title: Drowning in a river called time: A Second Chance - An Urban Spiritual Fable
author: L. Banks
description: The author was born, raised and educated in the school system of Brooklyn, NY. L. Banks attended Brooklyn College majoring in Musical Composition. At an early age, L. Banks learned to appreciate different types of music, poetry and the dramatic arts. While being a skillful musician, in the author adult years became a choir director and an accomplished song writer. Not willing to be satisfied with one area of the arts, the author started a record company and had the opportunity to work with many of today?s top contemporary artists. As an occupation, L. Banks works as drama coach for NYC Parks Department and has performed original plays for the last seven years. The works of L. Banks have been categorized as powerful, innovative and inspirational. L. Banks has recently plunged into the art of fiction writing and as a result, this novel has manifested. Enjoy.
zlib_text: 
  
  
  ALICE HOFFMAN is the author of Property Of, The Drowning Season, Angel
  Landing, White Horses, Fortune’s Daughter, Illumination Night, At Risk,
  Seventh Heaven, Turtle Moon, Second Nature, Practical Magic, Here on Earth,
  Local Girls, The River King, and Blue Diary. She lives near Boston.
  
  
  
  
  
  SUPERSTITION
  
  
  FOR more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for
  everything that has gone wrong in town. If a damp spring arrived, if cows in
  the pasture gave milk that was runny with blood, if a colt died of colic or a
  baby was born with a red birthmark stamped onto his cheek, everyone believed
  that fate must have been twisted, at least a little, by those women over on
  Magnolia Street. It didn’t matter what the problem was—lightning, or locusts,
  or a death by drowning. It didn’t matter if the situation could be explained
  by logic, or science, or plain bad luck. As soon as there was a hint of
  trouble or the slightest misfortune, people began pointing their fingers and
  placing 