Finding Meaning, Making Sense - An Anthology of Short Stories & Poetry - 2022-2025

The more you’re convinced you’ve uncovered the truth, the more likely it is you’ve missed something important.

With over five decades of reporting, journalist/author Rod Raglin, has turned to fiction and poetry to address those important things today’s truth dismisses. In Finding Meaning, Making Sense, the works evoke empathy allowing the reader to abandon society’s current polarization mindset and consider different perspectives

With the immediacy of short fiction and the introspection of poetry, the anthology provides insight and reflection on relationships and contemporary issues. Themes include:

Contemporary Issues: Politics, protest, lifestyles, social and personal issues; seven poems and five stories that address contemporary issues with a new perspective, including, BROTHERS. A personal tragedy just before a crucial vote, makes an aspiring politician question his decision–and his ambition.

The Chronicles of Arni – an Old Man in Modern Times
Food insecurity, corporate greed, loss of influence, ageism, declining health, loss, grief – five poems and four stories about aging in challenging times, including, BETTER THE DEATH YOU CHOOSE. Is death a better choice than a long and frightening decline in the care of strangers?

The Environment
Three poems and four stories about hope and horror and action and alternatives, including, THE LEAST OF LIGHT. Materialism, stress, greed, dead trees and turkeys – that’s Christmas. What about an alternative?

Horror/Fantasy/Speculative
Seven stories iabout hikes into hell, an experiment gone very bad, and relationships that are worse than death–and longer, including, WORSE THAN DEATH. Some things are worse than death. A lot worse.

Relationships
Rewarding, devastating, always complicated, stories and poems about relationships – the crux of life. Nine poems and five stories including, THE PARTY YOU WISH TO REACH. Does a dysfunctional childhood, mean a dysfunctional life? Can those survival skills learned as a kid be used to advantage later?

Thoughtful, honest, and unforgettable, this collection invites the reader to see that even when life makes little sense, meaning may be found in considering a different perspective other than your own.