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 Scholar, written in 2019, is my eighth novel. I'll post a chapter a day over the next few weeks.
Book Blurb
Precocious Chicago teenager Mia Hudson is growing up to love the marvels of science. But, a one-year move to Boaz, Alabama reveals a world trapped in another age, one filled with Christian fundamentalists and female jealousy.
After agreeing to tutor star football player Adam Brown, Mia is brutally assaulted. The attack in the girls’ P.E. dressing room leaves Mia with nightmares of dying and a steeled determination to bring her five female attackers to justice.
This is before she started falling for the stunningly handsome Adam Brown, and before chief instigator and preacher’s kid Jessica Miller is kidnapped by a rapist/murdering parolee.
Read this story to learn how Mia uses her love for humanity and her scholarly mind to solve a thousand-piece puzzle while local law enforcement is just opening the box.
And to experience a once-in-life teenage love story.
Chapter 2
It was nearly midnight before we arrived in Boaz. After bringing in my two heavy suitcases, Uncle Larry went to bed. Aunt Mary helped me unpack. My room was small but comfortable. It was also amenable to my reading and study habits. Uncle Larry had built me a desk across the interior wall right next to the door from the hallway. Above the long wood counter, there were plenty of shelves. It was nice to see the books I had shipped. I imagined each of them calling to me, reaching out a hand and saying, “Choose me.” I slowly slid my right hand across the spine of each book and silently told them how excited I was they were here to share our one-year adventure.
I had forgotten this bedroom had a private bath. Last night as I was brushing my teeth, I opened the shower door and realized I could barely squeeze inside. There certainly was no way to bend over and wash my feet without bumping my head against the wall. But this was better than having to share Uncle Larry’s and Aunt Mary’s bath down the hall in the center of the house. It was odd the small clothes closet was inside the bathroom.
The room’s furniture was minimalist but enough: a half-bed, a nightstand, and a chest of drawers. The stout but aged items looked like they could have been what Mother and Aunt Mary shared when they were growing up in the country outside Boaz. There was also a small rocking chair by the lone back window. The thing I disliked the most was the carpet. It was the contrast with the wood floors throughout our two-story home in Hyde Park that kept me awake for hours after undressing and crawling into my bed. It was nearly three o’clock the last time I looked at my iPhone. I couldn’t survive thinking about Chicago. I had to resolve to live in the here and now, no matter how much I already hated the sad and scary turn my life had taken.
“Mia.” Aunt Mary said, tapping on my door. It was 6:30 according to the giant, old-time clock hanging above my chest of drawers. I hadn’t noticed it last night.
“Yes.” I stayed vertical under the covers realizing my habit of sleeping naked might have to change.
“Your Mom and Dad are on the phone. They asked me to fetch you.”
“Okay, I’ll be right there, give me a minute.” I quickly pulled on a tee shirt and a pair of baggy shorts. I was confused as to why they hadn’t called me on my iPhone. I walked down the short hallway and into the small den by the kitchen.
“There, sit in my chair.” Aunt Mary said motioning me towards a chair next to a sliding glass door leading out onto a small deck. The giant phone sat on a table between two matching Lazy-Boy recliners. “Your mother called to thank me and your Uncle Larry.”
“Mom?” I said.
“Honey, are you okay? Did everything go well yesterday?”
“No problems. We got here around midnight. I didn’t sleep very well. New surroundings, I guess. Are you and Dad still in London?” For some reason I was confused. Was today Saturday or Sunday? I also couldn’t remember when the final leg of Mom and Dad’s flight would be.
“We’re here until tomorrow,” Dad said. I assumed they had their phone on Speaker.
“Hey, Dad. I miss you guys. Also, I’m afraid I made a mistake. I wish I were with you right now and was headed to Johannesburg tomorrow.” I had heard Aunt Mary go out the door to the carport. Without any sign of Uncle Larry, I suspected he had already left to meet his teaching buddy for golf.
“We miss you too.” Mother and Dad said in unison. I was blessed with great parents. I had enough friends whose parents were just as smart as mine but appeared incapable of truly connecting with their kids like it was not intellectual or something. But mine were special. I liked that they didn’t coddle me. They had taught me since I was a baby to think for myself. Both Mother and Dad were professors at the University of Chicago. Dad, a professor of evolutionary genetics in the Department of Ecology & Evolution. Mother, a professor of New Testament and Early Christian Literature in the Divinity School.
“What time is it in London?” I knew they would be several hours ahead of my time.
“Right now, it’s a little after noon,” Dad said.
“What are you guys up to?” I said, remembering our trip to London in 2015.
Mom spoke. I could sense she was excited by her tone and rate of speech. “We’re headed to the Shard for lunch. We have reservations at 1:00.”
“Thanks for inviting me.” More memories. We visited this beautiful skyscraper during our trip. It’s on the south bank of the River Thames and is the tallest building in Western Europe.
“Oh honey. This is no doubt the hardest thing your Dad and I have ever done. We miss you so much.”
“We have to stay focused,” Dad said.
“Discipline Dad. You can do it. It’s just a year. We’ll be stronger and smarter for sticking with the plan.” I repeated his words, what he had said for months, each night the three of us were planning this adventure.
“Honey, you remember The Shanghai Bar at Hutong?” Mother interrupted.
“I do. The thirty-third floor of the Shard. I also remember eating chilled and roasted baby pigeon. It was a starter we shared when we ate there. I think that was the final straw that made me become a vegan.”
Dad changed the subject. He and Mother had different opinions on my decision to give up meat and dairy. I guess he didn’t want to re-plow that ground. At least not today.
“We spoke with Lee this morning. Neil arrived yesterday. They seem anxious for us to arrive. Tuesday, we head to the caves.” Dad seemed more excited than ever.
“Reckon you and Mom will become as famous as Mr. Berger and Neil?” I asked. I had recently become infatuated with both men and had read extensively on their backgrounds and accomplishments.
Lee Berger is an American-born South African paleoanthropologist, a professor at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, and a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence. He is best known for his discovery in 2015 of Homo Naledi at Rising Star Cave just thirty miles north of the school. Berger determined that Homo Naledi is an extinct species of hominin.
Neil Shubin is also a professor at the University of Chicago and a good friend of Mom and Dad’s. Neil is a paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and popular science writer who is best known for co-discovering Tiktaalik roseae, a transitional fossil, in the Arctic of Canada. This fossil reveals a combination of features that show the evolutionary transition between swimming fish and their descendants, the four-legged vertebrates which include amphibians, dinosaurs, birds, mammals, and humans.
When I was in the right frame of mind, I knew this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Mom and Dad. They were joining Berger and Shubin as they returned to the Rising Star Cave system for the second exploration. From what Berger had written, he expected more exciting discoveries to be made, possibly as important as the Homo Naledi find.
“Baby, we are content to be in the background and support the team any way we can. It’ll be an honor just to serve water to these extraordinary men.”
Mom and Dad talked and walked until they arrived at the Shard. Dad ended our conversation by saying, “Mia, take it one day at a time and realize the world is home to all types of people. Don’t get discouraged when you hear someone boldly proclaiming his ignorance. We all have lots to learn.”
After the three of us shared an “I love you,” I sat in Aunt Mary’s chair feeling sorry for myself. I couldn’t help but stare at her Bible sitting on the end table. I picked it up and turned to the page where she had inserted a First Baptist Church of Christ bulletin. Underlined in pencil was Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” At first, I chuckled to myself as I thought how silly it was for anyone to believe in God, or His purported son, Jesus Christ, for that matter. Then, I realized the important thing wasn’t whether God’s existence was true, but what Aunt Mary and Uncle Larry believed. No doubt, they believed Jesus lived in their hearts and helped them day by day to do their work and live their lives.
“Your mom and dad seem excited.” Aunt Mary said, coming in the sliding glass door with a basket full of the prettiest tomatoes I had ever seen.
