Patience is a virtue, the empress to us all
I yell to her, I seek her aid
But she ignores my call.
She jumps across a sage-lined fence
And into waters swell
My hope is that I catch her soon
And, then, my breath as well.
-CDW
Daily Prompt: Elicit
I rarely write a review on Amazon, but after reading The Education of Dixie Dupree by Donna Everhart, I had to. Here it is:
Readers will learn from Dixie Dupree’s education!
Like every great book, the first chapter of The Education of Dixie Dupree grabs the reader by the collar and makes us yearn to know more. Loved this book!
The author, Donna Everhart, blew so much life and guts into her eleven-year-old protagonist that Dixie Dupree leaped off the page and into my heart from the very beginning. I identified with this young girl’s sassiness and grit, wagged my finger at her mischievous tongue, and, later, screamed at her to speak up and let the words flow.
Set in a small town in Alabama in the late 1960’s, the story revolves around Dixie and her relationship with her mother, father, brother and uncle. Written in first person point-of-view, Dixie shows us the good in her life, and how to survive when it’s anything but.
Some readers may find parts of Dixie’s suffering too troublesome to read. But her suffering is also part of our education. What reader can’t identify with the emotions of guilt, anger, and sadness that may lead to (hopefully temporarily) damaging our being?
But these emotions do not depict the whole story. The Education of Dixie Dupree is also about determination, insightfulness, warm hugs, resolution, and wholeness.
Dixie Dupree deserves a degree for her education—and her creator, Donna Everhart, deserves to be wearing a cap and gown and handed a framed diploma for writing this outstanding novel.
Cono visits his grandpa. (No Hill for a Stepper, except- based on a true story)
Pa and I are sharing a piece of Ma’s famous peach cobbler when I ask, “Pa, what happened to yer teeth?”
“Cono, now I’ll tell ye. My teeth started to achin’ and smellin’ so bad that I figured I needed to take ‘em out, harvest ‘em like an overripe crop.”
“All of ‘em? Ye pulled all of ‘em?”
“Shor’did. I got myself a pair’a pliers, sat there on the front porch and pulled out the ones that were botherin’ me the most. The good ones left felt funny bein’ in there without company, so I jes’t took them out too.”
“Damn!” I say. “They don’t stink no more?”
Pa laughs. “Ain’t nothing left te sniff.”
“He’s an old coot’s what he is,” yells Ma from the kitchen, overhearing the story.
“I’m surprised ye noticed, Ma,” he yells back. “Ye cain’t see two feet without yer glasses.” He turns back to me. “Don’t ye fret none about it,” he gums out. “Ever since them holes healed up? I kin eat a steak jes’t like ever’ body else. I chew a little longer s’all. But my whistlin’s gone to hell in a hand basket.”
Daily prompt: Aromatic
A friend of mine gave a copy of my latest book, The Last Bordello, to her mother, Del. She doesn’t email, nor does she know how to write a review on Amazon. So, she sent me a “real” letter! What a special gift!
Madam Fannie Porter vs. Mayor Hicks: Excerpt from The Last Bordello
“Pull the reins back, Mayor. Sadie’s not evil. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.” He was using Sadie as an excuse, a reminder I hadn’t moved into the mandated zone a stone’s throw down the road.
“If she could pull a knife on a man who harmed a friend, what measures would she take if she thought she had been wronged? It’s no secret she hates the temperance women.”
True. “What are you getting at? Do you still think that just because she found a yellow scarf, she’s guilty of a crime? Had something to do with the missing girl?”
“It’s likely.”
“It’s preposterous. Now, is there anything else?”
“She was there at the meeting. You know it as well as I do.”
“That’s no secret.”
“Too bad for her it’s not.” He stood, approached the front door, and yanked his jacket off the hook. “Not looking good for her. Nor for you and this place.” He waved an index finger around the parlor like a gun. “I’ll be watching.”
I didn’t escort him to the door, but watched him exit at the same time thunder rattled the porch. Good. For all I cared, he could glide back to the office on his own slime.
Two sets of eyes peeked over the swinging doors and into the parlor. “Okay, nosy children,” I said and joined Meta and Reba in the kitchen. “What happened to those good old days when Bryan Callaghan was our mayor?”
“We’s been scorched by a stinkbug, that’s what.” Reba palmed her newly straightened and gelled hair.
Meta’s expression remained grave. I had the feeling she felt a kinship with the missing girl.
This is too funny not to reblog!
First, thanks so much for liking my “shape” in previous posts.
When I posted The Shape of our Being, I mentioned how experiences shape our humanness. Here’s another example of the “shape” of Carolyn’s Being that shows up in my novels. I’ve posted Meta’s shape from The Last Bordello and Cono’s shape from No Hill for a Stepper.
Here’s Emma June from The Moonshine Thicket.
Kids at school say Scooter’s grain elevator doesn’t reach the top of the silo. That he acts more like a six-year-old than a thirteen-year-old. They don’t know diddly-squat. Scooter might not be the brightest penny in the cash box, but I’ve known him all my life. He has more grain than most of the numbskulls in Holly Gap, Texas and Scooter’s worth more than the whole lot of them. Wherever Scoot skips, bounces or walks, goodness grows in the footsteps he leaves behind. Without Scooter, everything would grow dead.
I can’t wait for you to meet Emma June when she finally gets out and about!
From The Moonshine Thicket:
Scoot will always be with me no matter how old I get. People often say, “I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.” I remind myself to never cross a broken bridge, especially if a gangster-wolf is lurking on the other side.
Scooter’s my bridge. He leads me across to a wonderful, magical way of looking at the world, one that’s never too dangerous to cross.
Daily Prompt: Mythical
In a previous post titled, The Shape of our Being, I mentioned how experiences shape our humanness. Here’s another example of the “shape” of Carolyn’s Being that shows up in my novels.
Disclaimer: I’m betting on my ‘underdog-ness’ again–that part of me who feels uncomfortable with self-promotion. But try, we must. Right?
NOTE: No Hill for a Stepper, is about Cono, my father (and a huge piece of my heart) who died in 2009 before its publication. Don’t worry, he read and loved the first draft.
In 1942, victimized his entire life by his own father, fourteen-year-old Cono must stand up against him an protect his mother and little sister.
Excerpt:
I hear Mother scream. I snap back into the present, out of my daydream. Maybe she’s woken up, has seen blood on her sheets reflected in moonlight, seen the blood on Dad’s face. I start to get up, but the quiet has taken over; but only for a moment.
I hear a voice I know is Dad’s but different somehow, guttural like a wolf’s growl. I hear Mother say, “Stop it Wayne!”
My feet touch the floor before the rest of me knows what it’s doing. I open my door. Mother is backing towards me, but away from the bloodied-face man holding a butcher knife, glistening from moonlight, shiny like a raccoon’s mirror. He’s stumbling towards her. My mind freezes. It’s a scene from a scary picture show. No, Cono, I tell myself, this is real. Real life, real time.
Dad’s stopped walking. He’s swaying back and forth like an old porch swing. No, more like the swing of a hanged man’s noose. His eyes are glazed like a film of anger is laying on top that he can’t wipe away. He glances once over to the couch where Pooch is sleeping.
“Mother, keep backing up towards me,” I tell her.
She stares at my father but listens to my words. Dad stops at the kitchen table, he puts his empty palm on the table for balance, the butcher knife in the other hand swaying by his side.
“C’mon, Mother, keep coming to me,” I say softly, feeling a surge of calm and determination at the same time.
Mother has backed all the way up me. I pull her behind my door into the bedroom where Delma is still sleeping. Mother is shaking. My hands are doing the same now. I see our .22 sitting on the open shelf just a few feet away. It’s so close I can almost feel it. It’s like the .22 Hoover found, the one I felt in my hands, the cold steel of it. Now, I want to feel the warm safety of it.
A fear invades my body like a sickness. I’m drowning, but not in water. I’m drowning in the fear of what to do next, what I need to do to protect my family from a madman.
Here’s Cono, my dad. My sister had the novel photoshopped into his hands and gave me this awesome framed photo.
I must reblog this. I am almost finished with “The Education of Dixie Dupree” and I’m LOVING it!
Carolyn Dennis-Willingham 