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PRECIOUS JEWELS AND FIREFLIES AVAILABLE ON KINDLE

I may not have been born in this century, but I'm still moving with the times!  

Fireflies is now on Kindle!
Precious Jewels, A Seventh-Day Adventist Family Saga is on Kindle!

A note to family and friends regarding the Kindle edition of Precious Jewels, A Seventh-Day Adventist Family Saga:  The Kindle version does not contain the complete collection of photographs that the print edition has.  If your life intersected with those of the characters in the book, you might prefer the print edition.

PRECIOUS JEWELS: TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION - No Compromise?

When Pearl first left Jtun over religious differences, her parents tried to get them to reconcile by sharing their own story of how they had compromised over religious differences years ago.  Do you think Pearl's parents should have compromised their religious beliefs in order to save their marriage? 

Jtun said he was willing to compromise his beliefs, but Pearl was not. Do you think there are compromises that can be made so that spouses who believe differently can live together harmoniously?  If so, what compromises would you recommend and why? What compromises would you advise against and why?

PRECIOUS JEWELS: TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION - Racism

Racism is an underlying theme in Precious Jewels.  In the beginning of the book, the racism of the characters is obvious when the word "nigger" is spoken.  In what other ways do the characters reveal their racial bias throughout the narrative?  Do you think that racism still exists today?  If so, in what forms do you find racism happening?

Although Pearl never questioned her racist beliefs, her daughter Grace finally concluded that she had to confront her own racism and overcome it.  Do you think she succeeded?  Why or why not?

This graphic came from Pearl's copy of Swanee River, the one that Jtun gave her when she was a girl, the one that was beside her bed when she died.  Although art depicting black people in that time period were usually unflattering caricatures, I was surprised to find that the renderings in that particular issue of Swanee River were thoughtfully done.  I particularly like this one, in which I imagine that the book that the lady is reading to the man is the Bible. 

TINY SCENES FROM PRECIOUS JEWELS 1898

TINY SCENES: SERVANT PROBLEM

 Pearl and Jtun Holt are displeased when their servant and former slave won't work on Saturday.

A PAINTING STRAIGHT OUT OF PRECIOUS JEWELS

I found this beautiful painting by Harry Anderson on Oakwood University's website.  They have a lot of information pertaining to early Adventism in the American South, and I referred to their pages often when writing the first chapters of Precious Jewels.  Thank you, Oakwood!

The man in the painting is obviously Edson White, owner and builder of the Morning Star Riverboat, on his  mission to minister to the recently freed slaves.  The lady is not identified, so I am free to imagine that maybe she is Talitha, straight out of the pages of Precious Jewels!  

A HIGHER STANDARD

I was recently called to task over my use of the term "a higher standard" in the synopsis of my book, PRECIOUS JEWELS, A SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST FAMILY SAGA.  The phrase appears on the back cover of the book (and elsewhere) and reads as follows:

"Precious Jewels is the story of a real, flawed people who, nevertheless, hold to a higher standard and an abiding faith in Jesus."

This, said my critic, is just the sort of prejudice that contributed to turning him away from Adventism.  The idea that Adventist standards are "higher" than, say, those of their Lutheran neighbors at the church down the way, or their Jewish friends at the synagogue, or any number of other folks who experience the sacred by observing specific codes of ideals, practices and beliefs certainly deserves to be qualified by an admission that the measurement used is subjective.

In fact, I wasn't even measuring.  The expression "higher standard" was used so often in my formative years that I admit that it automatically fit itself into the statement without exciting any thought from the author of what "higher" might be comparing itself to.  Read as it is written, it certainly implies that there is a comparison, and one then asks, "higher than what?"  In the context of the story, did Pearl's conversion to Adventism consist of taking up a standard of thought and behavior that was higher than, say, that of her parents, Anthony and Sarah, who found a way to a loving compromise when religion caused a conflict in their own lives?

Pearl would probably have said, Yes, that's exactly what it means.  To be vegetarian, she would have said, is a higher standard of diet that that of eating meat, and so forth and so on.  Point by point, practice by practice, we may debate whose standard on a particular stand is "higher." 

Did Pearl become a better person when she embraced Adventism?  Even the family -- perhaps especially her family -- might debate that.  She interpreted her beliefs to require a stern and rigid sort of life, and all these years after her death, her grandchildren haven't completely forgiven her for her inability to see the person in front of her before the ideology inside of her.

Pearl and her daughter Grace embody two sides of the spectrum of how religious devotion affects a person.  Pearl becomes more caustic as the years progress, until none but her daughters who knew her in sweeter years can love her.  But Grace who believes as completely in Adventism as does Pearl, leaves a different legacy.  The same people who couldn't love Pearl still mourn the death of Grace, whose generosity and unconditional love was nearly not of this world.

One religion, played on two very different human instruments, display two contrasting faces of what Adventism may be.  It would be very easy to say that Grace held to a "higher standard" because the resonance of her life struck such a beautiful tone in nearly every heart that encountered her, and to infer that because she was an Adventist then Adventism is the way to go.  It might be equally tempting to say that Pearl fell from a higher standard when she held to her beliefs so stringently that she appeared to be uncaring of anything else, and therefore Adventism might be avoided as a narrow, harsh religion. 

I suppose that my Adventist teachers who instilled the term "higher standard" into my subconscious did indeed mean that the Adventist way was superior, as this is what many if not all people believe about their own way of thinking. 

I, however, visualize "higher standard" as a flag on a tall pole, and "holding to" it as holding that flag up against a wind that would tear it down if not for a great effort.  In this sense, both Grace and Pearl held to the higher standard in the face of the winds of desire and heartbreak that buffeted them. 

Flags generally represent nations, but they can also represent beliefs and symbolize our most cherished values.  To raise the flag and to hold to its standard does involve the sense of height, for a flag is raised above one's head, and to raise it higher means to keep it within ones' sight.  A lower standard is a flag not raised--or one not raised high enough so that one may keep one's eyes on the goal.   So the "higher standard" that I speak of  is a comparison with itself, the standard raised or not raised.

TINY SCENES: 1896

TINY SCENES FROM PRECIOUS JEWELS: 

Thanksgiving at the Holt plantation; the Holt family agrees that the Morning Star riverboat is a nuisance.

Let Us Drink Tea and Read Voraciously

Photo by Sarah Jane.  It was a lovely visit!

EX-SDA BLASTS PRECIOUS JEWELS, A SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST FAMILY SAGA

I suppose it was inevitable that my book about an Adventist family would come to the attention of the anti-Adventist community sooner or later.  There are several websites devoted to debunking Ellen G. White and Adventism in general, and these guys are vigilant, staying up to date on the latest news within Adventism.

I met one of them on a forum where I had posted a synopsis of Precious Jewels, A Seventh-Day Adventist Family Saga.  He (I'll call him "Ex-SDA") posted his own commentary, calling my book a "proselytizing effort" and advising all who purchased it to view some videos produced by exAdventist Outreach in order to get a "brief history and evolution of the church."

Ex-SDA went on to say that he was ashamed that he had ever been an Adventist, but since his family had been Adventists from the time of the Millerite movement in the 1840s, he didn't have "a sporting chance to figure out what's what" until he was well into his teens… 

The folks who crusade against Adventism argue that they are more informed because they read things that Adventists don't. 

Yet this fellow was carrying on about what he thought my book was about without having read it. 

This weakened his arguments considerably.  Nevertheless, some interesting issues were raised.

First, is my book a proselytizing effort?  Ex-SDA said he was proud of his family's other accomplishments, but if he ever wrote a book about them, he'd weed out the "cultic doctrine of Seventh Day Adventism."

While I wish Ex-SDA the best of luck in writing his own family saga with the religion censored out of it, my family's story would be incomprehensible without the context of the religion.   How can I write about Adventists without mentioning Adventism?  Why would one even try?  No, my book is not intended to proselytize, but reading my book is like a trip home, and home was an Adventist one.

In the course of our interchange, Ex-SDA asked me if I had heard of some of the major books and people in the anti-Adventist movement.  I have indeed.  (In fact, one of the people on the forefront of the movement is one Dale Ratzlaff whose family were neighbors of my family during the time period of the later chapters of Precious Jewels.)  In addition, I was alive in the 1980s when the current debunking movement began with The White Lie, and most of my immediate circle left the church over it.  Today, there seem to be two camps -- those who have read the debunking literature and were unable to retain their Adventist beliefs afterward; and those who refused to read the books at all, and remain in the faith. 

Clearly, the decision of whether or not to read the debunking literature is a very serious decision -- and that is my objection to those anti-Adventist crusaders who pressure people to read The White Lie and related material.  If the bitterness of their remarks and the angry sound of their narratives is an indicator, their motivation isn't to help people live safer, kinder, more peaceful lives but to destroy a belief system they despise.  Their destructive agenda counter-balances any merit their arguments may have.

The main characters in Precious Jewels lived their whole lives believing completely in the Adventist way.  They were colorful, even eccentric, characters, whose uniqueness was intensified by their unique beliefs.  They lived lives of purpose and fulfillment, and their impact was so strong that we who knew them speak of them today as if they left us only yesterday.  That is how they were and that is how I have written them.

My words to Ex-SDA and his fellows are the following: "You may disagree with me regarding what my book is about or how I have told the story, and that is your right, but… 

before you draw a conclusion, please…

...READ THE BOOK!"

Unforgettable Characters.  Pictured are the main characters in Precious Jewels, A Seventh-Day Adventist Family Saga, taken about four years after making the epic journey from northern Minnesota to the Carolina coast in a caravan like the one pictured.  They had been living in a chicken coop near the Lake of The Woods, and their lifestyle didn't change that much after they went South.  (Chicken coops as homes and schoolhouses keep cropping up in the story.)  Missing from the photo is the home-made camper built on a truck chassis that also made the trip.  The portable coop in the forefront of the photo would have made the trip also, along with the dog, a cow, and a flock of chickens, plus a newborn baby and toddler sisters.  The year was 1937, top speed for the journey would have been about 25 mph, so the trip took a good 3 weeks!  

THE FACTS, MA'AM, JUST THE FACTS

I learned at an early age that facts, meticulously recorded for posterity, are not always the truth.  I was eight years old the summer that Seavy Wooten Brinson, Sr. called at our house, researching his book on my father's family history.  I'll never forget that day because my mother graciously invited him in and proceeded to lie to him about my family tree.

I remember Mr. Brinson, whom I met only once, as a dignified older gentleman.  I seem to recall that he arrived in a large automobile that looked rather too important to be sitting in the dusty driveway of our tiny Jim Walter cottage.  He wore a suit, wire-rimmed spectacles, and carried a briefcase filled with research on the Malpass and Brinson families of North Carolina.  It was obvious that he was going about important business, and I was terribly impressed to know that he was writing a book, and therefore was an author, a word which I had trouble pronouncing, but which I, too, aspired to become.

 It was almost certainly summertime on a week day, for my father wasn't home and I wasn't at school.  It is a late summer sort of memory, filled with the kind of light that has a sepia cast as if the day is passing into history before our eyes, which it certainly was.

My mother was expecting Mr. Brinson for he had been gracious enough to telephone before he came.  She had dressed appropriately for receiving a visitor, with every hair in place, and the living room was even cleaner than usual.  I, too, was coerced into my better play clothes.  It was probably my coordinated short set with the red plaid shorts, collar and cuffs, contrasting against a screamingly white shirt which would betray me by showing even the slightest smudge if I even thought about resorting to my usual activates.

Into this readiness and politeness, walked Mr. Brinson with his briefcase which he opened on the coffee table while chatting with my mother, whose smiles and offers of a glass of ice water hid her intention to lie to him. 

            

She should have warned me, she really should have.

            

As it was, I was taken completely by surprise when she rattled off the names of my Grandma Annie and her brothers and sisters.  At the end of this impressive list of eight children, she added my father as the youngest brother.  

            

"But, Mother!" I protested.  She ignored me.  I pulled on her arm.  "Mother, that's not right!"

            

She still ignored me, shifting so that she blocked me from Mr. Brinson's direct line of sight.  He was focused on his papers, carefully spelling our names so that my own Anne correctly had the "E".

            

"Mother, you're putting Daddy in the wrong family."

            

Then my mother turned upon me her famous dark-eyed glare, the one that could turn a kid to stone.   "Be.  Quiet." she said, and I knew that if I persisted that I would regret it most keenly after Mr. Brinson left.

            

So I sat there, in scandalized obedience as it was recorded for all time that my grandmother was my aunt.

            

When Mr. Brinson drove away, my mother reminded me that though it was true that I was my grandmother's grandchild, and not her niece, that some people still didn't like to say so.  A teenage, unwed mother from the nineteen thirties had a lot of shame to outgrow, so for my grandmother's sake, said my mother, it was best to avoid recording her shame forevermore.

            

"Besides," said my mother, prophetically, "We're probably not the only incorrect entry in Mr. Brinson's book."

            

Thus I learned early and graphically that you can't believe everything that is written down.  As I have researched for my own book about my mother's people, Precious Jewels, A Seventh-Day Adventist Family Saga, I have kept this wisdom in mind.  Even census records are not necessarily correct, as in the case where my mother's uncle and aunt, Harry and Ruby Denton, are listed as a brother and sister in the Tom Denton household rather than as husband and wife that they truly were.  I would imagine that this was an error on the part of the census taker, rather than the result of deliberate misdirection, but it goes to show that documenting the facts is a perilous journey.

            

Many years after the publication of Seavy Brinson's The James Malpass Family, 1760-1964, I acquired a copy of my own.  The first thing I did was to cross through the incorrect entry and write in the correction so that, in my copy at least, I am proudly Grandma Annie's grandchild.  For all time.

Pictured: Grandma Annie & Me, some years past

BY THE GRAVE OF UNA PEARL

This is where it begins.  The first scene in Precious Jewels takes place right here, when the inscription on the grave stone was new.  It reads "UNA PEARL, Daughter of Jtun Potts & Carolina P. HOLT, and the dates. 

Una Pearl Holt  was born on Valentine's Day 1895, and died in December of the same year.

There is room around the grave for more plots.  but a hundred years later, Una's grave is a lonely place, encircled only by a ragged wrought-iron fence which has the same crumbling texture as the years-old layering of leaves that cover the sarcophagus.

It is clear that her parents intended to be buried beside her someday, but the family was ripped apart at the seams by the events that came in the wake of this child's death.  At this gravesite.

Instead, her father died in Memphis, and her mother died in the wilderness of coastal Carolina.  Her sisters who were born later, also scattered to the winds, one on the west coast, one on the east.

A hundred years later in the 1990s, my husband Kevin and I found the grave, and I took this photograph.  The grave is located in Yazoo County, Mississippi, on Graball-Freerun Road, across the road from Bethany Church where other family members who died later rest in the newer cemetery in their own enclosed Holt Family section, which has seen better care.  Little Una Pearl appears to have been forgotten, until today as we move aside the brambles and brush aside the leaves, and speak her name. 

Who would have dreamed a hundred years ago, as the young parents mourned beside this same grave, that their great-granddaughter would trace their footsteps to this place?  Would they be surprised to know that their stories mattered so far in the future?

And what about me, I wondered.  Will my life matter later on?  I have no descendents to trace my steps on a sacred journey of discovery a hundred years from now -- but neither did Una Pearl have descendents.  Her life wasn't a year long, yet she changed my entire family history.

Those who change history aren't always the prominent, obvious people, nor those with droves of descendents.  A person whose life impacts future generations could be anyone -- it could be you.  It might even be me.

Which Pharaoh? Which Tunnel? The Problem with Context for Handed-down Stories

A problem with stories that have been passed down orally is their tendency to lose their context.  We often hear these stories as children or as distracted adolescents who don't wonder about the wherefores.  By the time we wonder about the supporting details, the storytellers are gone.

A prime example of this are the Bible stories which were passed down orally for generations.  By the time someone decided to record the Bible stories on something less porous than human memory, some pertinent details had fallen out.  We who write down these things are left with the problem of context.  We know that Moses grew up in the court of a Pharaoh.  The annoying question is WHICH PHAROAH?  Was it Thutmose, whose name resembles that of Moses?  Long answer short: We don't know. 

One trick of the skilled storyteller is vagueness.  In order to tell a story that is no longer complete, we improvise.  So Moses grows up in the court of Pharaoh who has no other name.  His story is so powerful that it transcends the detail.  Most of us don't care who Pharaoh was.  It is Moses' story that grabs us and holds on, and a nameless Pharaoh still serves his purpose by being the antagonist who spurs the Israelites to follow Moses into freedom.

This was my challenge with my grandmother Grace's miracle stories.  Grace, daughter of the star-crossed Jtun and Pearl Holt, believed in miracles in our time.  I grew up hearing Grace's first-hand stories of angels and deliverance.  But if she ever told me where they happened, I wasn't paying attention and neither was anyone else in the family.

In chapter three of Precious Jewels, we come to the first of Grace's miracle stories.  In this story, she encounters an angel in a tunnel when she is a little girl.  As I started pulling the details together to write the book, I realized I didn't have much information beyond the bare bones of the miracle story. 

Where exactly was Grace's tunnel? 

Through census records, city directories, and Seventh-Day Adventist publications of the early 1900s, I was able to trace the steps of the young, headstrong mother and her two little girls, from Yazoo City to Vicksburg to Jackson, Mississippi.  These locations weren't exactly a land o'tunnels. 

As I continued to get online "hits" on Pearl, Ruby and Grace Holt, I found the greatest number to be in Jackson.  Could I convincingly place a tunnel in Jackson, Mississippi?

I feared not.  It seemed an insurmountable problem until I began thinking out of the box.

I pulled up Google's streetview feature and virtually prowled the streets of present-day Jackson with an open mind.  I prowled in the neighborhood where they had lived and attended church, and where Grace's sister Ruby married her red-haired Yankee.  Most of the neighborhood is now an urban wasteland, but as I passed derelict houses and vacant lots, I discovered the W. Pearl Street train trestle.

Large enough to accommodate several train tracks, it is supported by rows of arches disappearing into the dark center.  It looked like a tunnel to me, and I could well imagine the fear it inspired in a little girl nearly 100 years ago, a little girl who had already formed the habit of turning to God when she was afraid.

I sat transfixed in my chair with a goofy grin all over my face.  Maybe rediscovering the location of Grace's tunnel wasn't a cool as seeing an angel, but it felt mighty fine!

So Rudely Interrupted

Tornadoes have ripped through my part of the country, something we aren't accustomed to having.  Eight days without electricity has put me behind and made me irritable even as I counted my blessings -- my loved ones are ok, my home is ok, and the weather is neither too hot nor too cold.  After the storm, most of those 8 days during which I lived like Grace and Ralph in Precious Jewels, were blue-sky days, the sort of days where one can sit on a front porch hammock with a very dear friend, while birds twittered (tweeted?) in the trees, while we waited for rescue.

GASP! PRECIOUS JEWELS may contain sleaze!

Precious Jewels, A Seventh-Day Adventist Family Saga, might have been brought to you by an Adventist publishing house, but I am afraid that my family were a little bit too human.  Several reviewers in the publishing company recommended that the book be published as long as the "sleaze" was removed.   

"Out!" cried one reviewer.  "I want the sleaze removed!"

Sleaze?  In my book?!  Well…

I admit that perhaps my great-grandparents, Jtun and Pearl Holt, married too many times (although mostly to each other.) 

Then there's that troublesome compromising scene at Holt House in chapter five.  It's not explicit, but it is clearly conveyed what happened…and it was naughty.

In chapter six, things get complicated for Jtun and Pearl's daughters, Grace and Ruby, when their paths cross that of Yankee schoolteacher brothers.  And on we go, this family that is so prone to controversy!

"These people are sinning too much," I can imagine the reviewers worrying.  And perhaps more importantly, "Can this book be read aloud in a family setting?" 

My answer to both those concerns is to refer them to the Bible.  The Bible is read to children and it is not a book of saints. 

Excuse me?  Am I comparing my book to the Bible?  Well, yes, but not to say that is of equal import.  Specifically, I am comparing the family saga in Precious Jewels to the family sagas of the Bible.  There was some pretty big sinning in those Bible pages, but the power of the Bible stories is that those people had beliefs, and though they didn't always measure up, those beliefs defined them.

Despite the "sleaze," Precious Jewels is a faith-driven story of four generations of passionate people, torn between their hearts and the burning desire to do what God wanted them to do.  That is the story that I had to tell, and I couldn't tell it if I extracted the "sleaze." 

So the publishing company and I parted ways, although I think we both respect the stand of the other.  They have specifications that they must hold to as a denominational publisher, just as I have specifications that are important to me as a teller of stories about real people.

BEWARE! PRECIOUS JEWELS is Politically Incorrect!

Already eyebrows have lifted because the word "nigger" appears several times in the first chapter of Precious Jewels.  I have been informed that I have committed a transgression against "political correctness" in allowing my characters to speak as they most certainly did speak in the late 1890s at the Holt home in Yazoo County, Mississippi.

A hundred years later, the Mississippi Holts still recalled the shock that rippled through the family when Carolina Pearl Holt converted to "that nigger religion" and that was the term that was still used in reference to the Seventh-Day Adventist church when I interviewed a 92-year-old distant cousin in Mississippi in the 1990's.  She was still of the opinion that her Aunt Pearl had lost her mind.

I have in my possessions the articles that were published in the Yazoo Sentinel, some of them written by my great-grandfather, Jtun Holt.  These articles, "politically correct" in their day, were full of racist rhetoric.  I have watered the narrative down considerably in order not to over-use a word that the present day "word police" are trying to abolish.  But I am against the abolition of a word just as I question the burning of books for fear of the knowledge inside them. 

It is not the word "nigger" that is evil.  It is how it has been abused.  To forbid it to be ever written is silly.

"Nigger" is simply the word "Negro" spoken with a Southern inflection, and "Negro" means "black." 

That being said, its meaning has been changed through the way it was used, just as the swastika's meaning changed from an ancient symbol of good fortune to something sinister and evil when the Nazis took it for their own.  We cannot use it nowadays for decoration because of the Nazis.  But we can write about it and show its image in the context of history, just as we can describe the ignorant ideas about the Jewish people that led to the Holocaust.

I have considered rewording the first chapter of Precious Jewels in order to omit the word "nigger", but found that it came across awkwardly and artificial.  The fact is my ancestors were racists, and so have I portrayed them in the story.  The issue of racism comes full circle in this family saga as each generation encounters it and ultimately chooses to overcome it.