Dora Eldrid Reynolds (1889-1958) - the daughter of artist, poet, and author Amy Dora Reynolds, who wrote using the nom de plume Mrs. Fred Reynolds - was an artist and author in her own right, albeit one with a very brief career. In 1913, she published her second and final novel Whispering Dust, in which 33-year-old Naomi, "a curate's orphan and a curate's niece," who, after 30 years of living amongst grime and turnip fields and having "done nothing," journeys to Egypt to wander its streets, tombs, and desert in search of more, of something intangible yet somehow just within reach, of what she can only inadequately express as Space (with a capital S) - all while narrating the story to You, a man whom she is quite certain she has invented and who does not exist . . . or does he? Rendered with vivid, poetic prose and colorful descriptions that bring Egypt alive on the page, Whispering Dust is an overlooked and forgotten gem of early modernist literature.
