Blogging as I read

Belle Blackburn is one sweet soul. She is also a swell scribe.

I wrote about Belle and her book "The Doctor's Daughter: Journey to Justice" in my newspaper column two weeks ago. It can be found here by scrolling to page A-3.

And, as you will read, I had intended to post my full review of her book on this blog one week ago. I am recovering from surgery more slowly than expected. Temporary fallout: I can only read for short stretches.

So, I thought I'd try something. As my way of making it up to Belle for missing a deadline, I am going to blog as I read, updates, here and there, as I can. I owe it to her. It's worth it. It will be fun.

As I said in the column, Belle grabs you from the beginning with a perfect prologue: a (fictionalized) snippet of a newspaper story from what was then called The Nashville Republican Banner. "Suicide on Summer Street" is the headline. May 16, 1860.

Seems the main character's father commits suicide in front of two witnesses, a business partner and his wife, before dying in his daughter's arms. Or did he?

Kate Seaver thinks otherwise. She's seeking the truth.

And I have been thinking this through, eager to learn more. Move it, migraine, so I can get to it! Did Brian Seaver commit suicide? Was he murdered? Is he even dead?

Kate's mother is a doctor of a sort, practitioner of the old ways, mountain medicine, you might say. An early chapter features a hilarious scene at a quilting bee in which the women get the men to tell the "true" way to be rid of a wart. You will see more of this -- medicine of the period (a central topic/theme) and humor -- later.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention here: one character wakes up at, yes, his own wake.

Another scene involves a character who could be found in "real life" today. Goad is her name, holier-than-thou, certain she's sitting at the left hand of the Lord. Perfect name, too, 'cause people like to goad her.

Kate's mother suggests a colic cure. Follow your own beliefs, she says, but try a toddy.

Goad growls:

"You'll burn in hell for that."

Discussion follows. God gave us the ingredients. Nowhere in The Bible does it say "Thou shalt not drink alcohol."

"Jesus drank wine. The Bible says so."

Goad: "That was just grape juice..."

"All I am doing is telling you what it says in the scriptures. You better quit using God in all your arguments or you will ruin His reputation."

Funny. Food for thought.

The review will continue...

"The Doctor's Daughter: Journey to Justice" by Belle Blackburn is available for download ($2.99) or paperback ($19.99) at Amazon.com. As of today, it has a five-star average review. 

So cruel, and yet so beautiful

You know the quote.

"April is the cruelest month," said T.S. Eliot.

So cruel, and yet so beautiful.

I thought about it today as I drove downtown. The greens, the blues, the vivid hues. Everything feels so alive.

Those who know me well know this is my season. April and its beauty. And its butterflies. And its baseball.

Like the character in Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities," I am recalled to life.

And yet. And yet.

My sister died one April. So, too, did a beloved aunt and uncle. So, too, did my great-grandfather, 40 years ago. My mother was talking about it this morning.

Anyone familiar with American history knows the sadness that lies in this month. Such slaughter at Shiloh. Such an ending at Appomattox. Assassination on April 14, 1865. MLK in Memphis.

Each Easter week I think of one of my professors, Dr. Robert Drake, Southern gentleman, super scribe. He died in 2001.

In one of his short stories, "By Thy Good Pleasure," he writes about his father passing away on Good Friday.

"Everywhere (after the funeral) the afternoon sun was streaming down into the back yard... Everything was terribly, overwhelmingly alive. And Daddy was dead. He would never see those peach trees again."

So cruel, and yet so beautiful, this fourth month called April.

Two minutes that changed the world

On this date in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered the greatest speech in American oratorical history. His cogent, simple words captured in two minutes what the featured speaker that day, Edward Everett, couldn't say in two hours.

I post the speech below, with the continued prayer that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall never perish from the earth.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.