruction. An agnostic Jewish musical protegé is consumed by the conviction that his friend, Nursing Sister Angela, sucks the life force from patients in her care. An overloud radio prompts a complaint that leads to the discovery of a body and a mad, pinball-machine chain reaction where unrelated innocents are the chiming energized bumpers.

A small-time children’s show host’s identity crisis leads to psychotherapy and a life-altering metamorphosis. A separate horror, arguable as evil as the Final Solution, breeds behind the wire of a nazi concentration camp. A garlic-eating rabbi turned kosher slaughterer is visited by devils in Hasidic guise on a matter of commerce. A petulant artist burdened with father issues wreaks an apocalyptic vision upon the Sistine Chapel and an elderly woman of phenomenal spunk defies her controlling family and, in an act of ultimate independence, re-establishes her connection with the Earth.

This is the stuff of twilight. Were Rod Serling still with us, surely he’d approve.

There’s nothing ostentatious in Fielden’s writing. The prose is clean, clear, uncomplicated. Indeed, Fielden’s story, "Hatching" contains one of the most moving depictions of an individual departing this world I’ve read in along time.

 "The Bauer-Hirsch Law of Survival: and "Bubeh Meisse" are short of brilliant. "Amelia’s music" possesses a delightful, old word/Grimms’ Fairy tales (sans faeries) tonality; a lovely piece of literary music, imaginative and captivating. And there’s undeniable potency to "Sister of Mercy" and its compelling portrayal of a man’s consumptive descent into paranoiac delusion at the cost of his art. Good strong stuff.

Indeed, there is worth to all of the stories in A Thin Place. Not only is it a worthy read it is perhaps an indication of changes yet to come not just in self-publishing, but the publishing world at large as experienced and talented authors increasingly experiment with non-traditional venues in bringing their work to market.

We can hope so. It’d be about time..."

Leo Tolstoy, Jack London, de Maupassant, Hardy, Anais Nin — these masters used the short story to inspect a living character, to autopsy a death. Like Bacon used the essay to explore an idea. Like Monteverdi the madrigal to examine an emotion. Like Shakespeare the sonnet to capture a perfect moment. How to do it: sonneteer Phillip Sydney had the answer. "Look in thy heart and write."

Charlotte Fielden has written short stories for over half a century. A therapist, she has peered deeply into many hearts, above all her own. In reporting her insights, her instrument is the play, the children’s story, the novel, the short story. In A THIN PLACE she has joined the ranks of the masters. Read it and weep. Or laugh, or soar. Or mourn. Read it, and learn her secrets.

At long last, a Canadian GONE WITH THE WIND with the publication of the historical novel PALATINE HILL by Charlotte Fielden. It is a riveting saga of the Servos-Secord families from the time of their arrival in the New World, through their trials and tribulations that they endured in the Indian Wars, the American Revolution, the War of 1812, right up to 1927, the beginning of modern times. Fact and fiction blend together in PALATINE HILL that makes it both enlightening and entertaining, and a perfect candidate for a major film, or film series.

Murray Kash
Actor, Broadcaster, Motivational Speaker