“Bread crumbs”(perhaps how you got here)

The “Celeste” novels follow the history of two people - Celeste Singer and Thurlow Greevy, who begin their mutual acquaintance in loathing for each other. The works are set in an alternate world - like ours, except that in 2006 someone (it’s never learned who) sets of a nuclear weapon in Long Beach Harbor to “celebrate” September 11th.

Of course, there are also other differences - Celeste and Thurlow have quite an impact on the world.

One important aspect of the works is that they try to draw out the consequences of certain divisive cultural and political influences that really are at work in contemporary America. Most of the consequences are not pleasant, unfortunately. The novels span roughly the years 1970 to 2060, but make extended reference to events both before and after those boundaries.

In general, the novels switch back and forth between the story of Celeste and the story of Thurlow. These stories are closely intertwined. In the excerpts given here I have generally given on excerpt from each novel for each of the two protagonists.

As things stand now, there are the following components to the Celeste novels:

• Six Celeste novels:
• True Love
• The Millennium of True Love
• The Late Springtime of True Love
• The Winter of True Love
• The Shards of True Love
• The Embers of True Love
• About four shorter novels (in the form of diaries), the “diaries” of Dawn Lawrence (of these, only two have been written so far)
• A brief history of North America in the Twenty-First Century. This work provides some answers to questions such as “What happened to ...”.
• A collection of miscellaneous essays and other materials, most of which are excerpts from the writings of Celeste Singer; there are also some of Thurlow Greevy’s works.

 All text on this page is the work of J W Durham and is licensed only under terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Other licensing terms may be available. E-mail me