The primary aim of the "Novel Excerpts" blog category is to showcase my creative writing, specifically from the novels I've written. Hopefully, these posts will provide a glimpse into my storytelling style, themes, and narrative skills. It's an opportunity to share my artistic expressions and the worlds I've created through my novels.
The Boaz Secrets, written in 2018, is my third novel. I'll post a chapter a day over the next few weeks.
Book Blurb
Fifteen year-old Matt Benson moves with Robert, his widowed father, to Boaz, Alabama for one year as Robert conducts research on Southern Baptist Fundamentalism. Robert, a professor of Bible History and new Testament Theology at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School enlists Matt to assist him as an undercover agent at First Baptist Church of Christ. Matt’s job is to befriend the most active young person in the Church’s youth group and learn the heart and mind of teenagers growing up as fundamentalist Southern Baptists.
Olivia Tillman is the fourteen year old daughter of Betty and Walter Tillman. He is the pastor of First Baptist Church of Christ. Robert and Matt move to Boaz in June 1970, and before high school begins in mid-August, Matt and Olivia become fast friends. Olivia’s life is centered around her faith, her family, and her friends. She is struck with Matt and his doubts and vows to win him to Christ. Over the next year, Matt and Olivia’s relationship blossoms into more than a teenage romance, despite their different religious beliefs.
June 1971 and Matt’s return to Chicago comes too quickly, but the two teenagers vow to never lose what they have, even promising to reunite at college in three years after Olivia graduates from Boaz High School.
The Boaz Secrets is told from the perspective of past and present. The story alternates between 1970-1971, and 2017-2018. After Matt left Boaz in June 1971, life happened and Olivia and Matt’s plans fell apart. However, in December 2017, their lives crossed again, almost miraculously, and they have a month in Boaz to catch up on forty-six years of being apart. They attempt to discover whether their teenage love can be rekindled and transformed into an adult romance even though Matt is 63 and Olivia is 61.
In 2017, Olivia and Matt are quick to learn they are vastly different people than they were as fifteen and sixteen year old teenagers– especially, when it comes to religion and faith. Will these religious differences unite them? The real issue is the secret Olivia has kept. Will Matt’s discovery destroy any chance he and Olivia have of rekindling their teenage relationship?
Chapter 4
December 3, 2017
“You will always be remembered here with fond affection, but just as important, for your contributions to cutting edge Biblical scholarship ever since you arrived in 1962, at least a decade before most of the current staff was even born. With this, we wish you well. Please come back for a visit very soon.” Laurie Zoloth, Dean of the University of Chicago Divinity School, ended her detailed biography of Robert Benson’s life and career, and his conversion to professor emeritus.
I had walked across the campus from my post at the Department of Ecology & Evolution to Swift Hall to join my honored Dad and celebrate with him the end of his 55-year career here at the Divinity School. What made today equally special was Dad’s birthday and its coinciding with his official retirement. Professors Arnold Davidson and Michael Fishbane had spoken before Dean Zoloth, with them excelling at alternating everyone’s emotions from sad and back to happy through their stories of working with Dad and experiencing his many sides, including his ability to uncover the tiniest of relevant leads from a mountain of, what academics referred to as ‘garbage data.’ The ninety-minute formality was now over and Dad and I, along with Professors Davidson and Fishbane, were continuing our celebration, on a more private basis, at Piccolo Mondo on East 56th Street.
After the four of us sat down at a corner table in the busy near-campus restaurant, and as Fishbane encouraged Dad to try the Fettuccine Apulliana, I couldn’t help but recognize another coincidence. This one didn’t bode as pleasant as Dad’s retirement and birthday. Later this afternoon, after a leisurely lunch and a brief meeting, hopefully, with Sally Edgeworth, one of my doctoral students, I was driving to Boaz, Alabama. It would be the first time there since Dad and I drove away after the completion of my eleventh-grade school year in June 1971. The occasion was anything but a vacation. I was going to offer all the support I could to my good friend, James Adams, who was facing criminal charges and a Federal jury trial.
“Robert, just last night I read your article, “A Jew-less Faith” in The Journal of Religion. A long discussion ensued between the three Bible scholars with me attempting to display interest and understanding. The article’s thesis was that Christianity had been hijacked by America and its infatuation with Republican politics. After a lull in their discussion, Davidson asked Dad how his 1970’s Alabama research on Baptist Fundamentalism had affected his career.
“I’ve thought a lot about that question myself. Looking back, it is easy to say that if Matt and I hadn’t spent that year in Boaz, Alabama, I don’t think I would have pursued my theory. It was the people there, their beliefs, traditions, and daily lives, that spawned such an interest. I was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time to capture a preview of Americanized Christianity before it spread across the country.” Dad said, dipping a french fry into a mound of ketchup. I knew he would reject the Fettuccine Apulliana. He wouldn’t dare spend $25.00 on lunch.
My meeting with Sally took an hour longer than I had expected or wanted. After thirty minutes to return to my house on Claremont Drive, I was finally ready for the ten-hour drive to the little town that I would never forget. It was there that I discovered that love, real love, had the power and capacity to either displace or circumvent vast differences in deep-seated beliefs. I was both excited and sad. Forty-six years ago, a wonderful teenage girl and I had held each other for the last time outside a four-room rental house on College Avenue. Olivia and I both thought at the time that our separation would be temporary. It was only three short years until she would graduate high school and be able to join me in college. It hadn’t worked out that way. She had chosen, or had it decided for her, that I was not worth it. The love we had discovered had wilted and virtually faded from my mind. It was as though something more powerful than love had prevented Olivia from taking the road our hearts were seemingly destined to travel. The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost blasted across my mind, especially the stanza:
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
The last of today’s sunlight faded as I drove south through Gary, Indiana. I was beginning to despise all of today’s coincidences. Once again, I had stopped at the same interchange that Dad and I had stopped at for him to fill up his truck with gas and for us to eat breakfast at a Waffle House. It was the same I-90 and I-65 exit but the 1970’s service station had long been razed and replaced by a multi-million-dollar Pilot Truck Stop. There was still a Waffle House but no doubt it too had been completely transformed. Even still, I couldn’t help but pull in, fill up my truck—Dad’s influence here too—and enjoy a quick cup of coffee in the imaginary spot where Dad and I had sat over forty-six years ago.
South of Nashville I had to pull into an I-65 rest area. It was past midnight and I could barely hold my eyes open. I found a quiet spot on the back side, a parking spot behind the one where the diesel engines of a dozen or more semis were humming their drivers a midnight lullaby. I slept for over an hour, woke up from a dream about being thirsty while walking across a desert with nothing in sight but an ocean of sand. I walked inside the Information Center, used the bathroom, and bought a cup of vending machine coffee.
Between Nashville and Decatur, Alabama all I could think about was the past, what my life had been like since June 1971 when I had left Boaz. For over a year Olivia and I had communicated, mostly through our letters, but with an occasional phone call. At that time, it seemed nothing had changed. During my entire high school Senior year, I firmly believed that Olivia and I would follow our dream and be together just as we had planned when I left Boaz. Then, I couldn’t see it happening. I have since reread her letters a million times. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to spot little clues. I couldn’t help but think that if I had shared them with Dad, he would have spotted them immediately. As that first year apart passed, Olivia spoke more and more about her prayer life and how she wanted to honor and please God. I think it was in December 1971, maybe January 1972, she started interjecting her duty to honor her father. This doesn’t mean we didn’t speak about our love for each other. Again, looking back over these letters, it was clear that Olivia was deeply troubled about something. I still wonder if it was about God and Walter Tillman or if it was about something else. I will never know because during the fall of 1972, during my second month at Harvard I received Olivia’s ‘Dear John’ letter, followed by her late-afternoon phone call declaring she had decided to break up with me. I will never forget her words, “Matt, you know I love you, but God has other plans for my life. I can’t keep you hanging on. I have to let you go.”
I almost flunked my first semester at Harvard. I don’t know how long it took for me to regain some form of normalcy, but I know without a doubt I experienced post-traumatic stress syndrome. To me, it was every bit as bad as if I had been blown up in Iraq or Afghanistan. I’m sure I’ve forgotten a lot of the details, but I know I would never have made it if it hadn’t been for Dad. From then on, every night for the next four years, Dad called, and we talked for at least an hour. I now realize what a sacrifice this was for Dad. He was extremely frugal with his money and his time. He must certainly have recognized how near death I was to have committed his most valuable resources to saving his only son.
After graduating Harvard with a Bachelor of Science in Molecular Biology, I moved on to Duke University in Durham, North Carolina for my Master’s and my Ph.D. I then did a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, with Timothy Prout, Ph.D. In 1981, with these excellent educational credentials and, I’m sure, a little help from Dad, I was hired by the University of Chicago’s Department of Ecology and Evolution as an Associate Professor of Evolutionary Biology working under the direct tutelage of the world-famous Jerry Coyne, assisting him in his work with evolutionary genetics.
Of course, my education and profession weren’t my entire life. I had met Alicia Harrison in 1982. Once again, I must thank Dad. Alicia was a new associate professor of linguistics in the Divinity School. Her office was across the hall from Dad’s and he liked her from the beginning. Long story short is that he introduced us. I had walked over to visit him the day before our Christmas holidays began. Alicia didn’t have family so Dad invited her to share Christmas dinner with the two of us. Less than a year later we married. If losing love one time wasn’t enough, fate, God, whatever, visited tragedy once again on my delicate heart. In January 1984, Alicia died two hours after being t-boned by a drunk driver while she was driving Dearborn Boulevard to begin her day at the Divinity School. Later, I discovered in her journal that she had planned on telling me that night that she was pregnant. She had written, “found out yesterday that I am pregnant. I wanted to tell Matt this morning before work but thought it best to wait until tonight when we have more time to celebrate. Can’t wait. He will be overjoyed.”
As I exited I-65 and turned east on I-565 towards Huntsville, I now, once again, realized, why I had remained single after Alicia died. I was doomed, destined, tainted, to never have love, real love, live in my life. There was something inside me, something opposite from fertile ground, that was like poison to a long-term and healthy relationship. As I drove towards Boaz I wished, long ago, I had pursued counseling or psychiatry or a ten-year Himalayan meditation, something, to discover why I could not hold on and succeed with a woman I loved.
Crossing the bridge into Guntersville, across the Tennessee River, I became almost sick thinking I was returning to the place I first fell in love. I knew beyond doubt that I had loved Alicia, but I also knew that my love for Olivia Tillman was unique, a once in life love.
The Pencil-Driven Life 