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 1
“Mountain Brook, here I come.” The red-faced, blue-haired older woman said as she stuffed a red and white bag into the overhead bin and sat down across the aisle from me. I hated not having a window seat.
“We’ll be in Birmingham in less than two hours. You going or coming?” Now the overly plump woman was looking directly at me. I was regretting my decision to read instead of listening to music, which required having my ear-buds in while waiting for everyone to board. I returned my gaze to The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker, one of my favorite writers, although I’d read this book half a dozen times. “Birmingham, you live there?” I kept my eyes on my reading.
I was saved by a short and stocky man and a similarly shaped woman directing half a dozen kids to their seats, two in the row in front of me, two beside the blue-haired woman, and two more somewhere towards the rear of the plane. I had to get up and stand in the aisle as the man in an Alabama Crimson Tide football jersey moved by toward the coveted window seat and the big-bosomed woman squeezed in next to my temporary residence.
As other passengers boarded. I sneaked a peak across the aisle to the chatty old woman. She was now sitting silent, with her head bowed, with what looked like a Bible lying across her lap. It was large. Probably a King James Version. The thought almost made me sick.
My near-perfect life was headed south. Literally. My flight from Chicago O’Hare to Birmingham was one-way. To silently answer the blue-haired woman’s first question, I was going, not coming. And, I was staying a full year. What was worse, I wasn’t headed to Mountain Brook, a quiet and rich suburb of what once was known as ‘the Pittsburgh of the South,’ a community I suspected possessed a thin layer of sophistication. No, I was going to Boaz, a little backwoods town eighty miles north. Worse still, I couldn’t simply hang out at Uncle Larry and Aunt Mary’s. I had to waste my entire tenth-grade year at Boaz High School.
“You live in Birmingham?” Damn, now questions were erupting from my right, from the thick woman whose left elbow already controlled the armrest.
“No.” I reached under my seat for my leather bag and my iPhone. It didn’t take but a minute to discover I had packed my earbuds in one of two suitcases. Both, now in the belly of the plane.
“Are you visiting family, and friends, or headed further south?” I couldn’t decide which was worse. The woman’s southern drawl or her overpowering perfume. Her speech reminded me it had been my decision to stay with Mother’s sister and her husband, both of whose words were painfully slow, instead of spending a year with my parents living out of a tent in south Africa.
Maybe if I responded, she would leave me alone. “Just visiting family.” See, I could be polite, and it was all true.
“My six young’uns start to school on Monday. You still in high school? Right? My Tammie’s about your age. Thirteen?” The woman was a machine gun, albeit a slow one with an endless number of bullets.
“I’m fifteen.” The irritating woman obviously hadn’t taken a good look at me, even though I had stood to let her, and her man take their seats. I am tall, nearly five foot eight, weigh one-hundred twenty-eight pounds and wear a 36D bra. And in these tight jeans, she could have noticed I’m shapely all the way to my toes. I almost shared with her what Jordan, my ex-boyfriend, had always said: “You have the sexiest ass,” but that would have been an equally painful subject to explore. Jordan, not my ass.
“I can’t believe Tammy’s startin’ the eighth grade. She’s already demanding I let her start dating. That’s not happening. Too many like Roger out there.” The purple-lip-sticked woman motioned her head toward the man sitting beside her. I wished I hadn’t looked. Dear Roger was leaning forward staring at my chest, smiling, and probably wishing I was exposing more cleavage. He could use a good dentist.
Ten minutes later the plane’s tires left the tarmac and headed towards 40,000 feet. I now knew the names of all six of Darla and Roger’s kids, that they lived in Clanton, Alabama, that Roger owned a tire store, and that she worked part-time at SmartStyle Hair Salon at the local Walmart Super Center.
Boaz, Alabama, here I come.
Delta flight 2489 landed at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport at 9:19 p.m., Friday night August the third. Uncle Larry and Aunt Mary were waiting just inside the terminal. She was holding a silly little sign that read, “Mia Hudson, welcome to Alabama.”
It wasn’t like I’d never set foot in the second most uneducated state in America. But it had been over two years since my parents and I had driven through during one of our annual summer vacations. That one, was the summer of 2016, two days after I had graduated seventh grade at Latin School of Chicago. We had stayed two days at their home straight across from Boaz High School. I still remember Mother saying, as we pulled out heading to Miami, “Mia, being naturally smart isn’t enough. Just look at your Aunt Mary. She made 34 on her ACT exam in the eleventh grade but she now makes $25,000 per year as a secretary for a church. Good decisions are imperative.”
“Hey,” I said, as Aunt Mary hugged me while Uncle Larry smiled and touched my shoulder.
“Mia, we’re excited to finally have a daughter. At least for a year.” Aunt Mary said, leaning her head back as she held both my hands even though my right one clutched my book bag. Her eyes scanned me from chest to feet. “Wow, you’ve filled out since we saw you two years ago.” Mother’s only sister, Mary Jackson, childless, worked as the secretary for Minister of Music Mike Glenn at First Baptist Church of Christ in Boaz. She also volunteered with the youth group, mainly managing refreshments.
“Thanks for letting me come. I promise I’ll not cause you any trouble.” I was being fully honest. After making my decision, I made plans to make the most of this year. At first, I was devastated when I realized I would lose a year at one of the finest college prep schools in the country, and possibly the chance to earn a full academic scholarship to the University of Chicago. It was my dream to someday be a professor at this prestigious college where my parents had taught and researched all my life. My plan, evidenced by two boxes of books already in my room at 711 Stephens Street in Boaz, was self-education. I figured Boaz High School wouldn’t be much of a challenge, so I would immerse myself in dozens of biology and psychology books by the world’s most brilliant minds, including Steven Pinker at Harvard.
“Let’s go grab your bags and head home. It’s already going on 9:30.” Uncle Larry said taking my book bag and walking toward the escalators. Mother had reminded me yesterday when she was giving me last-minute instructions before she and Dad left for the Rising Star Cave system in South Africa, that Uncle Larry went to bed early, especially during the school week. He was a math teacher at Boaz High School. I was glad the counselor had let me opt out of Geometry since I had taken it in the ninth grade. It would have been awkward living with your math teacher.
On the drive to Boaz, Uncle Larry conceded to Aunt Mary’s request that he go through the drive-through at a McDonald’s in Roebuck, a place just north of Birmingham right off Interstate 59. She had wanted us to go inside and eat but he wouldn’t surrender that much, something about needing to be up early to finish his next week’s lesson plans before a golf game with Stanley Smothers, the recently hired math teacher that needed some hand-holding according to Uncle Larry.
After eating my fish sandwich and spilling ketchup from my fries onto my jeans, I was kind of glad Aunt Mary addressed the elephant in the room, well, the car. The one major stipulation she and Uncle Larry had when Mother had asked them if I could live with them for a year was that I attend church with them. At first, this didn’t seem to be a big deal. I had attended church all my life. It was Temple Sholom of Chicago, a Jewish synagogue my parents had fallen in love with shortly after they moved from New York in the fall of 2001. Neither Mom or Dad were religious. They simply loved the fellowship and, as Dad said, “You don’t have to adopt the Jewish beliefs to benefit from Judaism. It’s a good way to structure your life; a good place to learn discipline.”
After Mother described Uncle Larry and Aunt Mary’s religion, my feelings changed. I had done some reading on Christian Fundamentalism, and especially the Southern Baptist denomination. I had even researched the First Baptist Church of Christ. It was going to be difficult keeping my mouth shut for an hour each week as I would hear the preacher, a man named Robert Miller, share his interpretation of a book he and 99.99% of his constituents believed had been authored by the Creator of the Universe.
As we exited the Interstate at Highway 77 our church attendance conversation took a darker turn. Uncle Larry spoke for the first time in fifty miles. “Wednesday night’s services and fellowship meal will expose you to the best Southern food imaginable and to the power of prayer. Sunday morning’s Sunday School will motivate you to immerse yourself in the New Testament. Jews stop right before the good part.” I could see Aunt Mary smiling as Uncle Larry pulled into a well-light Chevron station to “filler-up” as he said.
As he was outside pumping gas Aunt Mary said, “Oh, I almost forgot. I’ve arranged a little party for you tomorrow night. It’s kind of a welcome to Boaz party. It’ll be a good chance for you to meet several kids from the youth group, your Boaz High School classmates.”
That’s all I needed, being put in the spotlight of a bunch of snaggle-toothed, slow-talking backwoods kids who all believed in talking snakes and other magic I couldn’t even imagine.
“Thanks, Aunt Mary. I can’t wait.”
Richard L. Fricks 