The String People

Book excerpt: The String People is a collection of twenty-eight unforgettable short stories drawn from Dr. Anthony Paul Sterling’s imagination, mixed with other tales of the author’s life experiences. The title of the book and the first story “The String People” came from “when I was very young. My brother and I had only matches to make people that we played with. We were poor and couldn’t afford real toys. These string people became soldiers, cowboys, etc.” From the short story “My Bald Head:” “Early in life, at age 5 or 6, I told my Grandma Cheecha (Francis), who spoke only Sicilian, that I wanted to be unna Doctura, so I could listen to her heart and give her injections of insulin. She would laugh and hug me. I never forgot this woman who got off a boat from Sicily with her husband Paul and 22 children … The next major influence came when I arrived on the children’s cancer unit. What affected me was the number of bald heads seen in almost every bed; this meant that all of them had cancer and were on chemotherapy. I never got over this; I prayed, cried, and eventually shaved my head.”