Karen Humeniuk
The Impetus For Writing
A few years after my parents’ deaths–both in the twilight years of life, I found a package
of Dad’s family pictures and letters he wrote to Mom years earlier while traveling for his job.
Lurking among sepia-colored photos and hand-written messages were vignettes of their shared Christian walk
through a fifty-nine years-long marriage. Like many contemporary couples, my parents faced the daunting
challenges of raising three children in North Carolina, far from their family and hometown of Saint Paul, Minnesota.
The loss of my oldest brother at age eighteen months—their only child at the time—increased
the challenge, but they found hope and happiness through faith.
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Today Dad’s tender portrayal of marriage is deemed quaint, dated, and improbable,
but only by those who manage to avoid the hazards of missed communication,
disappointment, and unintended consequences that threaten to undermine every relationship.
About the Author
A native of Durham, North Carolina, Karen Humeniuk lives with her husband, John, in Greenville, SC. Ms. Humeniuk’s academic degrees include a bachelor’s degree in biology, a post-graduate certificate in medical technology, and a master’s degree in landscape architecture.
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While working in fields associated with her degrees, including clinical microbiology, cancer research, and landscape design, her novels draw heavily on a genetic quirk of fate. Other than her mother and granddaughter, Ms. Humeniuk has no direct female relatives. Instead, blood-related men—her father, brothers, son, nephews, and her husband—populate her life. Along the path of life, each imprinted Ms. Humeniuk’s imagination with many unique, indelible memories and one glaring male idiosyncrasy: Men move through time “linearly”—from event “A” to “B” to “C” and so on. Thus, long before reaching “M,” they relegate “C” to ancient history. Period. Women, on the other hand, traverse time multi-dimensionally. We jump from “M” to “B” to “L” or wherever. This puzzles men, leading them to ask their wives, sisters, and other female associates, “Why would you want to remember that,” whatever ‘that’ was? Yet, as Ms. Humeniuk’s son once noted, “The wonder isn’t that men choose to live with women; but that women want to live with men.” And we do.