Nobody’s Child
A Novel
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
Chapter 1 An Abusive Husband; a Premature Birth The old dingy white farm house looked even greyer in the evening sky. The house was dwarfed by towering oak trees. The night was appallingly humid and hot. There wasn’t a breath of air moving. Sarah lay on the old iron bed. Perspiration engulfed her as she stared at the wall. The flickering light from the kerosene lamp cast an eerie shadow across the room. Sarah sobbed softly as she recalled the circumstances that brought her back home to live with her mother and her sister. Three months ago, Sarah's husband, Seth had beaten her savagely when he learned she was pregnant again. He had warned her that their two boys were all the children he could afford, and all the family he wanted. He did not want a third child to clothe and feed. Sarah tried everything she could think of to keep from getting pregnant, short of kicking Seth out of the bedroom. She was too afraid to do that. She even went to see Doc Scott, but he wouldn't advise her on the matter. He said it violated the Hippocratic Oath he had taken upon becoming a physician: “I will not give an abortive drug to a woman”, as roughly translated from the original Greek. “Children are gifts from God”, Doc told her. If a reliable, safe and moral method of birth control existed in 1922, Sarah was too young and too inexperienced to have known about it. Once Sarah realized that she was pregnant again, she was panic stricken. What should have been happy news, had left Sarah terrified that Seth would find out about her pregnancy before she found a way to tell him. She had managed to conceal her condition from Seth for nearly four months, until that fateful April morning. Seth had left for work in a neighbor’s field. Realizing he'd forgotten his water jug, he returned home to find Sarah standing in front of the bedroom mirror, dressing. She was wearing only her panties. Her protruding stomach gave her away. Seth flew into a mad rage. He grabbed Sarah by her hair and dragged her around the bedroom. Then he threw her against the wall. Calling her a lying bitch, he punched her repeatedly and kicked her. Fearing for her life and the life of her unborn baby, she screamed for him to stop. Mark, the older of their two young sons, tried to stop his dad by grabbing him around his legs, but Seth just kicked him away. He threw Sarah through the screen door, knocking it from its hinges. She landed on her back at the bottom of the steps. Sarah curled up in a ball to protect her unborn baby from further savagery. Seth filled his water bottle. Then he stepped over Sarah and walked off down the road, not even looking back. She was grateful that he had not delivered a parting kick as he passed. There was a chance that the baby within her was still alive. She lay on the ground, barely able to move. When she found enough breath to speak, she croaked out, “Mark, go get Grandma.....quick!" Mark ran as fast as he could to get Grandma Liz. She was working in her vegetable garden. She could hear him coming before she ever saw him. He was crying loudly as he ran. It took Liz a couple of minutes to calm him down enough to tell her what happened. She took Mark by the hand and together they walked quickly back to Sarah's house. Sarah was still lying on the ground where Seth had left her. Mark’s younger brother, Matt, was kneeling beside her. Liz took off her apron and covered Sarah's bare breasts, while at the same time, she assessed her injuries. One of Sarah's eyes was swollen shut. She had a large bruise on her forehead and blood was oozing from her nose and mouth. There was no way for Liz to know whether Sarah's unborn child had survived the beating. Liz helped Sarah to her feet and they went into the house. Liz washed and bandaged Sarah's cuts and bruises as best she could. They were both relieved a few minutes later, when Sarah felt the baby move. Liz rushed home, hitched up the horse and buggy, and returned for Sarah and the boys. She left the boys with their Aunt Cindy and drove Sarah into town to see Doc Scott. After his examination, he said, "It's a wonder that both of you survived this terrible beating. That man of yours ought to be shot for what he did to you. The good Lord was looking out for you and your baby today. Now go home and get some rest. You take care of yourself and let me, Liz and God take care of your baby." Liz Horton was a small, but strong, determined woman in her mid 40's. She had another daughter, Cindy, who had been blinded in an accident at the age of twelve. At first, they were hopeful that Cindy's vision would return after she healed from the head trauma. It did not. It was doubtful that Cindy would ever be able to live apart from her mother. But Cindy learned the layout of their house like the back of her hand. She grew to be great help with the cleaning, washing, and ironing. Liz barely scraped together a living from the old farm. She was left to work it alone after her husband, John, contracted pneumonia and died a couple of years earlier. “Big” John Horton didn’t believe in wasting money on doctors. He put his trust in the herbal remedies that had been passed down to him from his mother and his grandparents, who were part Indian. “Big” John tried to power his way through his illness. He kept working until he got so weak he crawled into bed and finally allowed Liz to call Doc Scott for help. Doc came right away, but by then, there was nothing left to do but to pull the sheet over John’s head.
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
Sarah was severely beaten by her abusive husband while she was pregnant with Amy. He was trying to kill the unwanted life inside her. Mother and baby survived, but Amy was born prematurely, weighing just over a pound. Grandma Liz, a midwife and an old country doctor, fought desperately to give little Amy the chance to live. Listening to that story always made Amy feel close to God. When Grandma Liz, Amy’s caretaker, suffered a stroke, she solicited help from her brother-in-law and his wife, who had lost their own child at birth. Under the guise of helping, they stole Amy away to the swampy woods of southeast Texas, where little Amy nearly died of malaria…… another close call. God was really watching out for Amy. The “Great Depression” hit the country in 1929. Rural Texas and America were locked in its stranglehold. Amy was six. She wandered East and West Texas with her aunt and uncle, seeking work to buy food. Survival was the name of the game. They slept in their car, under the sky and in abandoned houses. They picked cotton; they tenant farmed, cut firewood to sell and raised hogs for market. By the time Amy was twelve, she could work like a full grown man. She nearly didn’t make it to twelve. When Amy was eleven, she nearly drowned in a creek. God put a total stranger in the woods at just the right time to rescue her. Amy was certain that God had saved her life for some special purpose or person. “Nobody’s Child” chronicles Amy’s story from her earliest childhood recollections, through the hard years of the “Depression” and later as a young mother awaiting her husband’s return from service in World War II. Her story is filled with both funny and sad moments and is told in a compelling faith based narrative.
About the Author
Growing up in rural Texas during the Great Depression was challenging enough for any family. In Jewel’s case, her challenge was exacerbated by being raised by a verbally and emotionally abusive aunt. Mental anguish for Jewel manifested in her adult life, stemming from this destructive relationship. Jewel dealt with her emotional pain by writing it down on paper, in an unpublished autobiographical account. Sometime later, she changed the names of the principles involved, switched it to a third person account and submitted it to a publisher who was promoting a writing contest. It was called “The Search For Amy by Julie Dean. (Jewel’s full name was Jewel Dean Wheeler). She received a letter of rejection of her submission. Disappointed, she never tried to revise or resubmit her manuscript. But privately, she still wanted her story told. I married into Jewel’s family in 1972. My wife, Janice, was Jewel’s daughter-in-law. Jewel always treated us like part of her family. We were always included in all the family gatherings and remained close until her death on November 6, 2016. Knowing that writing is my “spiritual gift,” Jewel asked me to rewrite her story in the summer of 2016. She gave me her manuscript. Regretfully, I did not begin writing “Nobody’s Child” until three months after Jewel’s death. Because she was not available to me to answer questions concerning the historical, geographic and cultural context of her writing, the novel became a work of fiction. The rural Texas towns named in “Nobody’s Child” are real places, but they were randomly selected by me and are used fictiously. The historical context of the depression era was readily available to me through research on my computer. Since I did not know any of the principles involved, I was free to develop Jewel’s primary characters and added a few secondary characters. Any similarity to actual people, living or dead is purely coincidental. I also included stories of my own invention that fit into Jewel’s narrative. I mimicked Jewel’s country wisdom as much as possible to do the story telling. “Nobody’s Child” exists as a “Word” document on my computer, copyright of John Dvorak, September 2017. It is a Christian “faith based” novel consisting of 35 chapters, containing 86,088 words including the summary and information about the authors.