COMFORT: School Library Journal Review

Nothing like opening the email and finding a positive review! I won't paste the entire School Library Journal review here because it contains major spoilers! But please indulge me while I lift out a few key sentences.

The continuation of this determined protagonist's story is even richer than the first installment.

While readers of BLUE will be instantly drawn into this sequel, COMFORT stands alone, and newcomers will find much to appreciate in Ann Fay's attempts to come to terms with the confusion around her. Hostetter's beautiful story about rebuilding, with absorbing back matter about post-traumatic stress disorder and disability rights, is exceptional historical fiction.

It was a good email sort of day!

TUESDAY 2: Two Items In The Mailbox

I was planning to share two quotes today. But yesterday, my hubby came in from the mailbox with a large padded envelope. When I opened it up - voila!

These are two of three early copies that were sent to my publisher. Comfort is thicker than Blue or Healing Water. I knew it would be, of course. But still, I got used to a certain size so this thicker volume throws me a little.

Suddenly, I realize why the revisions took me so long!

The bulk of the books are out on the high seas -making their way steadily from China. One day, in the next few weeks, the UPS man will deliver my complimentary copies while I'm not looking. I'll open the back door and voila!

Meanwhile, I don't mind if you pre-order online! (Comfort, BTW, is a sequel to Blue)

UnCOVERing Blue's Sequel

The sequel to BLUE will be published in April '09. Part of it takes place at Georgia Warm Springs Foundation. And the cover includes a vintage photo from the campus pool.

Here's one of Ann Fay's moments in the therapeutic water there.

The first thing she did was start moving my legs to loosen them up. She was so gentle it reminded me of what the attendant had said: “Just relax and let us take care of you.”

And I have to tell you it felt so good after all the bearing up I’d done with my family, and going back to school, and even working for Ruth Whitener. I couldn’t hold on anymore. The tears started slipping out of the corners of my eyes.

Janice was turning my leg in a circular motion, but she stopped. “Did that hurt?”

I shook my head. I kept my eyes shut, but they still leaked and the tears ran off my face and into the Warm Springs pool. It seemed to me like that clean sparkly pool was a good place to let go of my sorrows.

Janice explained everything she was doing to me. She bent my legs in different positions. She rotated them. She rested my feet on her shoulders and massaged my leg muscles with her fingers. I don’t think she missed a single muscle from my belly to my toes. And she worked on my left arm because it had been affected by polio too. “You still have some weakness in your shoulder,” she said.

I think I must have cried the whole time. Not out loud or anything, just to myself. It was like Janice was working loose all the sadness and worry in me. I hoped it would go down the drain without clogging the pool filters.

PEACHY KEEN: THE STATE OF GEORGIA, JIMMY CARTER, AND WORLD PEACE

The copyedits are almost finished on my Blue sequel. While accepting (and occasionally rejecting) my copyeditor's changes, I ran across this paragraph.

In a way I hoped Daddy would go stay with Mamaw and Papaw Honeycutt. Because I knew what it was like down there. I figured if there was any place in the world that could make a sad person feel better, it was the state of Georgia.

In the sequel, Ann Fay travels to Georgia. In fact she even stays for awhile. After all, her grandparents live there. And there's a place called the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, and another known as The Little White House, and a spot in the road called Magic Hill. But mostly there is a softness in the air, a little romance, and a welcome from the people that makes Georgia so peachy keen.

I love that Jimmy Carter is from Georgia. And I love that, after his presidency, he went back to Plains and did powerful things such as write books and get involved with a great organization that changes peoples lives. I especially love that he works for peace around the world.

Assuming that Ann Fay lived to a ripe old age she was a Jimmy Carter fan because she knows first hand the after-effects of war. Here's a glimpse into how war changed things at her house.

“My daddy can’t run the tiller,” I said.

“Is it broke?”

“The sound of it scares him. He did two and a half rows and just quit. You should’ve seen how he was shaking.”

Junior hung his hat on a hook inside the living room door. And his car key beside the hat. Bessie went in the kitchen to get him some cake and milk.

He balanced the dish with the cake on his knee. He ate it without talking to me. He knew good and well I wanted him to come and till that garden for my daddy. But I could see he was going to make me beg. So I did.

“I’m asking you to till the garden for him, Junior. He wants to do right by his family. But loud noises bother him. And you know how loud that tiller is.”

“Your daddy run me off his property and I don’t suppose he’s going to let me come back two days later, now is he?”

“He won’t be home for another hour and a half. You’ve got time before he gets there.”

I knew Junior wanted to turn me down, but of course he couldn’t. And his momma was right there to make sure he didn’t. “Don’t argue. Just go,” she said. “Leroy needs you and you’ll kick yourself later if you don’t help out.”

Junior looked like he wanted to kick something right that minute. He ate one last big bite of cake and drank the rest of the milk. Then he stood and his mother took his dishes from him and carried them into the kitchen.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Lots of people ask me about Junior Bledsoe's involvement in the sequel. Yes he's in the book. And like everything else in Ann Fay's life, their relationship gets complicated. But that's all I'm saying on that subject!

Mostly I am saying that Comfort struggles with the subject of Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder (back then it was known as War Neurosis) At the time of the Civil War it was called Soldier's Heart. I could totally grab that phrase and use it for my book but uh, well the amazing Gary Paulsen has already done it!

In the wake of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan I did not have to go further than my radio to hear stories of post war trauma. In some ways, research has never been easier.

Unless you count the emotional toll. There is nothing light and easy about postwar trauma. Maybe that's why the sequel to Blue is called Comfort.

WRITING WHAT I FEEL

I thought this post would be about gardening (sort of a sequel to my last one) but that was before I failed to post yesterday, August 5. So it will have to wait.

Today, August 6, is the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima - when fertile gardens turned radioactive, countless lives disintegrated in a flash, and a dark cloud spread across our world.

In addition to writing what we know, we writers are admonished to write our passion.

So today I will not post about wholesome gardens and other forms of niceness. I will acknowledge to you that, for me, war is not an answer. Yesterday, I heard an NPR interview in which Robin Young asked Howard Zinn if we had any choice about going into Afghanistan. Didn't we have to respond?

I have not read Zinn's book. I am not making a statement for or against his version of history. But to me, his answer made sense.

Zinn's answer was basically that: We had to respond. But we struck out blindly. As a result, there are more terrorists in the world today. We have not found Osama Bin Ladin.

It is incomprehensible that our responses to crises are so petty and childlike. We are not playing with sticks and waterguns. We are destroying innocent lives. But we seem to lack the ability to empathize with pain that does not affect us personally.

I hesitate to continue because focusing on American lives almost glosses over the loss of life in other places. Such as Japan in 1945.

But I need to say that war destroys our lives too. It's inevitable that a soldier who has witnessed the atrocities of war will come home a different person.

The stories of war trauma I've heard and read while researching my BLUE sequel are terrifying. PTSD affects the entire family and generations to come.

According to the Department of Veterans Affairs many veterans who fought in WWII are living with war trauma more than 50 years later.

I hope that Ann Fay's daddy is not one of those. I hope he gets the help he needs. Ann Fay surely does her best for him.

Here's the scene from Comfort in which the bombing of Hiroshima hits home.

So this time, when Ellie switched it on during dinner, Daddy didn’t tell her not to. He just said, “Ellie did you ask to get up from the ta…?” He never even finished the question on account of he realized that the regular program had been interrupted for a special announcement by President Truman. In the middle of the day even!”

The president said that the United States had dropped a bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

Our boys had been dropping bombs on Japan for weeks. But according to the radio, this wasn’t any ordinary regular old bomb—it was an atomic bomb with more than two thousand times the power of the British “Grand Slam”.

I could see right off that my Daddy knew what a Grand Slam was. And I saw how knowing that, made him real worried about this new bomb. He had just picked up his knife and was fixing to spread a glob of mayonnaise on his light bread. But when he heard that, he jerked – as if the explosion had gone off in Hickory, North Carolina. His knife clattered to his plate, his face went tight at first, and then slack. I saw the light go right out of his eyes. And all of a sudden I got a real bad feeling - like my daddy had got hit with that bomb.

The man on the radio told us that the Japanese would not be able to withstand another such assault and that the war would likely be over real soon.

Well, Ellie for sure didn’t ask could she get up from the table this time. And Ida didn’t either. The two of them jumped up and took each other by both hands and danced around the kitchen like that. They were a-whooping and a-hollering and I felt like doing the same thing—at least until I saw my Daddy’s face.

Then I was confused. If the war was ending shouldn’t I be on my feet— on my crutches I mean—dancing and singing? But if I was to go by Daddy’s reaction, there wasn’t nothing to celebrate.

Momma reached over and put her hand on Daddy’s and said real quiet, “Leroy, this is good news – the war is nearly over. It’s just a matter of time.”

Daddy didn’t say a word. He just stared at the glob of mayonnaise on his light bread. I noticed it quivering ever so slightly. But Daddy was so still, I wasn’t even sure he was breathing.

I didn’t bother reaching for my crutches. I just hung onto the kitchen table and scooted back my chair and pulled myself to my feet. Then I locked my leg brace so I wouldn’t collapse onto the floor. I grabbed onto Daddy. And I hung onto him like he was the bread and I was the mayonnaise—and it had already been spread.

Most times when I hug my Daddy he pulls me up against him and lets me feel his heart beat. But this time he just sat there with his arms resting on the dinner table and it was like he didn’t even notice that Momma had took his hand and I had wrapped my arms around the front of his shoulders.

I could feel his Adam’s apple working up and down under my hand. And that scared me a little. So I put my head against his.

He just sat there. He didn’t turn and hug me. He didn’t even squeeze Momma’s hand. Or move at all. Not on purpose anyway. But then, I felt him shaking. The day was so warm and humid we were both damp with sweat and I was practically sticking right to him. But still yet, he was shivering.

I looked at Momma but she wasn’t looking at me. She was staring at him and I saw a kind of fear in her pretty brown eyes. They should have been crinkled shut with smiling on account of the war being almost over. But she was studying him so hard I could almost see the worry wrinkles being made.

It scared me to see my parents like that. I didn’t know what to do so I just left them be. I worked my way around the corner of the table and sat on my chair so I could pick up my crutches. Then I headed for the back porch.

Ida and Ellie were still dancing and singing some stupid made-up song about the war is over. I couldn’t get to the door on account of them jumping around.

“Stop it!” I said. “That man did not say the war is over! This is not something to be whooping and hollering about!”

I don’t know why I said that. But I knew it was true.

The man on the radio had said that we had more power than ever to destroy our enemy. He did not say that we were destroying ourselves in the process. But I was watching my Daddy when he heard the announcement. Without saying a word or hardly moving a muscle he had let me know that killing someone you hate isn’t the same as living in peace.