Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

The Princess Gang rolled into the cul-de-sac on the day Mr. B’s plum tree decided to bloom.

That is the opening line to a story I’ve been playing with for a while, and like most of my mainstream fiction these days, it is based squarely in my real life. The Princess Gang was a cadre of small girls who used to rule the cul-de-sac, roaming their demesne like a pastel cloud of tulle-swathed glitterati. The plum tree was the Italian plum tree I planted in my front garden long before any of the Princess Gang were even born.

It was nearly twenty years ago that my wife and I drove back from the nursery with two plum trees sticking out of the back of our tiny hatchback, dormant branches rattling. I wanted some fruit trees in the front garden. Knowing the soil there was poor and that the area gets a lot of afternoon warmth, I thought a French or an Italian plum tree—no strangers to challenging conditions—would at least have a hope of survival. (more…)

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