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Boyhood
Children in 19th-century art reflect nation’s fears, dreams
Image courtesy of National Library of Wales
Tag: 19th century
What are Your Favorite Film Adaptations of Books?
You know mine will be period pieces set in 19th century America, right?
THE SON
Okay, so I haven’t watched this one yet but I will. Pierce Brosnan in a western family saga? What’s not to like?
GLORY
One of the few movies that captures the nuances of race relations during the American Civil War. The cinematography and music are beautiful.
“The screenplay was written by Kevin Jarre, based on the personal letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the book One Gallant Rush by Peter Burchard (reissued in 1990 after the movie), and Lay This Laurel (1973), Lincoln Kirstein‘s compilation of photos of the monument to the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry on Boston Common.” Wikipedia
THE OLDEST LIVING CONFEDERATE WIDOW TELLS ALL
Alan Gurganus tells how he came up with the idea to write this epic saga about a crusty old Civil War veteran who married a very young girl which I devoured when it came out.
Back in the day television networks actually called people at home to complete surveys about miniseries ideas. I answered the phone and they asked me if I’d like to see this book made into a miniseries! They granted my wishes!
What are some of your favorite books made into movies?
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Fiction: Lost Time
William Weldon ponders generational curses . . .
William, now at loose ends, went to see if he’d gotten any mail. He opened a short letter from his father in the old soldier’s pathetic, shaky script.
Dear William,
We are all well here. Mother was very pleased to receive a kind letter from Captain Bourke dated some months ago, but it seems as though you have impressed Captain Markham and the others as we knew you would.
Please tell us when your sketches are published so we can look for them in the magazines. We would like to hear from you more, but we understand about your headaches and all the distractions of the West.
Enclosed is a small bit of money for you, I wish it could be more. Buy a little treat.
Affectionately your father,
John Weldon
His father had great timing—always too late. What was five dollars to him now? William didn’t feel at all guilty about sending his father nothing for Christmas. Being out west reminded him of the Christmas long ago, alone with his father, before his accident.
All of the soldiers had sparkling gold and silver pocket watches, and William wanted one desperately. His father had taken him hunting with the same old carbine he still carried, and they had gotten a big bird. It was probably John’s bullet that caught it, but he lied and insisted it was Willy’s. He hinted that William would get what he wanted for Christmas. Something made William turn spiteful. “All I want is Mother,” he had said.
His father got sicker and the watch never materialized. Later William realized that his father had traded it for opium.
William shoved the letter into his pocket and limped in his old, uneven and tattered shoes from home. His head burned in the sun. He found shelter in The Buckskin Saloon.
“Merry Christmas, Robinson,” William said and sat at the bar, sliding the five dollars towards the bartender. “This is some of what I owe you.”
The bartender gave him a once over. “Well, this is a holiday, if you’re payin.’ But it hardly covers the damage you done last night.”
“Damage?”
“Boyo, you really are soft in the head, ain’t you? I mean to say all the drinks you bought on credit—that’s the damage.”
“Credit?”
“Like always,” Robinson replied. “What will I get you now?”
“Now? Oh, just a ginger beer.”
The man raised his brows. “On the wagon?”
“Gosh, no. My stomach just pains me is all.”
“Gosh? Bill, if you didn’t amuse me, there’d be no fun. So when you sellin’ another picture so’s I can get some more spoondulicks from you? More than just a few dollars, I mean,” the bartender asked while passing him the small glass and nodding at another customer.
“Soon.”
Jay Haviland slapped William on the back. “Here’s just the man I wanted to see today. You were all horns and rattles last night. Is the girl sent back and all, do you know? Thought I saw the very same one with one of them high-falutin’ officers this morning. Boy howdy—it’s hot enough to wither a fence post, ain’t it?”
“Yes, it’s hot.” William finished his drink, remembering the first time he met Haviland.
WEARY OF RUNNING PREVIOUS EPISODE
Excerpted from WEARY OF RUNNING. Read more about Buck Crenshaw, his sister Thankful and William Weldon’s misadventures when you buy the book today!
“The second installment in The Tenafly Road Series definitely did not disappoint. With the introduction of new characters and the return of familiar ones, Weary of Running made for an exciting read. The protagonist, Thankful, is the real highlight of the novel. She consistently makes very poor decisions but in the end, you can understand why she has made every last one of them. The story ranges from love and romance to questions of faith and morality. It does all this without being preachy and explores many angles of different aspects of life. This is one of the best books I have read in a long time.” Amazon Review
“Buck Crenshaw is my favorite dysfunctional lovable character.”
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Can Education Change The World? (or is it all in our heads?)
“I’ll keep having babies until they stop taking them away.”
Yes, that’s what a mentally challenged young woman told the social services workers outside family court. She’d lost five or six children to the system already. A talk on birth control would have made little difference.
I heard about this case from our foster daughter’s lawyer after I asked her if M could possibly get some baby pictures of herself that her mother “Tracy” used to have. The lawyer shook her head in sad disgust.
“I doubt Tracy would have kept the pictures. She’s never in one place for long, but when I see her at court next I’ll ask.”
“Court? Again?”
“Yes, she’s had two more kids in the last two years—both of them are already in the system,” the lawyer replied from behind the heaps of documents on her desk.
No one’s told M that not only does she have two sisters (adopted locally) and a stepbrother living with M’s scary father but also two new baby siblings—in the court system.
So I ask, “Is Tracy mentally deficient like the other woman you just told me about?”
The lawyer thinks a moment. “No, she’s just evil.”
I’m sort of shocked by her honest appraisal and inclusion of a moral take on the woman. Knowing M’s history I’d have to say the stuff that was done to her was evil.
What would phrenologists of the 19th century say? Phrenology is the detailed study of the shape and size of the cranium as a supposed indication of character and mental abilities.
Walt Whitman wrote in his 1870 sexual-eugenic essay Democratic Vistas that America’s youth lacked sexually. They were “puny, impudent, foppish, prematurely ripe, and characterized by an abnormal libidinousness and a diminished capacity for good motherhood.”
Whitman’s remedy: “crops of fine youth planted” to become America’s best breeders.*
As a gardener and foster parent of a girl with “delays” I’m troubled by the analogy. How are we to be rid of the weeds that grow among the fine youth?
To be pro-life is a radical idea in the history of the world where weeds, misfits and mistakes are gotten rid of. Slavery, body parts for sale, war and thousands of cast off orphans are the consequences of the human proclivity to get rid of weak and uncomfortable things.
How often do we hear now from “civilized” and “compassionate” people that this or that leader should be assassinated?
We hear of new procedures that may one day eradicate unacceptable or messy human misfits—a pipe dream at best but chilling when taking into account the many ways we find fault with each other.
George Combe, the Scottish phrenologist in his The Application of Phrenology to the Present and Prospective Conditions of the United States (1840) had this to say: The enlightened classes “raise the mental condition of the people . . . which will enable them to understand the moral and political principles on which the welfare of nations is founded.”
Combe predicted “an uncontrolled development of the faculties of Acquisitiveness (greed), Self-Esteem (excessive self-confidence), and Love of Approbation (vanity), in which could destroy the Union.” If something wasn’t done. *
We mustn’t judge the Victorians too harshly when we find that many embraced the idea of social and moral uplift through education and selective breeding. If we are honest we will see ourselves in the historical mirror.
Studying bumps on someone’s head may seem silly to us. Frat parties and pussy hats would probably have seemed “funny” to them. We judge our Victorian ancestors harshly for bringing “civilization” to “less civilized” people (but if we’re being honest not many of us want to live the Rousseau dream in a buggy forest with no air-conditioning (see the movie The Mission).
How much moral uplift has come from the public school system (or the Ivy League colleges—many of which were founded as Christian seminaries?).
How many less unwanted children have come into the world because of legal abortion?
Yes, I had to make the terrible choice to terminate a pregnancy (after seeing the baby’s perfect body on an ultrasound). My very flawed and very human doctor dismissed my concerns about a blood clot in my leg for weeks. A vascular surgeon saved my life at the very last minute, but the doctors refused me treatment until the baby was gone.
I hadn’t really wanted another child, but until this very day I suffer from a profound sense of loss. Funny how the heart works.
The 19th century perfectionist idea that we can, through science and education, bring heaven to earth was an illusion. It still is.
It’s easier to be rid of things, to divide the skull into seemingly rational sections that tell us our fate, to abort babies who have low IQs or the “gay gene.”
We must be careful in labeling someone we disagree with a fool or someone to be gotten rid of. We so rarely see the evil in ourselves and gladly kill the other for reminding us of our own weakness.
Judges 6:24 says: “The Lord is peace.”
What are we?
* From Pseudo-Science & Society in 19th Century America, Arthur Wrobel, Editor
** Pictures from VAUGHT’S PRACTICAL CHARACTER READER
In THE DEW THAT GOES EARLY AWAY Buck Crenshaw stumbles into a selective breeding program with mixed results.
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Utopia & Sex
JOHN HUMPHREY NOYES was a man of great vision–a deluded and selfish vision–yet one which inspired others to forsake their ordinary lives to join him in Christian communism.
Sharing looks good on paper.
Noyes was a magnetic man who believed in “healing energy.” He believed, like most 19th century perfectionist utopians, that the kingdom of heaven would be ushered in, not by trumpets and angels, but by good Christian men and women.
Noyes, in a dark night of the soul, convinced himself that he was to lead humanity (or at least a bunch of Americans) to this new heaven on earth. As their leader he would share his revelation (after marrying a dowdy but financially secure woman) that the first system of marriage illustrated throughout Genesis was now obsolete. Hadn’t Jesus told the SADDUCEES there were no marriages in heaven?
As above, so below was Noyes’ mantra. There were healings and possibly some good times. Mediocrity was seen as a special characteristic–one that kept people humble–even as Noyes’ enjoyed more and more power. By decreeing himself highly trained in love-making and instituting a “training program” by which young men were taught self control and the right way to sexually please women without getting them pregnant, Noyes’ embraced selective breeding and women’s rights.
What could possibly go wrong?
A friend of mine who grew up in a free love commune said it was a terribly unstable and lonely place for children. He noted the feel was more like a harem than anything heavenly. Dowdy women often footed the bills. Good-looking men were fought over.
I lived with a couple who believed in no special god. They believed only they created the universe. They believed in wind turbines and open, communistic marriages. These beliefs reflected in their real lives looked something like this: hatred for those who weren’t as highly educated and environmentally aware and an underlying aggression toward each other over sexual slights and unmet needs.
Noyes had magnetism. Women wanted to have sex with his magnetism. His wife had to be convinced his revelations were from God.
The community did make nice silverware.
Does free love work for anyone? I have only anecdotal evidence that it does not.
RELATED: VISIT JOHN HUMPHREY NOYES’ 19th CENTURY COMMUNE: SEX AS GOOD MEDICINE
ONEIDA SILVERWARE
READ ABOUT BUCK CRENSHAW’S ADVENTURES AT A 19th CENTURY COMMUNE
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Fiction: Taken By An Officer
Thankful meets Lieutenant Fahy.
A lamp flickered low in the window at headquarters. A soldier stood outside smoking.
“Land sakes, the soldiers I’ve seen so far are barely handsome at all,” Thankful whispered.
“What did you expect?”
“I suppose more like how I imagine your father when he was young—like you, sort of—well, when you were home—not now, I mean . . .”
The smoking soldier stepped forward from beneath the porch and the moon lit him.
“Lieutenant Fahy, is Captain Markham in, sir?” William asked.
Fahy stepped closer and bowed to Thankful. Her eyes lit up, and she giggled at the sight of him.
William’s stomach burned. “This is my cousin, Miss Crenshaw, sir.”
“Very pleased to meet you, Miss Crenshaw.”
“And you! You’re from Dublin, aren’t you?” Thankful asked.
The lieutenant grinned. “Why, yes, how did you guess? I’ve tried right hard to lose the sound of Ireland.”
“Oh, you shouldn’t! My father has a doctor friend from Dublin and he’s smart—not a shanty Irish type . . . my goodness I should just stop now, sir—I think your accent is charming.”
“Where have you hid this girl, Weldon?” Fahy asked.
“She’s run away from home and is going back to her father in the morning, sir. She’s very young . . .”
“I am not, Willy!”
Fahy took a drag from his pipe, his head tilted in amusement.
“I’m eighteen!” Thankful said, swishing her skirts slightly.
Fahy gave her the once over. “My sisters and brother and I came to America when we were young like yourself. You’ve got a great country here.”
“Oh, yes, of course it is,” Thankful said. “And how many sisters do you have, Mr. Fahy?”
“Just buckets of them and brothers, too. I’m a twin, in fact, but my brother joined the navy for a lark.”
“By golly, I’m a twin. How very coincidental.”
They laughed.
“Thankful, we need to talk to the captain,” William reminded her.
“Thankful? What an unusual name,” Fahy gushed.
“It sounds nice the way you say it, sir.”
“Come along now, COUSIN, I have to get back, you know,” William said, taking her arm.
Fahy sighed. “Bill Weldon, you should try to enjoy life a little.” He turned to Thankful. “Your cousin is a good fellow, but always so serious.”
Excerpted from WEARY OF RUNNING. Read more about Buck Crenshaw and his misadventures when you buy the book today!
“The second installment in The Tenafly Road Series definitely did not disappoint. With the introduction of new characters and the return of familiar ones, Weary of Running made for an exciting read. The protagonist, Thankful, is the real highlight of the novel. She consistently makes very poor decisions but in the end, you can understand why she has made every last one of them. The story ranges from love and romance to questions of faith and morality. It does all this without being preachy and explores many angles of different aspects of life. This is one of the best books I have read in a long time.” Amazon Review
“Buck Crenshaw is my favorite dysfunctional lovable character.”
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Fiction: Pretend We’re Cousins
William agrees to take Thankful to Fort Grant
“Call me Bill at the post,” William coached. “Lieutenant Bourke is the only one to hold to my childhood name, and it gives too much a laugh to the others.”
“Maybe it’s not your name they’re laughing at,” Thankful said, poking his side with her thin, gloved finger.
“What are you saying?”
“I just mean that maybe they have their own concerns and aren’t as against you as you think.”
“I know well enough if I’m being played the fool,” William said, but his stomach pained him. He wasn’t sure of anyone’s motives.
At the stables, Thankful laughed at William’s pony. “The Friesians at home could swallow that little thing. Are you sure he’ll hold me too and with the carbine?”
William pat the horse’s rump. “You shouldn’t go making fun of Sophie. She’s a good girl.”
“Sophie? What a name for a horse.”
“I like it. Maybe I had a dog or something named Sophie. You’ll have to ride Indian style. I had to sell her saddle.”
“No one will see that I care about,” Thankful said with a blush as she straddled the horse exposing her striped pink stockings.
William steadied her and pretended not to notice her shapely legs. Thankful was tall like her mother and father and solidly built. The sunlight streaming through the stable window played up her deep blue eyes.
“Thankful, I have to drive her. You’ll have to hang off back if you don’t mind.”
“I can ride quite well, Mr. Bill Weldon!” Thankful said, but slid off to let William on first.
“Maybe so, but you’re your mother’s daughter.” William swung his leg over the horse with a shy smile.
Thankful followed and wrapped her arms around William’s middle. He felt flustered again. But this was crazy. She’d be gone tomorrow.
Although his parents tried to keep him from horses after his accident, William always found a way to ride. He enjoyed this one good thing about himself and liked showing off to Thankful.
They cantered out on the desert path and rode for hours.
“William, have you missed me?” Thankful asked in his ear.
“I . . . I guess I miss the folks at home sometimes—you being one of them—so yes . . . I guess so,” William said.
Thankful stayed quiet until the fort came into view at twilight. “I’m so excited!” she said.
The guard’s ears pricked at the sound of Thankful’s voice.
“Bill Weldon, who do you have there?” the guard asked.
Thankful slid from the horse. “I’m Bill’s cousin from home with no place to sleep tonight—will the army put me up? I’ll pay.” She held out her hand, confident in the effect her looks had on men.
The man sported a big yellow grin. “Bill, you’ve got cousins? How many?” he asked, looking Thankful over. “I don’t know for certain, young lady, but I think the officers could find you something. Your cousin’s got special privileges.” He smacked William’s back. “Nice to see you, young fellow. We’ve missed you.”
The guard led them to the sergeant of the guard who gawked with pleasure at the girl with high cheekbones.
“Miss Crenshaw, Bill will show you in—he knows the way,” the sergeant said and whispered to William, “I guess we owe you now—bringing in such a beaut—she’s not spoken for is she? Has she got sisters?”
“A twin,” William let slip.
The man’s eyes lit. “The officers get this one, I guess, but send for the other and give us non-commissioned men a chance at happiness.”
PREVIOUS EPISODE HERE
Excerpted from WEARY OF RUNNING. Read more about Buck Crenshaw and his misadventures when you buy the book today!
“The second installment in The Tenafly Road Series definitely did not disappoint. With the introduction of new characters and the return of familiar ones, Weary of Running made for an exciting read. The protagonist, Thankful, is the real highlight of the novel. She consistently makes very poor decisions but in the end, you can understand why she has made every last one of them. The story ranges from love and romance to questions of faith and morality. It does all this without being preachy and explores many angles of different aspects of life. This is one of the best books I have read in a long time.” Amazon Review
“Buck Crenshaw is my favorite dysfunctional lovable character.”
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Fiction: Where Are The Gallant Men?
William Weldon is not the man Thankful once knew.
Thankful scooped up the map pieces on the floor. “Such a gift you have and you throw it away on depraved women.”
“Jesus hung around with them.”
Thankful looked up at him with a severe stare. “So now you compare yourself to our Lord? You have changed.” She adjusted her hat with one hand while clutching the map in the other.
The faint odor of perspiration under Thankful’s perfume flustered William.
Thankful stood. “I shall have to go back to the army on my own for assistance. I don’t trust anyone here and you won’t keep me the night.”
“Of course I won’t. The hotel is terrible rough though.” William tapped his fingers against his temple. “I guess it won’t be safe to go now. It’ll be almost candle lighting by the time you get there.”
He tried to ignore the small vermin creeping from under things.
“If you take me right now to the barracks, I’ll make my way home in the morning, and I won’t say a word about your state of affairs,” Thankful said bravely, but William detected a quiver in her voice. “This was a mistake.”
“It does seem ridiculous that you’ve come,” William said. “And I don’t care what folks at home think.”
“It seems MORE ridiculous that you’re corned and living in nothing better than an outhouse!” Thankful replied.
“I’m not drunk!”
“The William I know would do what’s right and bring me to the army where men have manners and are gallant and . . .”
“Enough! I’ll bring you. I hope you don’t mind horseback and it’s a dangerous thing out here.”
“I wasn’t born in the woods to be scared by an owl—when will we leave?”
William grinned. “Thankful Crenshaw, you’re a caution. The doctor must be in a conniption fit over you leaving home. I wish you hadn’t done it to him. Send the doctor a telegram to be fair.”
“I’d like to go soon if you don’t mind. Please stop talking about my father,” Thankful said, the guilt that plagued her on the train returning.
William found an old cap and sniffed it before smoothing his hair with a pungent tonic and tossing it on.
“Are you done with your toilet, Willy? I didn’t know boys prepared themselves so much for a visit to the post.”
William ignored Thankful and sifted through piles of sketchbooks, clothing and bottles, finding his gun.
“Oh, my, that old thing is yours?” Thankful asked with an amused giggle. “It looks mighty heavy. How do you lug it? Do you know how to use it even? I hope you have no intention of bringing it along. My father told lots of stories about cavalrymen shooting their feet and other things off.”
“Well, those people must have been fools. I’m not so weak that I can’t carry an old carbine!” William said.
“Now I’ll be a nervous Nelly all the way out, worrying I’ll be shot up.”
“It wouldn’t be an accident if I shot you, Thankful,” William joked.
LAST WEEK’S EPISODE: HERE
Excerpted from WEARY OF RUNNING. Read more about Buck Crenshaw and his misadventures when you buy the book today!
“The second installment in The Tenafly Road Series definitely did not disappoint. With the introduction of new characters and the return of familiar ones, Weary of Running made for an exciting read. The protagonist, Thankful, is the real highlight of the novel. She consistently makes very poor decisions but in the end, you can understand why she has made every last one of them. The story ranges from love and romance to questions of faith and morality. It does all this without being preachy and explores many angles of different aspects of life. This is one of the best books I have read in a long time.” Amazon Review
“Buck Crenshaw is my favorite dysfunctional lovable character.”
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Fiction:Taking Chances on Lost Men (2)
William Weldon sobers at the prospect of Thankful Crenshaw spending the night after her SURPRISE VISIT
“I’ll just wash my face at least,” Thankful said, moving toward the wash basin in William’s filthy room above the saloon.
“Let me go fetch fresh water.” William grabbed the basin before she could see the contents. He took a while to scrub it clean in the yard near the water barrel. The saloon keeper had pity on him so William brought back a lemonade drink, on credit, for Thankful and found her sifting through the drawings and maps he had hidden.
“Thankful, those are nothing. Please, take this drink.”
She glanced up at William with her big eyes but wasn’t listening. “Willy, when did you get so good at people?”
“Thankful, you’ve come all this way to snoop? Let me have those back. The colors are off. My paints aren’t very good.”
“They’re wonderful. Will you sell them?”
William tried to pry them away from her. “I do sell some to magazines. Now let me have them.”
“So why were they crumpled behind a table? Aren’t you afraid of ruining them? And look at this lovely map—what’s it for?”
“Oh, that was just something Captain Bourke wanted from me, but it’s too late now.”
“You mean the officer who invited you here asked for something and you didn’t deliver it?” Thankful shook her head and clicked her tongue at him with deep concern. “What will that say about you?”
“Hey, I don’t give a damn what it says about me! And what business is it of yours? Are you sure my parents didn’t send you?”
“No one sends me anywhere, Mr. William Weldon. I’m surprised at you. Drinking in the morning and leaving promises undone. That’s not the Willy I know.”
“First off, it’s almost 12 o’clock and a man can drink when he wants to.”
“A man finishes his work first.”
“I have finished my work! It’s not a regular thing . . .”
“Maybe it would be if you gave in your assignments on time.”
William scratched his head again, trying to hold his temper. “You’re not my teacher! That stupid map took me weeks and it was never right—and I thought—I should check the place names again and well, it just didn’t get done. The army has its own cartographers, anyhow.”
“You’re all rough around the edges now, William, but I know you’re just afraid Mr. Bourke won’t like it much. I’ll take it to him.”
William pulled it from Thankful with force this time. “Bourke isn’t here at the moment, and he’s less than happy with me over some foolish things.”
“Oh, so you were thrown from the army like your poor father?”
“My father wasn’t thrown from the army—though he should have been. I was NEVER in the army, you remember. Only for a visit. No one wanted to know me so . . . say, what are you smiling about?”
“You paint yourself as a right and true martyr. It tickles me.”
William glared at her. “How long have you been here? It feels like years and I’ve got— “
“A headache, I know. I know you better than you think, Willy,” Thankful laughed in adorable smugness.
“It’s Bill, I told you,” William said admiring her.
Thankful shook her head and went back to perusing the drawings and came upon a landscape. It was the prairie after a storm in late summer.
“I did that on the way out—for my father.”
“Why didn’t you send it? I don’t know much about real art, but it’s lovely and melancholy all the same.”
“So you think of it as real art?” William asked.
“Why, of course! Not like those awful paintings of bowls of peaches Mama buys up. Sometimes I feel I’ve grown up in a rotten fruit market.”
William nodded with a grin, remembering how his father used to make fun of the still life paintings at the Crenshaw home, but then his father knew nothing of art.
“Willy, your father would love this, I bet.”
“No, it’s too sad, and he likes to be happy all the time now,” William said, mocking his father’s tone.
“Is that a bad thing?” Thankful continued to admire the drawings until she found the nude prostitutes in acrobatic positions.
“William Weldon, so this is why you move to town? To frolic with filthy whores? I am so ashamed of you! What would everyone at home say? You’ve turned so bad. And why would you let me see these horrible drawings?”
“I didn’t! You took them. You Crenshaws try to run other people’s lives. I thought I had escaped that. How did you find me anyway?”
“Your father, he told me when I asked.
“He knew you were coming?”
“No, of course not, you scalawag. I told him I’d write you now and again so you wouldn’t be lonely.”
“I’m not lonely. I have friends enough,” William replied rubbing his scruffy chin.
“You just told me that no one liked you—unless you consider low women with their legs spread . . .”
“Thankful, don’t talk like that!”
She laughed. “I’ve had brothers to educate me. I’ve seen a woman’s body—I have one, you know.”
William pulled the papers away from her and tore them apart. “I don’t want to hear this. This whole day has me on nerve’s end.”
Excerpted from WEARY OF RUNNING. Read more about Buck Crenshaw and his misadventures when you buy the book today!
“The second installment in The Tenafly Road Series definitely did not disappoint. With the introduction of new characters and the return of familiar ones, Weary of Running made for an exciting read. The protagonist, Thankful, is the real highlight of the novel. She consistently makes very poor decisions but in the end, you can understand why she has made every last one of them. The story ranges from love and romance to questions of faith and morality. It does all this without being preachy and explores many angles of different aspects of life. This is one of the best books I have read in a long time.” Amazon Review
“Buck Crenshaw is my favorite dysfunctional lovable character.”
PART ONE HERE
PART TWO HERE
PART THREE HERE
PART FOUR HERE
PART FIVE HERE
PART SIX HERE
PART SEVEN HERE
PART EIGHT HERE
PART NINE HERE
PART TEN HERE
PART ELEVEN HERE
PART TWELVE HERE
PART THIRTEEN HERE
PART FOURTEEN HERE
PART FIFTEEN HERE
PART SIXTEEN HERE
PART SEVENTEEN HERE
PART EIGHTEEN HERE
PART NINETEEN HERE
PART TWENTY HERE
PART TWENTY ONE HERE
***Featured image from Pinterest.com
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Novel Inspiration: A Deserted Girl
What if you’re the favorite child and grow up beautiful in a house of secrets? You’re a smart girl and learn quite young how to skirt your parents’ anger with a smile and outward compliance. Your rebellion comes late and turns in upon itself. Your admirers see a blue dress and a seductive impetuosity. Your brothers think you’re a fool.
It’s hard to protect an impetuous girl. Emotions can’t be bottled in a dress. Needing love trumps sticking to a plan. When the man you love loves something else another man will do. This other man will convince the first that you, Thankful Crenshaw, have worth beyond your curls and flirtatious giggle. You assumed William Weldon already knew that. You assumed he’d leave his new found badness in town and rescue you from your foolishness. You thought you’d eventually tell him things about Buck and Fred and all you’ve kept to yourself for years.
But here you are alone.
Pretending, always pretending, in your blue dress that you know what you’re doing, that your heart isn’t torn. You have a pretty smile and curls that droop in the desert. Everyone admires the picture you present and that is all.
*****Thankful, is the real highlight of the novel. She consistently makes very poor decisions but in the end, you can understand why she has made every last one of them. Amazon review
ENTER TO WIN! (Final day for WEARY OF RUNNING!)
Goodreads Book Giveaway
Weary of Running
by Adrienne Morris
Giveaway ends December 12, 2016.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
