Would you read past this first page?

Here's the deal: I'm looking for people to tell me if they'd read past the first page if it were the beginning of a book they picked up.




1979

His little body burned Maizy's fingers. As soon as her husband closed the side door, drafts of cold air snaking around her ankles, Maizy lowered the infant into the playpen and let him drop the last inch, wringing her hands. He fussed, the scratchy radio static sound, but she turned away. Little good it did though; she could see his newborn blue eyes and his hair lightening from black to brown in her mind’s eye nonetheless.
 The old ceramic kitchen heater hissed as she stared out the windows etched with snowflakes as finely laid out as German shneirenshnidt paper art, lit pink and green and blue from Christmas lights lazily left out too long, lolling into this dark February morning.

Her fingers flew to the heat of her neck, scratching beneath the high neck of her house coat. The skin was red and dappled purple, all the way down her chest. She raked it nearly raw every time the baby nursed.

Maizy pressed her hands into her skin to still her fingers, heat surging from the spaces between them. As she paced, the old floorboards protested her every step, and her slippers on the new linoleum, harvest gold, squawked.

She banged through the kitchen door, sped through the living room and flung herself out onto the porch, gulping air that froze her lungs. She ran down the few steps, the cement roughing up her flimsy house slippers, as she glimpsed the towers of Three Mile Island. She was so close. In two minutes, she could be panting on the bank of the Susquehanna River. She could be frozen, numb, out.

She felt her eyelashes sink onto her cheeks. Something had to change. Itching began behind her ears and the back of her neck, and her face felt as hot as if she’d sat in the face of the fireplace’s open flames; but she’d not even struck the match to start the fire yet.

As she walked back into her hissing, protesting kitchen, she shivered, delayed. But she entered a different woman than the one who’d run from it minutes earlier. She'd made a decision. No one would understand, but she had to do it nonetheless. Just like no one had understood why she believed, before he was even born, that her baby would die, why she’d never expected to bring him home from the hospital, why she’d never put the gifts of clothes into drawers like he lived there, why she’d never even bought anything larger than three months, the age he was now.  Her husband couldn’t understand why she’d avoided holding him any longer than necessary, why she had to steel herself, why she had to work so hard to protect herself from a scrawny infant not even ten pounds yet. So he, they, wouldn’t understand this either.

She took a shower, leaving the baby in the kitchen, and when she dressed this time, she put on regular clothes. She would not be nursing again, she said aloud to calm the welts on her skin. Her doctor would be very concerned; he had impressed upon her from the beginning how such a low birth-weight, malnourished baby benefited from breast milk especially. But she just couldn’t do it anymore. She began devising how she could maybe even bottle-feed him without touching him. When she held him, her skin crawled, her mind raced, her heart beat so rapidly she couldn’t talk, move or even hardly breathe. She’d thought it was her penance to endure it, but she was beyond that now. The urgency to feed him breast milk for his health didn’t weigh so much, seeing that she knew so definitively that the thread of his life was to be cut short. Any day now.




Ok, so would you want to turn the page? Leave comments below. Why or why not?


Secondly, if you answer that, yes, you'd want to know more of the story, which of these descriptions of the whole story sounds like a better read?


1) You read the story of 2 couples who are connected, Maizy and Curt, and Ash and Ginny, all telling their viewpoints of the events in their lives in the year 2008-2009; Maizy and Curt's memories flash back to 1978 occasionally.


2) The book alternates between the story of Curt and Maizy in 1979, and the story of Ash and Ginny in 2008, both being told independently of the other, and as if each is the present (though you'll know by the dates that one happened earlier than the other). Instead of seeing an older Maizy and Curt remembering their young life, you'll see their young life, and you'll also see how Ginny and Ash view Maizy and Curt in 20008. While the 2 stories don't comment on each other, the reader will be able to make connections and draw parallels as they figure out how the two stories are intertwined.


So if you have any thoughts or find one more interesting than the other, let me know in the comments. I'm torn between continuing my writing as is or overhauling its whole structure.

Overhaul the way I'm writing my book???

Ok, I've written that a recent reading aloud of an excerpt from my novel put me in a moment of doubt (read here, if you wish), about everything from my ability to tell the stroy to wondering if it was after-all worthy of being told, or if I should be doing it differently. Then I read a column in Writer's Digest where debut novelists talks about how they broke into the business, and something one said tipped me off on a different way to structure my book.

For background info, what I've been doing is this: telling a story in 2008-2009 thru the points of view of 4 people--Ash and Ginny, a nearing-30 married couple, and Maizy and Curt, Ash's parents. One way of describing my novel is saying that it tries to show how Ash is affected by the way his parents lived their lives, and more specifically, how the choices they made surrounding his conception and his early childhood affected him.

How to start the story, as well as how to tell it, has been a problem from the beginning. Novelist Joyce Magnin read my prologue and didn't like how much backstory was in the opening (point well taken) and suggested maybe I'm trying to do what's a called a framing device, which she did for her first novel. I've determined I'm not doing that. Tracy Higley also read it, and I honestly forget what she said, other than that I should skip the prologue and just start it as chapter 1.

A writer's critique group has read the prologue and opening chapters, and I got a lot of negative feedback about the amount of back story there too. Also, after I'd reworked that prologue/chapter 1 ad nauseum to get it shorter, cleaner, I'd lost the immediacy of Maizy's experience. I'm writing in third person, so I can't use I to get the reader in her head, and all I'd done to shorten and cut backstory try to left my readers saying there was just too much distance between the reader and Maizy--exactly when I need to be hooking the reader, making it impossible for them to NOT turn the page! I cut so much out in my attempt to make backstory shorter, that I lost whatever good was going on before.

Then what hit me when I read the WD article was this: why does it have to even be backstory? What I've got is 2 stories, one suffering from the burden of being in the backstory, though I struggle and struggle trying to put too much attention on it, too many words in it. So why not have two stories running simultaneously, as if they are happening presnetly? That's not unheard of. All this time, I've been writing the 2008-2009 story, with the 1978-1979 story coming out in pieces as backstory through the remembrances of Maizy and Curt. But I've run into problems with this. 1) I regret that the 50-something year old Maizy and Curt remember their earlier life thru the lens of their experiences since--it's very difficult to get to the very naive and raw feelings they had in 1978 without casting whole long portions of the novel in flashback. My answer to this now is, why does it have to be flashback? I've read many a novel twining stories of two different time periods, each being told as if they happening in the present, and the reader can see connections as the 2 stories unravel, although they hardly comment on each other. I love stuff like that. Why can I not tell my story this way? Let us watch Maizy and Curt live their younger lives, and when the 2008-2009 story makes reference to them, we can see they are older and how changed they are. What I've been doing is backwards from that--all the present-happenings we witness are when they are older and I have to try to reach back in their lives to show readers why they are the way they are, when the real heart of the story, its impetus, is in the past.

2) Another problem I've mentioned before in this blog is that I like the germ of a gothic trope I've got going on with the house. But I didn't know how to carry it through in the second half of the book. I think I'm beginning to see though that if I restructure the telling of Maizy and Curt's story, that may be easier.

This is not a simple idea though. It's overwhelming. It requires I rewrite nearly half of what I've written!  (That's daunting when I was feeling I was barely 75% done with my first draft. But it also gives relief because it takes away some things I didn't want to do or didn't know how to do. I didn't really want to delve into Curt's inner world thru his long illness. If i have him be a teller of the story only in 1978-1979, then all I need write of his illness in 2008-209 is thru the eyes of his son and daughter-in-law. I won't have to be in the heads of them . Though I may miss being in Maizy's head at that age. I'll have to rework things I like about her so that other characters can observe them, if I don't let her eyes tell her part of the 2008-2009 story. (But then, who's to say I could have them as POV 2009

One thing I do see is that if I run both stories simultaneously, it will be very keenly dependent on how I interweave them, though initially it could be easy--I can just write each straight out without worrying yet for correlation points. I see already that the pacing will be very different between the two stories. The modern-day one covers a year, the second one may cover a few, but with more gaps, whereas the modern-day one will be a week-to-week plot. The big demand it will place on me, if I go forward with this overhaul, is that I will have to write a lot more of the 1979 stuff that I never did. I have a few scenes visualized--as much as I needed for flashbacks, but I've never really followed Maizy and Curt completely thru their experiences of that time. That will be demanding.

Right now, my principal characters are multi-generational--2 turning 30, 2 nearing 60. If I switch, all my characters will be in the same age bracket. That will definitely change the voice of the book.

But I'm really excited what this change could do for the one theme and using the house as a symbol of sorts.

What I dislike about big changes like this that get my juices flowing is that I can't really take advantage of it in one big gulp like my mind wants to. I'll just have to settle for working at it in sips, hoping the enthusiasm that will wane can sustain me thru the months of rewrites... And where do you start without feeling like whatever you do isn't futile?

I think I will start with my prologue/first chapter with Maizy. I'll see how i like the feel of just letting her story be the story, not backstory. (And here it is, the fruits of my short labor this afternoon: my new prologue. SO far, I like the new prospect. I feel better about this version of the prologue than I've felt about any. I'm hoping it gives the reader enough info to make them want to know more, with nothing extraneous. i want it to propell the reader to the next page.

Prologue

Prologue to my novel-in-progress

Stillhouse Road, 1979

Just touching his little body burned Maizy's fingers. As soon as her husband closed the side door, cold morning air slithering in around her ankles, Maizy lowered the infant into the play pen, dropping him the last inch and wringing her hands. 

He fussed, but she turned away. The old ceramic radiator hissed as she stared out the windows etched with snowflakes as finely laid out as German shneirenshnidt paper art, lit pink and green from Christmas lights left out too long, mocking this dark February.

Maizy scratched beneath the collar of her house coat. Her skin was red and dappled purple, all the way down her chest, as it was every time after the baby’s skin touched hers. She pressed her hands into her skin to still her fingers, heat surging from the spaces between them. As she paced, the old floorboards protested her every step, and her slippers on the new harvest gold linoleum squawked.

Feeling her chest squeeze beneath press of her fingers, Maizy banged through the kitchen door, sped through the living room and flung herself out onto the porch, gulping freezing air. She ran down the few steps, the cement roughing up her flimsy house slippers, as she glimpsed the towers of Three Mile Island. She was so close. In two minutes, she could be on the bank of the Susquehanna River. She could be frozen, numb, out.

She let her eyelids plummet to her cheeks. Something had to change. Itching began behind her ears and the back of her neck, and her face felt as hot as if she’d sat in the fireplace’s open flames; but she’d not even struck the match to start the fire yet. Something had to change, and she suddenly knew what she could do.

No one would understand, but she had to do it nonetheless. Just like no one had understood why she believed, before he was even born, that her baby would die, why she’d never expected to bring him home from the hospital, why she’d never even bought anything larger than size three months, the age he was now.  Her husband couldn’t understand why she didn’t cuddle him and want ot hodl him all the time, why she had to steel herself against attachment, why she had to work so hard to protect herself from a scrawny infant not even ten pounds yet. Why she didn’t name him. Her husband gave a name. Asher. Meaning joy. He cooed it to the infant a thousand times a day, but she never used the name.

She strode back into the house, stopping at the mirror on the wall across from the fireplace.  “You won’t be nursing anymore,” she said to the petite woman with wet dark hair, iced over from the outside cold. She said it to calm the welts on her skin. Her doctor would be very concerned; he had impressed upon her from the beginning how such a low birth-weight, malnourished baby benefited from breast milk especially. But she just couldn’t do it anymore. When she held him, her skin crawled, her mind raced, her heart beat so rapidly she couldn’t talk, move or even hardly breathe. She’d thought it was her penance to endure it, like enduring the pain would be absolution for her sins. But now she’d finally married the man. “That makes up for some of it, at least. Right?” she asked the Maizy in the mirror. She’d done what she could to correct things on her end. There was nothing else to do. The baby would die anyway, whether it got breastmilk or not, so why further punish herself?

As she walked back to the hissing of the kitchen radiator, she shivered. The linoleum squawked with each foot-fall—that linoleum Stephen, her first husband, had laid so hurriedly as he anticipated the birth of their child. The walls of the kitchen, wallpapered by Stephen too, seemed to close in on her. It wasn’t just that baby’s telltale little heart, beating out her betrayal—

it was this house too. It remembered everything she wanted to forget.

Doubting your writing after sharing it

So I read an excerpt from my novel at my writers group Christmas party. In another blog I talk of what necessary lessons I learned in cutting it down to read, but now I want to talk about how i felt really deflated after reading it to a group of 15 people.

I've long wanted to write a great holiday dinner scene. (I even wrote about it before, before I wrote it). I wouldn't say this draft (read it here if you like) has really achieved all I wanted, but I think parts are well executed. So I was a little disheartened by the lack of laughter as I read. But I should remind myself of a few things:

 1) I couldn't really expect hearers of that excerpt to get all the nuances of that scene; their appreciation and even understanding of all the nuances are dependent on reading the chapters before. The plot was mostly complete for what I read, but the listeners' knowledge of the characters was missing; they wouldn't know if something was remarkable or out of character for Ash or Ginny; they couldn't know the history with Allen and Thomas and how those characters' conversational comments would have affected others.

2) Perhaps out loud laughter was too much to expect. I have my characters engage in some controversial topics that, while I think humorously reveal their personalities, the topics themselves could be red herrings evoking emotional responses in the listeners that distract them from regarding the topics through the eyes of the characters.

3) It's really not an over-all funny chapter. I meant for some hints of humor, but it really is more about Ginny's constant tension, a building tension, that ends in a fight between her and her husband Ash.

4) This reading wasn't a critique or designed for feedback. It was simply a reading meant to entertain.

But I did feel disheartened after reading it aloud. (We writers are an insecure bunch when we reveal our art...) Sometimes, after spending years and thousands of words, I start to doubt of my plot is worth what I've put into it. I don't want my story to be silly, trite, expected, or ridiculous. I want it to have a message, I want it to keep people guessing and thinking. Sometimes I'm flattened by the sheer weight of the enormity of the project. When you work so isolated on something for so long, you know you lose objectivity and sight of some things that you really need, to keep everything in balance.

Reading made me wonder if I'm going in too many directions with the plot. I have a bit of a gothic thread that I love, but I'm not sure how to carry it through the second half of the novel. I've also got what some would consider just a plain romance thread I've got to solve, and I'm a bit gun-shy. I don't want it to be shallow, cheesy, or unbelievable. It's much easier to break up a marriage than to show people falling in love. I've been going the past few months on the idea that I don't need to know those answers yet. Just write, Renee, I tell myself. I comfort myself knowing that Stephen King waited until the second draft to pull out certain things and then write them more fully through the whole story. I'm hoping I can do that with some themes and symbols.

I'm taking this month off, as far as novel writing goes. (Because I just got too many freelance articles assigned and due, and because it's Christmas.) I hope to return in January, renewed, with a clearer sense about what's really important in my novel, and what to focus on.

Articles in print:
100% Whole Wheat Bread with Honey or Molasses, for a Bread Machine

"Beyond the Gifts: How to get your kids to see past the materialism of the holidays" Smart magazine


Are Schools Expecting Our Kids to Read Too Early?

Killing your darlings and cutting your words in half

Maybe my worst vice in writing is that I'm wordy. I've been learning a lot in freelancing for magazines, where I'm assigned 500 word articles and commonly have to cut my first draft in half, that I really can do it--I really can get across a lot of information in fewer words. But its' really hard. I probably get paid a mere few dollars an hour when you take into account how long I labor over cutting my articles down to the size required. But when it comes to my novel, I've not been constrained in that area--I write and write, with no thought to length. (I know I'll someday have to cut a lot, but it's not right now--I don't have a complete first draft yet.)

But the Christmas party of my writers group brought the challenge and opportunity for me to present an excerpt from my novel-in-progress. We were all to bring a selection Christmas-themed. I'd written, months ago, a holiday dinner scene where my main characters are hosting the holiday meal for the first time. I thought I'd easily print out that scene and be done. But no, it was over 4,000 words! I had to cut it down to 1500 at most so it'd be short enough for me to read aloud to the group. If you want to read it, the Christmas dinner excerpt is here.

I learned a few things.

1) I was amazed how much I cut, and how much I could cut--though it took many different sittings. On a particular day, I couldn't handle killing anymore of my darlings, as Hemingway called them, so I had to stop. I couldn't possibly imagine reading the scene without letting readers know the description of Tiffany's forehead scar, or hearing the anecdote about Ginny and nativity sets, or about how Ash confronts Ginny about her condescending comments to him during the dinner. Another day, I'd sit down with a less impassioned and attached mind, and cut a little more.

2) The cutting really did force me to pull out the focus of the scenes and helped me see some stuff wasn't necessary, or at least, was for another scene, but not necessary for this one. It made my writing better, sharper.

3) On the contrary, I learned sometimes that cutting a scene made the whole story less sharp, more muddled. I cut more than the chapter can really handle. I cut things that didn't matter for the excerpt reading, but now for the novel, I'll have to go back and add it back in to make sense of the whole storyline.

4) This wasn't a waste of time. It taught me a lot about how I'll need to cut my whole novel, shortening sentences, paragraphs, being less descriptive.

5) It was a waste of time in some instances--I now have to go back to previous drafts and add back in many details and even passages that the novel really needs. I saved many versions along the way, but none is the version I now know I need.


Articles I've published:

"Beyond the Gifts: How to get your kids to see past the materialism of the holidays" Smart magazine

Omega-3 Fatty Acids Protect Against Obesity?

Natural Deodorants: Do Any Work as Effectively as Popular Commercial Brands?

Christmas Dinner chapter excerpt

Here's an excerpt I read from my novel at my writers group's Christmas party. We were all asked to bring something to read that was Christmas-themed. It was a challenge; this 1500 word selection was carved out of a 4,000 word selection. For better or worse, here is an excerpt with a large section taken out, and the ending lopped off. (In another blog I wrote about what I learned from this exercise, and whether or not it was a waste of time...)

Background:

Ginny and Ash, married couple with no kids, hosting Christmas dinner for first time.

Guests: her mother Ruthanne and newish stepfather Allen, her cousin Ruby with infant daughter Namaste, and her best friend, pregnant Daniella.

            Then hours before the meal, Ash invites guests without asking her fist: Tiffany next door that has seven kids and a husband, and the neighbor on the other side, the bachelor scholar Thomas, with whom Ginny, unbeknownst to Ash, has recently had a very comfortable encounter.

            Ginny gasped when she opened the oven to check the turkey.

            “Ash! Asher, what did you do with the turkey?” She was staring at his pies—which weren’t supposed to be put in yet.

            “What?” he blinked innocently. “The turkey was done, so I put my pies in.”

            “It can’t be done yet! Where is it?”

            “Oh, there was no room, so I put it in the bathroom.”

            “The bathroom?’ she whispered in disbelief, racing to it.

            “It’s not like I stuck it in the toilet,” he laughed. “I just balanced it on the sink.”

            Ginny winced. That unused room smelled like stale water, rust and mildew. She threw Ash a look of disgust as she gripped the handles of the roaster.

Then she saw her sweet potatoes--the top a surprise pool of white goo.

            “What’s this?” she asked.

            “Oh, I finished them,” Ash said. “We’ve gotta have marshmallows.”

            “Ash—I was making a different dish than what your mother makes! They weren’t unfinished!”

            “Oh,” he said. “Oh well, we’ll get extra sweet sweet potatoes!”

            Wrenching back a turkey wing, she poked the flesh. Pink flesh.

            “Ash, it’s not done.”

            “What‘d’ya mean?’

            “What do I mean? The turkey’s simply not done!” She closed her eyes and slumped against the counter.

            “I was just trying to help,” Ash sighed. “It’s Christmas, Ginny.”

            Ginny felt his arm snake around her waist. She thrust it off.

            “It is Christmas. And I’m trying not to get really upset with you.” She shut her eyes until she heard the bang of the kitchen door.

            Soon everyone was seated, but herself and Thomas, who’d not yet arrived, but whose seat was across from hers. Her mom sat around the corner from her, she and Allen sharing that head of the table. Tiffany’s husband Don headed the other end and nearly shared his seat with the Christmas tree. Ginny shook her head, thinking how if Ash had his choice of tree, they’d never have fit the table at all.

            Ginny gasped; she’d forgotten the butter. Through the sound of her own hurried steps, she heard the knock on the side door. Out the window, she saw the light reflecting off Thomas’s glasses and the taut, side-skewed smile on his face.

            “Sorry I’m late.” He hung his head.

            “We didn’t start yet,” she smiled uncertainly. “Coat, there,” she motioned to the hooks by the door, then opened the fridge and swung around the door like it was her dance partner, the butter dish in hand a prop. As she hurried ahead of Thomas, her skirt swirling between her ankles nearly tripped her.

            As her mother lead the Christmas prayer, Ginny tried to breathe deeply, as Daniella did when stressed.

            As strangers passed dishes, Ginny worried that the baked corn was too runny and about the plaster dust on the nativity set on the mantle. (Thomas had offered to clean all his mess, but Ginny had been more eager to get him out of her house.)  Then she worried what they’d talk about. She’d spent all her worry on the food. She noted Ash had done well with the seating, putting all with or expecting babies together and not splitting family units.

            “Hey, Mr. Ash,” said three-year old Jaibee, who was sitting on her knees in her chair, “I can sing Jingle Bells and my ABCs.”

            “Well, sing for us,” encouraged Ash. So the little red-head sang in her tiny voice until the close attention wicked it down to a whisper and she turned her head into her mom’s shoulder.

            “Ginny, why don’t you sing them the Sunday School ABCs,” said her stepfather. “Tell that eternal E story!”

            Ginny felt her cheeks burn. In Allen’s eagerness to love her mother, he took a weird ownership of all her childhood stories.

            “No, no!’ Ginny protested.

            “What’s he talking about?” Daniella asked.

            “It’s really not that interesting,” Ginny rushed, deciding it was better to tell it herself. “There’s a Sunday School ABCs all about Jesus. The final rhyming line was, ‘a home eternally.’ Well, I was really young, so I thought the words were, ‘a home eternal E,’ as in the letter E was given special recognition as the best and everlasting letter, God’s favorite.”

“She drew Es all over her wallpaper,” her mother chimed. “She made a point of telling everyone ‘my name has four E’s in it!’ She wanted her middle name to be changed to Evangeline, and she loved eating eggs, eggplant, beets, and her favorite animal was the eel!”

              “Oh, Gin-Gin, that’s so cute!” Daniella gushed, rubbing her starting-to-show belly.

            Ginny didn’t dare glance at Thomas. Their relationship pivoted on not getting too personal.

 “This is really yummy orange stuff,” a pig-tailed girl said as sweet potatoes oozed between her lips.

“You like them?” Ash asked, winking at Ginny.

Ginny wanted to pinch him.

The kids resounded with assurances that they were the best thing on their plates. Ash’s face bloomed to them like a sunflower tracking the sun.

“But if we’d’a stayed home,” a boy perhaps seven piped up, “we coulda had Spam out of a can. I like Spam better’n bird.” His mother tried to nudge him.

            As Ginny took her first bites, conversation moved to baby things.

            “Disposables came out right before Ginny was born,” her mother directed to the middle of the table, “but I didn’t give them any bother.”

            “Yeah, my mom used cloth, and I plan the same,” Daniella said between bites of mashed potatoes she smoothed into hills of snow with her lips. Ginny noticed anew how beautiful she was, though she didn’t need the silver eyeliner. Daniella had let her hair go natural brown after years of coloring it, and it made her Italian skin tone rich and luminous.

            “Oh Lord,” Tiffany exclaimed. “If I had to wash diapers for the past fifteen years, someone would have to put me in my grave.”

            “They’re easier now,” Daniella said. “My sister swears by them, and now they’ve got ones with Velcro or snaps. No more pins.”

            “But you still have to wash them, right?” Tiffany asked. “Not for me.”

            “Well, we think it’s worth the benefits,” Daniella shrugged.

            “Benefits?” Ruby asked. As Daniela enumerated the health and environmental benefits of using cloth, Tiffany interjected.

            “The environment?” Tiffany asked. “I don’t have time to worry about that, and I don’t think we need to anyway,” she said, brushing her brassy hair off the face of her newborn who was sleeping in a wrap swaddled to her chest.

            “I’m curious why you think that,” Thomas said.

            “Well,” Tiffany said without hesitation, “we don’t put much stock in anything you can’t weigh, measure and paint John Deere green, but I think if there is a God, we can’t destroy his world.” Ginny could almost hear Pap saying “Worrying about the environment is for atheist idiots who haven’t read the end of the book. Only God can destroy this world.”

            Thomas responded, “But, accepting Revelation as literal, who’s to say that precludes our ability to severely maim the earth or destroy a large percentage of the inhabitants beforehand?”

            “Ooh, that’s a good point.” Daniella pondered. “There are many degrees of decline between health and death.”

            Tiffany’s baby cried, and she began to move out of her chair, lips a taut line.

“I agree with Tiffany,” Ash rushed. “He’s not going to let us live on an earth covered with soiled disposable diapers.” Just like Ash, Ginny thought, missing the point.

            “But,” Daniella said, “in third world countries that’s already true.”

            “That’s like all the worry about a nucular holocaust,” her stepfather laughed. “In my day, people protested it, fearing we could do each other off in some mishap. But we can’t nuke the whole world; God will destroy the earth, not us.”

            “But should we make choices to destroy portions of the world and unleash perilous health consequences we can’t reharness?” Thomas asked.

Ginny felt like warning Allen that he was arguing with a PhD in the philosophy of ethics. Her stepfather used logic like a four year old, repeating an unsound point as if repetition could change its veracity. But as Allen smacked his lips against his fork and jabbed it in the air to enumerate his points, she wished she had warned Thomas of Allen.

“Yes, but again,” Thomas responded patiently. “where does the Bible promise the world will function in health until the last day? Parts of our world are dying every day. We’re reaping consequences already. Aren’t we responsible for our choices?”

 “I just wish,”  Ash smiled and brushed his hands together, washing his hands of the discussion.  “that we’d lived in the good ol’ days—the fifties and sixties.”

 “The good ol’ fifties and sixties?” Ginny didn’t withhold her incredulity or her annoyance. “That’s one of my pet peeves—that level of ignorance! Even with 9-11, we are living in safer times compared to the Cold War with people building underground shelters.” Ginny felt tension in her fingers as her gestures grew larger. “And the sixties—well, that was the most colossally dangerous decade of the earth’s existence! And furthermore—”

Just then Ruby’s baby whapped Thomas’ drink into Allen’s plate, and everyone made much of it, seeming relieved for a change in subject.

I wrote here about how I felt after reading this to others...I was tempted to give up on the novel...

Other things I write:

"Beyond the Gifts: How to get your kids to see past the materialism of the holidays" Smart magazine

Organic Food: Eight Benefits for You and Your Children

Job Search: How to Make Your Application Climb to The Top of The Pile