Brown and White

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Sporting Chance Press author Lawrence Norris has a little marble angel on his desk, just under his computer screen. It's not very big, but Norris says it "looks over" all his labor each day.  Norris wears a brown scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel every day. It's the scapular that he always wore as a student at Mount Carmel High School in Chicago.  On one wall of his little office, there are images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Sacred Heart of Mary.  The pictures are housed in beautiful gold frames that are shaped like little stained glass windows.   His desk is home-made from an old dinning room table. And as a publisher and an author, surrounding Norris are boxes of his company's books and an old floor to ceiling bookcase that includes a small sampling of his old books.  He has another small bookcase by him and several more throughout his house. Most of his old books have little value to anyone other than himself.

Norris is not sure if the Sisters who educated him in grade school or the Carmelites who did the same in high school or the Benedictines who took Norris on in college would love all his work.  He wonders if old Carl Kroch or Bill Casey would get a kick out of what he has done since he left Kroch's and Brentano's bookstore many years ago.  He wonders whether Bob Bartlett, the first president for whom he worked at CCH Publishing Company would like at least a few pages he's written or published. 

But somehow Norris has always thought a lot of his own book and he has a lot riding on it.  The little eBook that he calls the Brown and White is a fictionalized memoir of his first year in high school.  It has been a part of him for over 40 years as he has worked on other authors' works.  The Brown and White is a personal story that was put together as a kind of humorous and sentimental travel log.  He has resisted some editors advice who told him to make it more  plot driven. Norris liked the work of John Powers, a Chicago South Side author (Last Catholic in America and Do Pattent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up) , and he set up his book like one of Powers stories. He also resisted those who told him to take the religion overtones out of the book and others who told him to put more in.  The story is not of a very well-rounded worldly boy, it a story of a boy who lives in one of those traditional Chicago neighborhoods where children are raised with great love, but not always kindly. Worldliness comes later.

Norris wants you to know that his work is available this week for just $.99 via a Kindle Countdown Deal. 

Brown and White: A Different Time

Brown and White

The late 60s were a wake up call for Americans.  Civil rights, the war in Vietnam, the generation gap, changing moral values, civil disobedience, drug abuse and so much more.  But for the kids in my book, the brown and white school bus was their transport between the big changing world and their home turf. At the time, although many neighborhoods were changing radically, ours seemed secure.

About the time my story takes place, John Powers books on Catholic life in Chicago were best sellers.  Powers was able to take that life and hold up a mirror for us to see ourselves.  Powers world was pre-Vatican II.  He weaved ridiculously funny stories that boldly cast his characters.  Powers gave the community a sense of value as many things we valued seemed to be coming apart at the seams.

When I began writing my story over 40 years ago, I was very young and had an exaggerated sense of my understanding of life. Time has made me humble and in the Brown and White I stepped back and described what I knew. I hope people will appreciate it for what it is, and also understand it for what it is not.