Praise for A Boundless Place
“
A heartwarming, delightful debut. You can't help loving Pamela Stockwell's grumpy, quirky characters, and you'll wish you were their neighbor on Magnolia Avenue too.
LINDA ROSEN, author of Sisters of the Vine
“
A Boundless Place is a delightful, easy, read that is sweet as sunshine.
LAINEY CAMERON, award winning author of The Exist Strategy and host of the Best of Women's Fiction podcast
“
Stockwell's writing is heartfelt and touching . . . The characters will stay with me for a long time.
VIRGINIA MCCULLOUGH, author of Island Healing
COMING IN APRIL 2024
The Tender Silver Stars
In 1972, change is sweeping the world, but it isn’t coming fast enough to South Carolina.
Not for Triss Littlefield, anyway. She has always wanted to become an attorney—just like her father, brother, and grandfather. But her wealthy, influential grandfather who raised her won't hear of it. She attempts to go it on her own until the day she commits an impetuous act that threatens to derail her life.
Everlove Porter, the daughter of a working-class Black family, is not looking for change but it finds her anyway. She has always followed the rules, living up to the expectations of everyone around her. Then one day, she doesn’t and blows up the life she has always known.
By chance, the women meet, become friends, and help each other find new paths in a world that tells them who they should be and how they should behave. They might have given up if the indomitable Mrs. McCabe didn’t step in to offer her eighty-plus years of experience—whether they want it or not.
Can the two women build new lives from the ones they shattered?
Readers of Clare Pooley's Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting will enjoy this uplifting tale of unlikely friendships and the quest for fulfillment.
Awards
BOOK AWARDS
17th Annual National IndieExcellence® Awards|2023
Finalist -- A Boundless Place
Florida Authors and Publishers Association’s Annual President’s Book Awards |2022
Bronze Medal for A Boundless Place
Best Book Awards Best Cover Design | 2022
Finalist for A Boundless Place
LBW Page 100 Writing Competition | 2020
Winner – A Boundless Place
CREATIVE NONFICTION
Story Circle Network's LifeWriting Contest | 2022
Second Place for "The Phoenix Family"
ANTHOLOGIES
A Million Ways * Stories of Motherhood |2023 "If I Tell You My Name"
Story Circle Network | 2022
“Veterans Day at the Veterans Day Memorial" appeared in Real Women Write: Seeing Through Their Eyes
Sparked Literary Magazine | 2021
"A Slash of Light" published here.
Poetry Awards
Story Circle Network's Annual Poetry Contest |2023
Second Place for "Photographs"
Photographs
​
At 17, she poses, poised
Fixed fast in black and white with Bobby socks and bouncing hair
A luminescent smile hides a homelife of hardship
But she beams because she has met my father whom she will marry
And she will exchange her shifting sands for an immovable mountain
At 27, she is imperturbable
In her Jackie Kennedy suit and bouffant bob that belies her beginnings
But that is behind her now and she is moving onwards
Going overseas with her Air Force husband and two young daughters
Her family circle content, complete
At 37, she frosts her hair and wears wild print pants that are caught in Kodak color
It is the unsettled seventies and I am eleven and she knows everything
Her self-assurance is a rock I can tie my boat to
As I drift and explore
Within the safety of her sphere
At 47 she sports shoulder pads and belted waist
I am twenty-one, and she knows nothing of my life in college and the challenges I face
But we smile at my college commencement as if we are friends and as if
I know all about her life
While she knows nothing of mine
At 52 she softens into middle age flashing the same incandescent smile
But gray flecks crosshatch her caramel hair and crow’s feet bracket her eyes
She says the one thing I need to hear to leave my train-wreck marriage
And I flee home grateful for the refuge, the reliable retreat
We rub and grate, but we have learned to soften the edges of our collisions
At 62, she dies.
She succumbs to cancer
And I wonder who, now, will guide me on my path, who will stand back until asked
Who will whisper the right words, who will hold my hand
open their arms, have my back, hear my voice
and then I hear a tenuous murmur rippling at the margins of my spiraling sorrow
something implanted, instilled, ingrained, gathering strength, growing stronger, resonating
and I know now where she resides.
​
​
This poem is dedicated to my mother, Gail Armstrong, and what more can I say that isn't here?
This is the Story of a Flag
This is the story of a flag
that flew in October’s opal skies
and December’s disconsolate clouds
snapping in the clamorous din of football games
until Colin took a knee.
and then
under its striped glory
some of us saw a man who protested
peacefully
respectfully
his silent action
speaking
for the voiceless
for the downed brown men
and women
and boys
and girls
who sold cigarettes
passed a fake twenty
carried a knife
got stopped for a traffic violation
played in a park
walked with a friend
jogged
slept at home
who police
choked
strangled
knelt on
rough rode
and shot
and shot
and shot
and shot
and shot
Some say
this kneeling man
disrespected that flag
while others say the flag
never respected him
and that it flies over souls
fleeing brown bodies
at the hands of men in blue
This is the flag we pledged allegiance to
And to the republic for which it stands
but then we learned
it is not one nation
under God
and it is not indivisible
and there is not liberty nor justice for all
And under that flag
instead of bridges
to cross the divide
or gain some understanding
that all men and women are not equal
the voices
of those who will not listen
fall like blades
into the breach
shaving canyon walls
so the rift widens
and we can’t see each other
across the yawning gap of
misunderstanding.
And this flag was there
on January 6
when rioters
smashed glass
splintered wood
brandished their flags
bludgeoned with their flags
tore a nation asunder
with their flags
And who now owns this flag?
The people who
say blue lives matter
then beat a police officer
with the flag?
The people who
built a gallows that cast long shadows
across the lawn of the heart of our nation
and punctuated it with the loop of a noose?
The people who
have their knees pressed firmly
on democracy’s throat?
This is the story of a flag.
That flailed in the gunmetal gray skies
of winter
and witnessed the fracturing of a nation
again
About Pamela
Pamela Stockwell was born in Texas and raised in South Carolina. In between, she lived in the Philippines and, along with her big sister, became fluent in Tagalog name-calling. She abandoned her foreign language studies at age five and went on to earn a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism from the University of South Carolina. She lives with her husband and three children on a small farm in New Jersey. She is a member of the Princeton Writing Group and Women's Fiction Writers Association (WFWA).