Novel Excerpts–The Boaz Secrets, Epilogue

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?

Epilogue

October 2018

I’m glad I was able to control my anger.  Instead of pursuing a way to wreak holy-hell revenge on Wade, I had allowed Olivia to persuade me that her justice was coming.  She was right.  It came just four months after we married.

To avoid the death penalty, Wade Tillman and James Adams plead guilty to the murders of Wade’s wife, Gina Tillman, and Alma Castenada.  In addition, they plead guilty to four counts of kidnapping for sexual exploitation, and conspiracy to commit a hate crime against a specific people group.  They were sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 30 years.  They are currently serving their time incarcerated at the Federal Penitentiary on Cumberland Island in Georgia.

At the time Wade and James settled their federal cases, four of the fathers of the Flaming Five agreed to plead guilty in the Circuit Court of Marshall County, Alabama.  Walter Tillman and Franklin Ericson agreed to plead guilty to embezzlement and extortion, and to be sentenced to eight years in prison.  David Adams and Raymond Radford agreed to plead guilty to two counts of murder in the deaths of Harold Maples and Shawn Saylor, and to be sentenced to twenty years in prison. 

Fitz Billingsley, in exchange for assisting the U.S. attorney in prosecuting these cases, avoided all federal and state charges.  The four fathers were allowed three days freedom in which to get their affairs in order before surrendering to the county sheriff.

Sometime in the afternoon after the pleas were entered and the agreements reached, Walter Tillman, Franklin Ericson, David Adams, and Raymond Radford kidnapped and murdered Fitz Billingsley.  Less than two hours later, the four fathers died in a horrific gun battle with Gina Tillman’s attorney, Micaden Lewis Tanner, at Oak Hollow, his farm off Cox Gap Road, eight miles south of Boaz.