The Presence of Absence is a spiritual memoir about a longing many of us have for something we struggle to articulate. It’s about fear, brokenness, and the mystery of stillness, solitude, and silence. It is the story of a sacred journey to a lost mother, a found family, and an encounter with Divine love.
“Her story will offer hope to all who recognize in themselves an inconsolable, unnamed, melancholy and joyful longing.”
Shirley Showalter, author of Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets a Glittering World and The Mindful Grandparent
“Both memoir and spiritual journal, this memoir gently invites the reader to join the writer in her sacred search.”
Marian L. Beaman, author of Mennonite Daughter: The Story of a Plain Girl and My Checkered Life: A Marriage Memoir
“We all would do well to consider her call to solitude, introspection, and a recognition that God chooses each of us to be uniquely beloved.”
Linda K Thomas, memoir coach and author of Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir and Grandma’s Letters from Africa.
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LINDA HOYE is a Canadian author of three memoirs: Two Hearts: An Adoptee’s Journey Through Grief to Gratitude, The Presence of Absence: A Story About Busyness, Brokenness, and Being Beloved, and Living Liminal: A Slice of Pandemic Life.
Her work has appeared in an assortment of publications in the U.S. and Canada and her personal essays in three anthologies: Inside and Out: Women’s Truths, Women’s Stories: Essays from the Story Circle Network, Still Me…After All These Years: 24 Writers Reflect on Aging, and Living on COVID Time: Sharing Stories, Sharing Lives in Prose and Poetry.
She is a member of the Inscribe Christian Writers’ Fellowship, the Creative Nonfiction Collective Society, the Saskatchewan Writer’s Guild, and a Story Circle Network board member.
Linda is grateful to live in her hometown in Saskatchewan, where she returned with her husband and their doted-upon Yorkshire Terrier, Maya, after a 50-year absence. She thought she would have things figured out by now, but keeps coming up with more questions.