It's Monday! What are you reading? (Oct 25, 2010)

What are you reading on Mondays is hosted by Sheila at One Person's Journey - You can hook up with the Mr. Linky there with your own post - but be sure and let me know what you are reading too!  Even though this week's post covers the last two weeks - you will not see a lot of change in it.  I seem to have slept through a couple of days last week!  I just don't know where they went!

Currently Reading:

Crescendo by Becca Fitzpatrick
Somewhere Along the Way by Jodi Thomas
My Give a Damn's Busted by Carolyn Brown
Take a Chance on Me by Jill Mansell

Bathroom Book:

Surrender the Heart by M.L. Tyndall

Audio Book:

The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris

New this week:
French Letters: Engaged in War by Jack W. London
The Miracle of Mercy Land by River Jordan

Books Reviewed Last Week:
Not one!

Books Waiting to Be Reviewed:

Ah-Choo!: The Uncommon Life of Your Common Cold by Jennifer Ackerman
Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick
The Big Dirt Nap by Rosemary Harris
Two Lethal Lies by Annie Solomon
Perfection by Julie Metz
Dewey's Nine Lives by Vicki Myron
When I Stop Talking, You'll Know I'm Dead by Jerry Weintraub (audio)

Books that have been languishing here so long I will probably have to re-read to review!

101 Things I Learned (TM) in Fashion School by Alfredo Cabrera

Heart of My Heart: 365 Reflections on the Magnitude and Meaning of Motherhood A Devotional by Kristin Armstrong

Meet Me in Dreamland: A Lu-Chu and Lena Book by Steven McKinney, Valerie McKinney

Masked edited by Lou Anders

Ready - Set - Read!

Mailbox Monday (Oct 18 - Oct 24)

In My Mailbox is hosted Sundays at The Story Siren.  Mailbox Monday's host for October is Avis at She Reads and Reads. Please visit these posts and take a look at what packages everybody else got this week!

The Distant Hours

by Kate Morton

A long lost letter arrives in the post and Edie Burchill finds herself on a journey to Milderhurst Castle, a great but moldering old estate, where the Blythe spinsters live and where her mother was billeted fifty years before as a thirteen-year-old girl during WWII.  The elder Blythe sisters are twins and have spent most of their lives looking after the third and youngest sister, Juniper, who hasn't been the same since her fiance jilted her in 1941.

Inside the decaying castle, Edie begins to unravel her mother's past.  but there are other secrets hidden in the stones of Milderhurst, and Edie is about to learn more than she expected.  The truth of what happened in "the distant hours" of the past has been waiting a long time for someone to find it.

Morton once again enthralls readers with an atmospheric story featuring characters beset by circumstance and haunted by memory.  The Distant Hours is an homage to the great classics of gothic literature and to the power of storytelling.

Ansel Adams in the National Parks

For many Americans, the names Yosemite, the High Sierra, and the Grand Canyon conjure up first and foremost an Ansel Adams photograph.  A lifelong environmentalist, Adams was one of the most ardent champions of our national parks and wilderness systems, and through his magnificent photographs, letter-writing campaigns, and Sierra Club activities, he arguably did more than any individual since John Muir to raise our awareness and appreciation of America's wild places.

He visited more than forty national parks in his lifetime, lugging an 8x10-inch view camera, tripod, and photographic gear through dense old-growth forest and over precarious mountain passes, often with a burro as traveling companion and baggage handler.  His customized wood-paneled station wagon, nicknamed Helios, took him across the land and boasted a photographic platform on its roof, a mobile stage from which he could gain the best possible vantage points for image making.

With more than 225 photographs -- many rarely seen and 50 never before published -- Ansel Adams in the National Parks is the most comprehensive book of Adams' photographs of our national parks and wilderness areas.  Edited by Andrea G. Stillman, who worked for Adams in the 1970s, it features original essays by critic Richard B. Woodward and commentary by Stillman on the making of numerous photographs, enlivened by quotations from Adams.  Essays by Wallace Stegner, William A. Turnage of The Ansel Adams Trust, and Adams himself capture the essence of Ansel Adams as both gifted photographer and passionate environmentalist. 

The Peanuts Collection

In 1950, Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts made its unassuming debut in just seven newspapers.  Today, ten years after Schulz inked his final strip, Peanuts appears in 2,200 newspapers in 75 countries, and Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the gang live on in film and advertisements and on television -- adored by fans and forever ingrained in popular culture.

The Peanuts Collection features rare materials -- some never before published -- carefully selected from the Charles M. Schulz Museum and family archives.  With quotes from Schulz family members and a foreward by daughter Amy Schulz Johnson, The Peanuts Collection offers insight into the world's most endearing comic strip characters and the man who made them an essential part of our world.

Includes:

• Frameable prints of Peanuts characters
• Animation cels from holiday specials
• Peanuts stickers and booklets
• Rare draft sketches from throughout Schulz's career
• Cookbook featuring Snoopy's recipe for dog treats
• Much more!

Vixen

by Jillian Larkin

Every girl wants what she can't have.  Seventeen-year-old Gloria Carmody wants the flapper lifestyle -- and the bobbed hair, cigarettes, and music-filled nights that go with it.  Now that she's engaged to Sebastian Grey, scion of one of Chicago's most powerful families, Gloria's party days are over before they've even begun . . . or are they?

Clara Knowles, Gloria's goody-two-shoes cousin, has arrived to make sure the high-society wedding comes off without a hitch -- but Clara isn't as lilywhite as she appears.  Seems she has some dirty little secrets of her own that she'll do anything to keep hidden. . .

Lorraine Dyer, Gloria's social-climbing best friend, is tired of living in Gloria's shadow.  When Lorraine's envy spills over into desperate spite, no one is safe.  And someone's going to be very sorry. . .

From debut author Jillian Larkin, Vixen is the first novel in the sexy, dangerous, and ridiculously romantic new series set in the Roaring Twenties. . . when anything goes.

The House of Dead Maids

by Clare B. Dunkle

A chilling prequel to Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights that blends Yorkshire lore and Bronte family history.

The child who will become Heathcliff is already a savage little creature when Tabby Aykroyd arrives at Seldom House as his nursemaid.  The ghost of the last maid will not leave Tabby in peace, and her spirit is only one of many.  As she struggles against the evil forces that surround the house, Tabby tries to befriend her uncouth young charge, but her kindness cannot alter his fate.  Long before he reaches the old farmhouse of Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff has already doomed himself and any who try to befriend him.



Moondogs

by Alexander Yates

A singularly effervescent novel about the disappearance of an American businessman in the Pilippines and the estranged son, jilted lover, misguided felon, and supernatural saviors who all want a piece of him.

Benicio has not spoken with Howard -- his jet-setting father -- in five years, but after his mother's death Benicio travels to Manila so they can heal their relationship.  When he arrives, Howard is nowhere to be found -- leaving an irritated son to conclude that his father has let him down again.  But Howard has actually been kidnapped by a meth-addled cabdriver and his villainous rooster.

Benicio's search for Howard uncovers the truth about his father's womanizing ways and suspicious business deals.  Interspersed with Benicio's intense inquiry and his father's calamitous life in captivity are the high-octane interconnecting narratives of Reynato Ocampo, the local celebrity-hero policeman charged with rescuing Howard; Ocampo's rag-tag team of wizardry-infused soldiers; and Monique, a novice officer at the American Embassy, whose family still feels desperately unmoored in the Philippines.

With blistering speed, wonderfully bizarre turns, and glimpses into both Filipino and ex-pat culture, Moondogs marches toward a stunning climax and challenges our conventional ideas of family and identity.

Hollywood Ending

by Lucie Simone

Trina Stewart needs cash.  Fast. She's barely got enough dough to keep her fanny off the streets, let alone any spending money for hot nights clubbing on Sunset Strip.  And her job teaching English as a Second Language is seriously lacking in both pay and glamour.  But not just any job will do.  She's after a real Hollywood job.  The kind that makes her $100,000 in film school debt and ten years in Tinsel Town not seem like such a big fat waste of time and money.  But a girl can't fritter away all her time fretting over her next paycheck, can she?  Certainly not when a man like Matiu Wulf, a sexy Maori from New Zealand, parks his oh-so-fine self in the apartment above hers while he takes his best shot at Showbiz.

If only Matiu didn't seem so. . . repelled by Trina.  Really, though, it's Los Angeles that Matiu finds so revolting.  He's only in L.A. to get some scene design experience to beef up his resume, and then he's headed back to New Zealand to follow his dreams in peace, thank you very much.  That's his plan, anyway, until he falls hard for Trina. . . and Trina falls under the spell of a toothy-grinned wannabe actor who charms the pants right off her.

With Matiu on a mission to win Trina's heart, and Trina on a mission to nail down that ever elusive Hollywood job, these two soon discover that when love gets tossed in the mix, life in Tinsel Town isn't all red carpets, after parties, and celebrity gossip.  In fact, Hollywood can be a downright bitch!

What books found a home with you this week?

Why Knitting is Like Writing by Julie Metz

This might sound at first like the riddle from Alice in Wonderland—(why is a raven like a writing desk?) but for me there have been many overlaps between handcraft and writing.

I love knitting. When I cannot work on a project I enjoy watching others at work. Lately the subway has become a knitter’s paradise. Handwork has remained a hand/brain activity. I am not so skilled that it is effortless. In fact, in my case knitting requires my full attention. When I space out, I’ll end up ripping out ten rows because of a dropped stitch way back when. People often think of writing as a purely intellectual effort, but for me the activity of writing is physical. My brain thinks, my fingers type.

On a great day, when writing comes easily, and words spin out almost without thought, I type like mad, without correcting typos, as if I were taking dictation. They happen once in a while, but truthfully, I haven’t had many days like that. Most workdays are deliberate in effort. The words come slowly, like the loops over needles of a novice, rather than the fluent, even rows of an experienced handcrafter.

Though our everyday speech often feels patterned (how many times do we say the same things to our family members or co-workers?) words can be refashioned and rearranged endlessly. The language evolves so rapidly that my teenaged daughter uses expressions for which I need translations. Knitting is perhaps more like the digital world—there are knits and purls, like zeros and ones. The variety is in their texture and pattern.

Reorganizing a sentence is something like repairing mistakes with a crochet hook, or carefully ripping out a stitched seam.

My mother worked many needlepoint pillows—when she made mistakes she would mutter to herself, then carefully remove the mistakes with a tiny and precise scissors, and rework the section, her original error now invisible. The best writing feels like that, though as writers and good readers we know how much effort went in to what might read as a clear and simple prose.

As I work on new projects I am reminded of the greatest similarity between writing and handwork—the value of patience and persistence.

Thank you Julie for being a guest at Books and Needlepoint today!

Julie Metz is the author of The New York Times bestselling author of Perfection, which was a 2009 Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers Selection. The recipient of a MacDowell Award, her writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times, Glamour, Hemispheres, Publishers Weekly, and the New York City storysite mrbellersneighborhood.com. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.

About Perfection: Julie Metz had seemingly the perfect life--an adoring husband, a happy, spirited daughter, a lovely old house in a quaint suburban town--but it was all a lie.


Julie Metz's life changed forever on one ordinary January afternoon when her husband, Henry, collapsed on the kitchen floor and died in her arms. Suddenly, this mother of a six-year-old became the young widow in her bucolic small town. But that was only the beginning. Seven months after Henry's death, just when Julie thought she was emerging from the worst of it, came the rest of it: She discovered that what had appeared to be the reality of her marriage was but a half-truth. Henry had hidden another life from her.


Perfection is the story of Metz's journey through chaos and transformation as she creates a different life for herself and for her young daughter. It is the story of rebuilding both a life and an identity after betrayal and widowhood, of rebirth and happiness--if not perfection. (back cover)

Connect with Julie at www.perfectionbook.com or on Facebook.


Perfection
Publisher/Publication Date: Voice, May 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4013-4135-0
352 pages

First Wild Card Tour: Catching Moondrops by Jennifer Valent

It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!

You never know when I might play a wild card on you!

Today's Wild Card author is:

Jennifer Erin Valent

and the book:

Catching Moondrops

Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. (September 20, 2010)

***Special thanks to Maggie Rowe of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. for sending me a review copy.***

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jennifer Erin Valent is the 2007 winner of the Christian Writers Guild's Operation First Novel contest. A lifelong resident of the South, her surroundings help to color the scenes and characters she writes. In fact, the childhood memory of a dilapidated Ku Klux Klan billboard inspired her portrayal of Depression-era racial prejudice in Fireflies in December. She has spent the past 15 years working as a nanny and has dabbled in freelance, writing articles for various Christian women's magazines. She still resides in her hometown of Richmond, Virginia.

Visit the author's website.


Product Details:

List Price: $12.99
Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. (September 20, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1414333277
ISBN-13: 978-1414333274

AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:

There’s nothing in this whole world like the sight of a man swinging by his neck.

Folks in my parts liked to call it “lynching,” as if by calling it another word they could keep from feeling like murderers. Sometimes when they string a man up, they gather around like vultures looking for the next meal, staring at the cockeyed neck, the sagging limbs, their lips turning up at the corners when they should be turning down. For some people, time has a way of blurring the good and the bad, spitting out that thing called conscience and replacing it with a twisted sort of logic that makes right out of wrong.

Our small town of Calloway, Virginia, had that sort of logic in spades, and after the trouble it had caused my family over the years, I knew that better than most. But the violence had long since faded away, and my best friend Gemma would often tell me that made it okay—her being kept separate from white folks. “Long as my bein’ with your family don’t bring danger down on your heads, I’ll keep my peace and be thankful,” she’d say.

But I didn’t feel so calm about it all as Gemma did. Part of that was my stubborn temperament, but most of it was my intuition. I’d been eyeball to eyeball with pure hate more than once in my eighteen years, and I could smell it, like rotting flesh. Hate is a type of blindness that divides a man from his good sense. I’d seen it in the eyes of a Klansman the day he tried to choke the life out of me and in the eyes of the men who hunted down a dear friend who’d been wrongly accused of murder.

And, at times, I’d caught glimpses of it in my own heart.

The passage of time had done nothing to lessen its stench. And despite the relative peace, I knew full well that hearts poisoned by hateful thinking can only simmer for so long before boiling over.

In May of that year, 1938, that pot started bubbling.

I was on the front porch shucking corn when I saw three colored men turn up our walk, all linked up in a row like the Three Musketeers. I stood up, let the corn silk slip from my apron, and called over my shoulder. “Gemma! Come on out here.”

She must have been nearby because the screen door squealed open almost two seconds after my last words drifted in through the screen. “What is it?”

“Company. Only don’t look too good.” I walked to the top of the steps and shielded my eyes from the sun. “Malachi Jarvis! You got yourself into trouble again?”

The man in the middle, propped up like a scarecrow, lifted his chin wearily but managed to flash a smile that revealed bloodied teeth. “Depends on how you define trouble.”

Gemma gasped at the sight of him and flew down the steps, letting the door slam so loud the porch boards shook. “What in the name of all goodness have you been up to? You got some sort of death wish?”

A man I’d never seen before had his arm wound tightly beneath Malachi’s arms, blood smeared across his shirt front. Malachi’s younger brother, Noah, was on his other side, struggling against the weight, and Gemma came in between them to help.

“He ain’t got the good sense to keep his mouth shut, is all,” Noah said breathlessly.

I went inside to grab Momma’s first aid box, and by the time I got back out, Gemma had Malachi seated in the rocker.

Gemma gave him the once-over and shook her head so hard I thought it might fly off. “I swear, if you ain’t a one to push a body into an early grave. Your poor momma’s gonna lose her ever-lovin’ mind.”

Along with his younger brother and sister, Malachi lived down by the tracks with his widowed momma—as the man of the house, so to speak. He’d taken up being friends with Luke Talley some two years back when they’d both worked for the tobacco plant, and they’d remained close even though Luke had struck out on his own building furniture. Malachi was never one to keep his peace, a fact Gemma had no patience for, and she made it good and clear many a time. Today would be no exception.

“Goin’ around stirrin’ up trouble every which way,” she murmured as she pulled fixings out of the first aid box. “It’s one thing to pick fights with your own kind. Can’t say as though you wouldn’t benefit by a poundin’ or two every now and again. But this foolin’ around with white folks’ll get you into more’n you’re bargainin’ for.”

The man who’d helped Noah shoulder the burden of Malachi reached out to take the gauze from Gemma. “Why don’t you let me get that?”

Gemma didn’t much like being told what to do, and she glared at him. “I can clean up cuts and scrapes. I worked for a doctor past two years.”

Malachi nodded towards the man. “This here man is a doctor.”

I was putting iodine on a piece of cotton, and I near about dropped it on the floor when I heard that. Never in all my born days had I seen a colored man claiming to be a doctor. Neither had Gemma by the looks of her.

“A doctor?” she murmured. “You sure?”

He laughed and extended his hand to her. “Last I checked. Tal Pritchett. Just got into town yesterday. Gonna set up shop down by the tracks.”

Gemma handed the gauze over to him, still dumbfounded.

“What d’you think about that?” Malachi grinned and then grimaced the minute his split lip made its presence known. “A colored doc in Calloway. Shoo-whee. There’s gonna be talkin’ about this!”

The doctor went to work cleaning up Malachi’s wounds. “I ain’t here to start no revolution. I’m just aimin’ to help the colored folks get the help they deserve.”

“Well, you’re goin’ to start a revolution whether you want to or not.” Malachi shut his eyes and gritted his teeth the minute the iodine set to burning. “Folks in these parts don’t much like colored folk settin’ themselves up as smart or nothin’.”

Gemma watched Tal Pritchett like she was analyzing his every move, finding out for herself if he was a doctor or not. I stood by and let her assist him as she’d been accustomed to doing for Doc Mabley until he passed on two months ago. After he’d bandaged up Malachi’s right hand, she seemed satisfied that he was who he said.

Noah slumped down into the other rocker and watched. “It’s one thing to get yourself an education and stand for your right to make somethin’ of yourself. It’s another to go stirrin’ up trouble for the sake of stirrin’ up trouble.”

“I ain’t doin’ it for the sake of stirrin’ up trouble. I done told you that!” Malachi flexed his left hand to test how well his swollen fingers moved. Ain’t no colored man ever goin’ to be free in this here county . . . in this here state . . . in this here world unless somebody starts fightin’ for freedom.”

“Slaves was freed decades ago,” Noah said sharply. “We ain’t in shackles no more.”

“But we ain’t free to live our lives as we choose, neither. You think colored people are ever gonna be more’n house help and field help so long as we let ourselves be treated like less than white people? No sir. We’re less than human to them white folks. They don’t think nothin’ about killin’ so long as who they’re killin’ is colored.”

“Don’t you go bunchin’ all white people together, Malachi Jarvis,” I argued. “Ain’t all white folk got bad feelin’s about coloreds.”

Malachi waved me off in exasperation. “You know I ain’t talkin’ about you, Jessilyn.”

Noah had his hands tightly knotted in his lap and was staring at them like they held all the answers to the world’s problems. “All’s you’re doin’ is gettin’ yourself kicked around.” He looked up at me pleadingly. “This here’s the second time in a week he’s come home banged up.”

I put a hand on Noah’s shoulder and set my eyes on Malachi. “Who did it?”

He put his bandaged right hand into the air, palm up. “Who knows? Some white boys. You get surrounded by enough of ‘em, they all just blend in together like a vanilla milkshake.”

“How’s it you didn’t see them? They jump you or somethin’?”

“Don’t ask me, Jessie. I was just mindin’ my own business in town and then on my way home, they start hasslin’ me.”

“What he was doin’,” Noah corrected, “was tryin’ to get into the whites-only bar.”

Gemma sniffed in disgust. “Shouldn’t have been in no bar in the first place. There’s your first mistake.”

“Whites-only, too.” Noah kicked his foot against the porch rail and then looked up at me quickly. “Sorry.”

I smiled at him and turned my attention back to Malachi. “It’s a good thing Luke ain’t here to see this. He don’t like you drinkin’ and you know it.”

His eyeballs rolled between swollen lids. “I don’t know why he gets his trousers in a knot over it anyhow. Ain’t like there’s prohibition no more. And he’s been known to take a swig or two himself.”

“Luke says you’re a nasty drunk.”

“He is.” Noah knotted his hands back in his lap. “And he’s been at the bottle more often than not of late.”

“Quit tellin’ tales!” his brother barked.

“I ain’t tellin’ tales; I’m tellin’ truth. They can ask anybody at home how late you come in, and how you come in all topsy turvy. He comes home in the middle of the mornin’ and sleeps in till all hours the next day.”

“What about your job at the plant?” Gemma asked.

Malachi closed his eyes and waved her off, but his brother provided the answer for him. “Lost it!” He loosened his grip on his hands and snapped his fingers. “Like that. There’s goes his income.”

“I said I’ll get another job.”

“Oh, like there’s jobs aplenty around these parts for colored folk. And anyways, if you find one, how you gonna’ keep that one?”

Gemma had her hands on her hips, and I knew what that meant. I leaned back against the house and waited for the lecture to commence.

“You talk a fine talk about colored folks needin’ to stand up for equality, but you ain’t doin’ it in any way that’s right and good. You’re goin’ about town gettin’ people’s goat, and tryin’ to get in where you ain’t wanted, and gettin’ yourself all liquored up and useless. Now your family ain’t got the money they depend on you for, and why? Because you walk around livin’ like you ain’t got to do nothin’ for nobody but yourself.”

“I’m standin’ up for the rights of colored folks everywhere.” Malachi was angry now, pink patches spreading on his busted-up cheeks. “You see anyone else in this town willin’ to go toe to toe with the white boys in this county?”

“Don’t put a noble face on bein’ an upstart.”

Malachi pushed Tal’s hand away and sat up tall. “You call standin’ up to white folks bein’ an upstart?”

Doc Pritchett tried to dress the wound on Malachi’s temple, but Malachi pushed his hand away again. That was when the doctor had enough, and he smacked his hands on his thighs and stood up tall and determined in front of Malachi. “I ain’t Abraham Lincoln. I’m just Doc Pritchett tryin’ to fix up an ornery patient, and I ain’t got all day to do it. So I’m goin’ to settle this argument once and for all.” He pointed at Gemma. “She’s right. There ain’t no fightin’ nonsense with more nonsense, and all’s you’re doin’ by gettin’ in the faces of white folks with your smart attitude is bein’ as bad as they’re bein’.” Then he pointed at Malachi. “And he’s right, too. There ain’t never a change brought about that should be brought about without people standin’ up for such change. And sometimes that means bein’ willin’ to fight for what’s right.”

Gemma swallowed hard and didn’t even try to argue. My eyes must have bugged out of my head at the sight of her being tamed so easily.

“Now, I’m all for civil uprisin’,” Tal continued. “I don’t see nothin’ wrong with colored folk sayin’ they won’t be walked on no more. I don’t see nothin’ wrong with wantin’ to use the same bathroom as white folks or sit in the same chairs as white folks. Way I see it, none of that’s goin’ to change unless someone says it has to.” He squatted down in front of Malachi again and stared him down nose to nose. “But all this hot-shottin’ and show-boatin’ ain’t goin’ to do nothin’ but get your rear end kicked. Or worse. You aim to stand tall for somethin’? Fine. Stand tall for it. But don’t you go around thinkin’ these battle scars say somethin’ for you. You ain’t got them by bein’ noble; you got them by bein’ stupid. All’s these scars say is you’re an idiot.”

It was one of the best speeches I’d heard from anyone outside my daddy, and if I’d ever thought for two seconds put together to see a colored man run for governor, I figured Tal Pritchett would be the man for the job. As it was, I knew he was the best man for the job he had now. Sure enough, being a colored doc in Calloway would be a challenge. But I figured he was up for it.

Regardless, he shut Malachi up, and for the next five minutes we all watched him finish his job with skill and finesse. When he’d fixed the last of Malachi’s face, he stood up and clapped his hands. “Suppose that should do it. Don’t see need for any stitchin’ up today. Let’s hope there’s no cause for it in future.” Then he looked at me. “You got someplace out here where I can wash up?”

I held my hand out toward the front door. “Bathroom’s upstairs.”

He hesitated. “I’d just as soon wash up out here.”

I caught the reason for his hesitation but didn’t know what to say. As usual, Gemma did.

“I done lived in this here house for six years now, and I’m just as brown as you. You can feel free to go on up to the bathroom, you hear?”

He looked from Gemma to me, then back to Gemma before nodding. “Yes’m.” And then he disappeared inside.

“Ma’am,” Gemma muttered under her breath. “Ain’t old enough to be called ma’am, least of all by a man no more’n a few years older’n me.”

“You know what happens once you start gettin’ them crows feet . . .”

Gemma whirled about and gave Malachi the evil eye. “Don’t go thinkin’ I won’t hurt you just because you’re all bandaged up.”

Noah got up and paced the porch until Tal came back outside. “Doc, you have any problem gettin’ your schoolin’?”

Tal shrugged and leaned against the porch rail. “No more’n most, I guess. There’s a lot to learn. Why? You thinkin’ about goin’ to college?”

You could have heard a pin drop on that front porch. Never, and I mean never, in all the days Calloway had been on the map, had there ever been a single person, white or black, to step foot at a college. The very idea of that mark being made by a colored boy was a surefire way to start war.

And Noah knew it.

He looked at his feet and kicked the heel of one shoe against the toe of another. “Ain’t possible. I was just wonderin’ aloud, is all.”

“What do you mean it ain’t possible? All’s you’ve got to do is work hard. You can get scholarships and things.”

But Noah took a look at his brother, whose face was hard and tight-lipped, and nodded off toward the road. “Nah, there ain’t no use talkin’ over it. We’d best get home anyhow.”

Tal didn’t push the subject. He just picked his hat up off the porch swing and plopped it on his head. “Miss Jessie. Miss Gemma. It was a fine pleasure to meet you, and a kindness for you to give us a hand.”

“You should stop by sometime and meet my parents,” I said. “They’re off visitin’, but I’m sure they’d be right happy to know you.”

“I’m sure I’d be right happy to know them, too.” He turned his attention to Gemma. “You said you worked for a doctor?”

“I worked for Doc Mabley. He was a white doctor. Died some two months ago.”

“He let you assist?”

“Only with the colored patients. Doc Mabley was kind enough to help some of them out when they needed it. Otherwise I kept his records, kept up his stock.”

“Well, I’ll tell you, Miss Gemma, I could sure use some help if you’d be obliged. An assistant would be a good set of extra hands, and I could use someone known around here to make my introductions.”

Gemma eyed him up before slowly nodding her head. “Reckon I could.”

“Wouldn’t be much pay, now, you know. Ain’t likely to get much in the way of fees from the patients I’ll be treatin’.”

“Don’t matter so long as I have good work to put my hands to.”

“That it would be. My office is right across the street from the Jarvis house.”

Malachi snorted. “Shack’s more like it.”

“Room enough for me,” Tal said. Then to Gemma, “You think you could stop in sometime this week to talk it over?”

“I can come day after tomorrow if that suits.”

“Nine o’clock too early?”

“No, sir! I’ve kept farm hours all my life.”

He grinned at her. “Nine o’clock then?”

“Nine o’clock.”

Malachi watched the two of them with his swollen eyes, a look of disgust growing more evident on his face. He’d made no secret over the past year about his admiration for Gemma, and the unmistakable attraction that was growing between her and Tal was clearly turning his stomach.

“Mind if we go home?” he muttered. “Before I fall down dead or somethin’?”

Gemma tore her eyes away from Tal to roll them at Malachi. “Would serve you right if you did.”

“And on that cheery note . . .” Malachi groaned on his way down the steps. “I’ll bid you ladies a fine evenin’.”

I gave Noah a playful whack to the head, but he ducked so it only clipped the top. “Luke will be back home tomorrow evenin’. He’ll be itchin’ to see you, I’m sure.”

“I’m itchin’ to see him.” He took the steps in one leap, tossing dust up when he landed. “You tell him to come on by and see us real soon.”

“And tell him to bring his cards,” Malachi added. “He owes me a poker rematch.”

I squinted at him suspiciously. “Only if you play for beans.”

“I hate beans.”

Malachi leaned on Tal for support and Noah scurried to catch up and help. I watched them go, but I wasn’t thinking much about them. I was thinking about Luke. It had been two months since he’d left to collect customers for his furniture-making business, and every day had seemed like an eternity.

The very thought of him got my stomach butterflies to fluttering, but one look at Gemma told me it was another man who had stolen her attention. “That

Doc Pritchett’s a fine man.” I looked at her sideways with a smirk. “Looks about twenty-five or so.”

“So?”

“Good marryin’ age.”

She crossed her arms defiantly. “Jessilyn Lassiter, what’s that got to do with anythin’?”

“Only what I said. I’m only statin’ fact.”

“Mm-hm. I hear ya. You’d be better off keepin’ your facts to yourself.”

She grabbed the first aid box and headed inside, but the sound of that door slamming told me I’d got to her.

It told me Tal Pritchett had got to her, too.

Mailbox Mayhem (Oct 11 - Oct 17)

In My Mailbox is hosted Sundays at The Story Siren.  Mailbox Monday's host for October is Avis at She Reads and Reads. Please visit these posts and take a look at what packages everybody else got this week!

 

 

The Life Book

This isn't so much a book - as it is a movement - The Life Book Movement.

Founded by The Gideons International as an innovative strategy to reach high school students with God's Word, The Life Book Movement works through churches and their students to saturate high schools with God's Word. The Life Book Movement is best described as a week-long mission trip in which high school students get the opportunity to offer the gift of The LIfe Book to their classmates during school.

The Life Book’s unique design engages searching high school students with the truth of God’s Word as they are introduced to Jesus Christ. Using an interactive format with honest student comments and real-life questions in the margins, readers are drawn into the only story that can change their lives forever.

Working through local churches, The Life Book Movement provides free copies of The Life Book to Christian students to give to classmates during school. Because it is legal for students to distribute religious literature in public schools, this unique approach provides an opportunity for churches and youth ministries to get God’s Word in the hands of every student in every high school they serve.

With Saturations scheduled throughout the United States, the end goal is to eventually place God’s Word in the hands of 17.5 million high school students. (From www.thelifebook.com)

The Family Dinner: Great Ways to Connect with Your Kids, One Meal at a Time

by Laurie David

The Family Dinner is a practical, inspirational, fun - and of course, green - guide to the most important hour in any parent's day.  It's chock full of:

• Over 75 kid-approved fantastic RECIPES
• Tips on teaching GREEN values
• CONVERSATION starters
• GAMES to play at the table
• How to rescue the family dinner after DIVORCE
• Ways to express GRATITUDE, and much more.

Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol: A Pop-Up Book

by Chuck Fischer

Charles Dickens's Classic A Christmas Carol has been a yuletide favorite for more than a century and a half.  Now this heartwarming fable of the true meaning of Christmas, featuring Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim, the Cratchit family, and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, is beautifully re-imagined in dramatic paintings by artist Chuck Fischer and brought to life in intricate pop-up scenes by paper engineer Bruce Foster.

A Christmas Carol: A Pop-Up Book invites you to experience Dickens's beloved tale in an entirely new way.  With an animated Scrooge, a towering Ghost of Christmas Future in a bone-chilling graveyard, a finely crafted Victorian tableaux, every spread will delight and dazzle.  The complete text of A Christmas Carol is reproduced in five illustrated keepsake booklets; an introductory booklet provides a biography of Dickens and a note on the enduring appeal of this timeless story.  A Christmas Carol: A Pop-Up Book will brighten the holidays for young and old.

A Season of Miracles

by Rusty Whitener

Looking back on the 1971 Little League season, Zack Ross relives the summer that changed his life. . . Gunning for the championship is all that matters until twelve-year-old Zack meets Rafer, a boy whose differences make him an outcast but whose abilities on the baseball field make him the key to victory.  Admired for his contribution to the team, Rafer turns everyone's expectations upside down, bestowing a gift on Zack and his teammates that forces them to think -- is there more to life than winning or losing?  And what is this thing called grace?

Spilling the Beans on the Cat's Pajamas

by Judy Parkinson

Strike while the iron's hot and bone up on the origins of your favorite expressions.

Cat got your tongue?  Well, for Pete's sake, use this collection of colorful expressions to enrich your everyday speech.  This book spills the beans on our best-loved euphemisms and most curious sayings, explaining their fascinating origins and the remarkable stories that surround them.  It rounds up the usual suspects -- the catch phrases, quotations, and expressions that keep our language flourishing -- and makes them easy to find in a convenient A-to-Z format.

Did you know that. . .

• The expressions all that glitters is not gold and apple of the eye have each been in use for more than a thousand years?
• To bark up the wrong tree comes from the sport of raccoon hunting?
• Embarrassed parents can thank the songwriter Cole Porter for the euphemism the birds and the bees?

What books found a home with you this week?





Oogy by Larry Levin - Giveaway!

Oogy: The Dog Only a Family Could Love

by Larry Levin

In the bestselling tradition of Rescuing Sprite comes the story of a puppy brought back from the brink of death, and the family he adopted.

In 2002, Larry Levin and his twin sons, Dan and Noah, took their terminally ill cat to the Ardmore Animal Hospital outside Philadelphia to have the beloved pet put to sleep. What would begin as a terrible day suddenly got brighter as the ugliest dog they had ever seen--one who was missing an ear and had half his face covered in scar tissue--ran up to them and captured their hearts. The dog had been used as bait for fighting dogs when he was just a few months old. He had been thrown in a cage and left to die until the police rescued him and the staff at Ardmore Animal Hospital saved his life. The Levins, whose sons are themselves adopted, were unable to resist Oogy's charms, and decided to take him home.

Heartwarming and redemptive, OOGY is the story of the people who were determined to rescue this dog against all odds, and of the family who took him home, named him "Oogy" (an affectionate derivative of ugly), and made him one of their own.

Thanks to Hachette books, I have 2 copies of this book to give away!  There are a few ways to enter:

1. Be a follower of my blog - just let me know how.

2. Follow me on twitter (@kherbrand) and tweet or use tweet button below.

3. Comment on a non-giveaway post and let me know.

All entries can be left in one comment, but please be sure and leave your email address!  Giveaway open to US/Canada only - no PO Boxes.  This giveaway will end on Nov 3, 2010.  Winners will have 48 hours to respond.  Any unclaimed books will be given away on twitter. Winners will be subject to the one copy per household rule, which means that if they win the same title in two or more contests, they will receive only one copy of the title.

Oogy

Publisher/Publication Date: Grand Central Publishing, Oct 12, 2010

ISBN: 9780446546317 

224 pages