Elan Durham @europabridge1

Writer, Editor, and Traveler in Ipswich, Massachusetts

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends … Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, 1750

©Borrowed Light, A Novel of Lives opens in 1968 with Jean Turner and her family crammed inside a Chevy Impala to fetch the oldest son from hitchhikers jail in Hollywood. But it’s a bumpy ride on Route 66, as Bill, a WWII Veteran and certified speed demon, burns rubber every chance he gets, and Violet, the Microbiologist Mom, hides more than her keen eyesight behind Jackie-O sunglasses.

Jean, the youngest daughter and narrator, suffers a mishap in the Grand Canyon--plucked from disaster by Jules and Leslie from a British hiking party, but Ernie, freed at last, remains incarcerated inside. A series of crises tests the Turners resources to find the road leading home, also gives them the love they need to survive their collective trauma and surrender to the leafy burbs of Smith Street in Charleston's beachside community, for now.

Borrowed Light spans some 45 years of American life in five Acts and 12 linked stories to explore personal freedom, the meaning of family, the requirements of home, and the cost of enduring love.

Morgan Reed, Jean's British boyfriend from university becomes an emblem of Wall Street survival and expatriate reinvention; Teddy Fortesque, Veteran British actor preps Jean for a surprise succes; Lucien, a photographer from Prague, Isabelle Campbell, HK Producer and MMA Actor, Jules & Leslie Cunningham, Grand Canyon Hikers, Harlan Harrison, Southern Architect, Sara and Spencer Partridge, Bon Vivants, Tiggy Pritchard of the Gardening Club; Sophie and Matt, London columnist, and Estate Agent, and Cornish Hoteliers Nicola and Tremayne Lanyon are just some of the novel's key characters whose personal stories knit together the United States with Great Britain and the world beyond.

Freedom of the Press means the freedom to criticize and oppose. George Orwell

©Adventures in Paradise explores the world of London's Hackgate Media scandal with Journo Aurora Blunton and Hospitality Mogul Clive Reade as the two meet and discover antipathy, common ground, business, and a May-December romance that flips the seasonal roles. #Hackgate closed London's oldest tabloid and caused a stink across London society, while Adventures in Paradise's cracking ensemble cast, cheeky hints of Succession (HBO), and third-act dinner party surprises revive the Screwball Comedies of Cary Grant and Kate Hepburn.

Both novel and screenplay are copyrighted and registered with the Library of Congress, WGA, and The Vault.

Thanks for visiting, and please consider supporting my work through one of the links below.

  • Work
    • Writer-Screenwriter-Editor
  • Education
    • MFA
    • University of North Carolina
    • University of Oregon
    • University of Alabama
    • Louisiana State University
Recommendations
Borrowed Light concerns the life of Elan Durham's smart, fierce, and witty heroine Jean Turner, and it is a full-blown, wonderful ... sometimes hilarious, sometimes scathing, and gorgeous sail through a life, which includes a childhood in South, lives in Los Angeles and New York, and then a luminous if ambivalent and hard-earned redemption back in the South and beyond. Elan Durham's stories are some of the most stunning I've read in a fiction of surpassing beauty and humour.
Rebecca Lee, Professor and author of Bobcat, and The City is a Rising Tide.
Elan has taught a variety of writing courses, literature, and Women's Studies courses, and her breadth of knowledge and abilities is impressive. Additionally, she is an innovative teacher; she works hard, loves to conference with students, and creates imaginative assignments and classroom activities that speak to her abilities as an innovative, caring instructor of writing.
Don Bushman, Professor, English UNCW
Elan Durham's guidance and example have been noted by students as inspirational and significant in their lives. I consider this tribute to be very important, as it underscores the teaching mission of the university and the value of her work with students.
P Nelson Reid, Ph.D. UNCW Dean of Students