The Velvet Bridge
by
Anita Stubbs
This true-to-life rags to riches tale, my first novel, is set during WWII and could have actually happened if not for one thing: Mattie Featherstone never existed, other than between the covers of this 381-page book. But the lifestyles, the culture of the time, and some of the places ring so true, you'll wonder. It's classic 1940's, Dallas, Texas, in and around Oak Cliff.
Too young to be
widowed and too pretty to be alone, Mattie Featherstone is both. Suddenly
impoverished, this confused, tormented woman abandons her children and seeks
refuge in an encampment for vagrants situated near the Trinity River on the
west side of Dallas during World War II.
When a twist-of-fate encounter eases Mattie out of destitution into the
genteel world of her paper doll dreams, she manages to conceal the truth
about her past from her benefactors. She even justifies - in her own mind -
the abandonment of her daughters.
However, everything changes when yet another unforeseen event turns her life
into sensational headline news, revealing more than even she could imagine.
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Last summer, I watched this spider spinning its web in my caladiums.
I took the photo because it fascinated me, the intricate detail of the
design he, or she, was weaving. If you will look closely you can
see the outward spiraling for the web from the center.
If you will notice, there is a thread strung or draped across the caladiums, from which another vertical thread is attached. It is this vertical thread that suspends the web in the center of the photo where the spider is spinning.
I had no idea when I took these photos the strength of that mysterious fiber, or the possibilities that could be realized could that substance be duplicated, or harnessed.
I now know that Canadian researchers have succeeded in cloning goats capable of producing spider's silk in their milk. Somehow the fibers in the milk is processed into the spiders' silk used to produce Biosteel, a fabric used in aerospace, engineering and medicine. Although the engineered fiber does not have the tensile strength of the pure spider's silk, which I have read is 5 times stronger than steel, other sources say 10 times stronger, it may be that someday soon the mystery will be unraveled. I find the subject very interesting, and intriquing.