Book Review: An Altered Existence

There is something about vintage photos that sparks the imagination, drawing you into a bygone era, imagining what life was like for the subjects, who often looked solemn, dressed in all their finery, posing for the camera. I love to use old family photographs in my heritage scrapbooking and mixed-media art, telling the stories of my ancestors through pictures and journaling.

In An Altered Existence: Fictitious Stories About Faces from the Past, Melody M. Nunez has taken vintage photos, also known as cabinet cards, which she collected from flea markets and antique stores, and created fictional short stories about the people in them.

Each chapter begins with an “altered” photograph, embellished with stitching, buttons, lace, an old key, followed by a story woven around the subject of the photo. The stories range from historical to contemporary fiction and cover a wide range of subjects from family, relationships, and the language of flowers, to ghosts, hoarding, and a man obsessed with time. I love Melody’s style of writing. It is easy to read, with each story an imaginative glimpse into a life that could have been.

Melody is an artist and a writer. Visit her website at www.melodynunez.com to see illustrations from the book, and to view more of her artwork.