title: Black Inked Pearl: A Girl's Quest
author:  Ruth Finnegan 
description: <div>LITERARY TITAN Silver Award 2017</div><div>FINALIST, INDIE EXCELKENCE, 2017.</div><div></div><div>Kate Pearl&apos; Series vol 1</div><div></div><div>Forward Review:</div><div><span>Fans of classical verse and fiction will appreciate the rich allusions, universal themes, and linguistic creativity of<i>Black Inked Pearl.<br />If James Joyce&apos;s dream-like opuses were written from a more feminist perspective, they might look something like Ruth Finnegan&apos;s<i>Black Inked Pearl, a rapturous fantasia of words and images set somewhere between ancient myth and the green shores of modern Ireland.<br />Two epigraphs explain the title. &quot;Black Ink,&quot; taken from one of Shakespeare&apos;s sonnets, refers to the act of writing itself, of using the pen to stave off mortality and preserve beauty. &quot;Pearl,&quot; taken from a maxim by the thirteenth century Persian poet Rumi, is represented in the poetic sense as a kernel of wisdom, a spiritual treasure to be sought. In this way,<i>Black Inked Pearlis a traditional quest story, though its diction is decidedly nontraditional. The book&apos;s heroine, Kate, finds herself searching for divinity in &quot;the wilderness of love.&quot; She becomes a central character in a reimagining of the Garden of Eden and other biblical and classic narratives.<br />Because of the book&apos;s experimental steam-of-consciousness style, the plot is often hard to follow. The prose intermittently breaks into long runs of poetry and interpolated quotes and allusions. In this Joycean narrative structure, the language itself must skip, shine, and sparkle to hold interest. Fresh, fun, and kinetic phrasing like &quot;ink-tangle-murmur of the sea&quot; achieves this aesthetic dynamic. Some passages are simply breathtaking: &quot;And so--she waited there. In the dust. For one who did not come. For one who would never come.&quot;<br />In other places, however, the prose is too hackneyed to sustain the book&apos;s symphonic aspirations: &quot;black was the sky, black the sea, the rocks. Black her heart.&quot; More overwrought constructions, such as &quot;nothingness of nothinged voidedness,&quot; become numbing after a while. If there&apos;s a line between playful language and plodding language,<i>Black Inked Pearlcrosses over into plodding territory more than once.<br />The book&apos;s best moments stay on the playful side of language. This is particularly true of the narrator&apos;s sly, subversive treatment of patriarchal power structures. In a passage relating the protagonist&apos;s religious instruction, for example, the proverbial fall of man is specified as &quot;Male pride that riseth erect in the passion of night, falls to nothing under the star, the lull, the fall of morn.&quot; Unlike Joyce&apos;s heroes, Kate must find self-expression and self-fulfillment among traditions and institutions that historically exclude women. Hers is a fight for equality in the eyes of God. It&apos;s a fight worth following.<br />Fans of classical verse and fiction will appreciate the rich allusions, universal themes, and linguistic creativity of<i>Black Inked Pearl</i><em>. Even those who prefer simpler language and more traditional plotlines might find passages worth noting and taking to heart. Finnegan is a talent to watch. (Scott Neuffer,11 May 2016)</em></i></i></i></i></span></div><br /><br /><span></span><br /> <span>Wow!</span><div><span>I just finished reading Black Inked Pearl: A Girl&apos;s Quest by author Ruth Finnegan, and all I can say is &quot;Wow!&quot; It&apos;s written in a unique and creative style, one that at times blends poetry with prose ... </span><span>enviable and beautiful at the same time ... a lovely, unique and interesting work of fiction should absolutely read Black Inked Pearl .I will be eagerly awaiting the next offering by author Ruth Finnegan. If it is anything like her debut novel, it will be simply magical! (</span>Chris Fischer for Readers&apos; Favorite 5 stars )</div><div><div></div><div>An inventive and intriguing read ... Indream-like and poetic prose, this novelwill stay with readers longafter they have finished the last page. ...It&apos;s not challenging in a badway, but a good way, in that it will keep the reader thinking, feeling andexperiencing what the author wants to convey to her readers [and] that will keep their minds workingand those who want to come away with a thought provoking message. ... Ruth Finnegan is a newcomer to keep an eye on. Herunique style and voice will certainly not go undiscovered for long! (Tracy Slowiak for Readers&apos; Favorite)<br /><br /><span>Black Inked Pearl: A Girl&apos;s Quest by Ruth Finnegan is a lyrical, hauntingly beautiful part-poetry, part-prose novel. Black Inked Pearl tells the story about a girl named Kate who is looking for her beloved, her soul mate, her lover. The story unfolds enigmatically and is written in a style that is unlike anything I have ever read. The closest it resembles is poetry, but there is prose and paragraphs interspersed throughout the novel that add to its &quot;other-worldly&quot; charm. Kate had an Irish upbringing and went to a convent school. She had once inadvertently rejected this lover, but has been searching for him since she realized her strong, overwhelming feelings for him. What follows is her journey (and his) as they meet, only to be separated again, meet again, with more separation, and so on until they both realize their goal. Her journey takes her to Eden, the gates of Heaven, and even Hell as we journey with her in her anguish, pain, ecstasy, knowledge, and love. In the end, the book transcends reality as we know it, where it is hard to distinguish fact from fiction, or indeed if anything is &quot;fact.&quot;</span><span>Black Inked Pearl: A Girl&apos;s Quest by Ruth Finnegan is a unique story and may be said to be open to interpretation by the person who reads it. I enjoyed the style of writing although I had a bit of a hard time grasping it at first. Black Inked Pearl: A Girl&apos;s Quest basically tells a veiled version of the story in the Bible and definitely has Christian overtones and themes. Although the book is well written with a unique style, I would have liked less of a Christian theme, and more of just a story. That being said, I did enjoy reading this book.</span><br /><br /><span></span> </div> </div><br /><br /><span></span><br /><span>BLUE INK REVIEW</span><div>Ruth Finnegan&apos;s novel<i>Black Inked Pearl, is an epic love story relayed through poetry and myth.<br />Growing up in Donegal, Ireland, Kate is courted by an unnamed suitor whom she rejects when she is 15; years later, abroad in Africa, she has a romantic epiphany and she sets out to find him. In a series of near misses, symbolic encounters, and supernatural events, Kate and her mysterious suitor ultimately journey through heaven and earth (literally) to reunite.<br />Black Inked Pearl consciously blurs the line between poetry and prose, and that experimental style is its greatest strength. Finnegan&apos;s narrator has a chatty, digressive voice that is engaging and distinctly Irish. Kate&apos;s childhood is rich and atmospheric, her African odyssey evocative, and the chapters taking place in heaven effectively recall Milton.<br />But the stylistic success of<em>Black Inked Pearl</em></i><em>is juxtaposed with the execution of its story, which begins with a simple premise but at every turn obscures the action with confusing or contradictory events. In multiple scenes, Kate tries to reunite with her suitor seven years after rejecting him, but in one passage, she is in her 40s and another time he is in a retirement home, resulting in an incomprehensible timeline. Her lover&apos;s name is never revealed, and Kate assigning him a name is the essential plot point--but why wouldn&apos;t she know the name of her childhood friend? And he seems haunted by his need for her forgiveness, but if it is for more than trying to kiss her once as a teen, the trespass is not clear.<br />Readers are actually well-rewarded for putting aside questions and simply letting the poetic language wash over them, but the experience is incomplete.To that end, the book is a sort of Rorschach test: Some readers will fall in love with the language, but others will be left feeling frustrated by the many unanswered questions.<span> </span><br /></em></div><div><em><br /><div><span>Black Inked Pearl: A Girl&apos;s Quest by Ruth Finnegan is an epic for our modern age, steeped in mythology and impeccably crafted as only a writer with a world-class grasp of great literature can do. In this sweeping novel which crosses the boundaries of life, death, heaven and hell, Finnegan captures both the essence and the scope of the human experience in ways that are simultaneously mind-expanding and edifying. The girl of the subtitle is young Kate who, in her youth and innocence, rejects the advances of the man destined to be her true love and then spends a lifetime searching, finding, and failing to connect with him in an epic journey, accompanied on one vital leg of her quest by a coleopteran psychopomp unlike any extant character in fiction or legend.</span><br /><br /><span>The narrative in Black Inked Pearl: A Girl&apos;s Quest by Ruth Finnegan is delivered in a stream-of-consciousness style that makes every new event seem to be happening in a vivid dream and puts the reader inside Kate&apos;s journey. While the story itself takes place on so many levels and in so many different environs that it almost defies description, the most important epic landscape in this visionary work exists in the topography of Kate&apos;s heart and mind. Ultimately, Black Inked Pearl: A Girl&apos;s Quest is an extended metaphor centered around the object lesson that human beings cannot define themselves in terms of others. Kate&apos;s journey teaches us that we must explore our own internal landscape to find a sense of self worth that is not dependent upon whether or not we find love with another person.</span><br /><br /><span>Black Inked Pearl: A Girl&apos;s Quest by Ruth Finnegan is inventive and fresh on an epic scale. The questions it asks about male-female relations, the nature of love, and the importance of self-determination are both timely and timeless. Black Inked Pearl elevates one girl&apos;s journey of self discovery to mythic proportions and, in so doing, inspires the reader to find her or his own monomyth and live each step of the quest more fully. (</span>Rich Follett for Readers&apos; Favorite)</div></em></div><br /><br />KIRKUS REVIEW<span></span><span></span><div><div>The captivating tale of a young woman&apos;s journey to reclaim her lost love.</div><div><br />Early in Finnegan&apos;s debut novel, there&apos;s a gush of confused emotion and panic: &quot;She was too young she was not ready she was afraid she was terrified only fifteen not ready yet she must go now immediate like a brother nice-impossible too young sea too loud storm tangle-hair she was too young now run run run.&quot; Fifteen-year-old Kate is just an ordinary Irish girl, terrible at math, fearful of the nuns in her school. But as Kate points out, she&apos;s part of an epic love story that is continuously unfolding, waiting for her to step in and bring the story to its conclusion. Alongside the roaring Atlantic Ocean, she meets a mysterious young man and falls under his spell. But, frightened by the intensity of their connection, she rejects his ardor and runs from him. Seven years later, however, she feels compelled to find him and reignite their passion. Kate turns to God and finds that she must complete seven tasks to find her beloved, including traveling through Eden and hell. She relives the biblical tale of love and indiscretion in the Garden of Eden as she and her soulmate converse with the infamous snake and contemplate the apple. Before long, though, Kate appears to be on her way back to her Irish village, with traces of her saga standing as testimony that dreams can penetrate reality. Blurring the lines between poetry and prose, dreams and reality, Kate&apos;s tale recalls the archetypal search for love, as the pursuit permeates every thought of Kate&apos;s.</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>Engaging readers with humor and insight, this unique tale is told through lyrical verse:<span>&quot;<i>I said it was friendship /</i><i>but you wanted love / I said that I&apos;d thought of you /</i><i>when you wanted--above.</i>&quot;</span><span>Kate&apos;s romantic quest calls to mind<i>Paradise Lost</i>and Greek mythology as it weaves together biblical allusions, fantasy, and details of the modern day.</span></div><div></div><div></div><div>A mythical story of two lovers whose connection transcends space and time.</div></div><div></div><div></div><div>OTHER REVIEWS</div><div>I immensely enjoyed it. VERY interesting, takes you into another world. Not just a love story, a spiritual message <span>Reverend Jan Beer</span></div><span>Amazing! I enjoyed it tremendously; light,floating, visualDasck Eve Defin</span><br /><span>I loved the bits where the poetry is so closelylinked with her childhood memories,Professor Paul Thompson,</span><br /><span>Opening new areas of experience ... things beyond mynormal frontiersJim Graham, School Counsellor</span><br /><span>It touches my heart in many ways -- poetic,personal, verbal/creative, emotional ...&quot; -Patrick Bond, Nature poet</span><br /><span>. I like the way it plays with language and thepoetic stream of consciousness. a strong sense of a teenager awakening toadulthood in all sorts of ways Janet Maybin, School literacy specialist</span><br /><span>Some of the author&apos;s scholarly preoccupations comethrough, notably the role of memory and quotation, and I loved the way Kate&apos;sreflections are so bound up with poetry. The assemblage and juxtaposition ofgenres are very much in keeping with African-language prose fiction, wheregenre boundaries are constantly breached and where long passages of oral poetrymight be incorporated into a descriptive or narrative sequence.... the novel isa dreamProfessor Karin Barber</span><br /><span>&quot;Different, fresh. I loved the stream ofconsciousness Joycean style. Trance-like.&quot; -Denise Saul, Poet andfiction writer,</span><br /><span>&quot;Powerful and inspiring. Not just a great lovestory, an inside adventure.&quot;-Maxim Naiken, Chinese medicinepractitioner</span><br /><span>&quot;I loved it. Keep it by my bed. Dreamlike.Magical.&quot; -Hope Davies, Mother</span><span></span><br /><br /><br /><div><span>Black Inked Pearl: A Girl&apos;s Quest</span><span>by Ruth Finnegan is a work of poetry and prose that is 286 pages long. It is listed under Religion and Spirituality. This is clearly a book that is meant to be studied. It is very confusing at parts, but is not a result of bad writing, because the confusion is meant to display the nature of the characters and Kate&apos;s emotional struggle. Also, the confusion stems from the otherworldly story that seems to blend dream worlds with reality. The line between real life and dream worlds becomes less clear as the book goes on. Many aspects of the book seem to be open to readers&apos; interpretations.</span><br /><br /><span>Kate rejects the love of her soul mate as a young girl. She continues with her life, going to a convent to get her education. She gets engaged, has a career, and travels to Africa. In Africa, God&apos;s plan is revealed to her, and she remembers her long lost love. She feels guilt for rejecting him, and realizes her mistake. She searches for him, but he rejects her at the gates of Heaven. She looks for him again and watches in sorrow as he slowly leaves her. The guilt of rejecting her true love follows her as she tries to make it right. God decides to be merciful and gives her another way to meet her love again and fulfill her destiny. Her journey takes her to the Garden of Eden, heaven, and hell. In the end, it is all about self-discovery and eternal love.</span><br /><br /><span>This is not an easy, quick read. There are times that I had to pause and reread paragraphs. There are many parts of the book that read similarly to a stream of consciousness. What I love most about this approach is how it conveys Kate&apos;s and other character&apos;s thoughts and emotions. A lot is left out, so the reader is required to fill in the spaces and understand the transitions. There is no warning that the perspectives have changed, so you have to put that together on your own. Time also flip-flops back and forth with little warning. Instead of a structured narrative that explains, the reader is able to see through the characters&apos; ideas, remembering memories the way that we actually remember moments from our lives in flashes. It is like being in their minds. There are also pieces of more traditional style poetry throughout the work.</span><br /><br /><span>The author conveys emotions well, and I could really relate to Kate. What I liked most about</span><span>Black Inked Pearl</span><span>is how heavily some of the author&apos;s statements hit me emotionally. Each event or test in the text can be interpreted as a real life event. For example, I believe that the last test in which Kate has to read and understand all knowledge in God&apos;s library may represent the monotony of life after a true love has passed away. It feels as though you must search through the largest library in existence before you are finally granted the chance to see them again in the afterlife. Because Kate originally rejected the man&apos;s love, she has to complete multiple tests to prove that her love is enough. One of my favorite parts of the book is when Kate must cut off her ring finger to wake her love. The author makes an analogy-she cuts off her finger as one would cut down a tree. The poem after this alludes to Christ&apos;s love, because he died on a tree.</span><br /><br /><span>Much of the writing is very profound, but I also love the humor mixed in. For instance God is not depicted in a traditional way. God&apos;s mercy is what gives her the ability to see her true love again, but he is also a source of humor multiple times in the text. (Online Book Club)</span></div><div><div><div></div><div></div> </div> </div>
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  # It’s Just You
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## R. Phoenix
  
  
  ## Chris McHart
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Copyright © 2021 by R. Phoenix & Chris McHart
  
  
  All rights reserved.
  
  
  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or
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  a book review.
  
  
  [![Vellum flower icon](../images/00001.jpeg) Created with
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  # Contents
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  1\. [Finn](part0003.html#2RHM0-17647dcea26549468d6b07b16ca06617)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  2\. [Kane](part0004.html#3Q280-17647dcea26549468d6b07b16ca06617)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  3\. [Finn](part0005.html#4OIQ0-17647dcea26549468d6b07b16ca06617)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  4\. [Kane](part0006.html#5N3C0-17647dcea26549468d6b07b16ca06617)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  5\. [Finn](part0007.html#6LJU0-17647dcea26549468d6b07b16ca06617)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  6\. [Kane](part0008.html#7K4G0-17647dcea26549468d6b07b16ca0661