Most of all, thanks to the animals that enrich our lives. May we always be worthy of their affection and their trust.
Carolyn McSparren
Carolyn's grandfather held her on a horse when she was two. That moment began a love affair with horses that has continued all her life, even when she lived in cities where the only horses she saw were either pulling carriages through the park or maintaining crowd control.
Although she longed for her own horse when she was a teenager, her parents couldn't afford to buy or keep one, so she set her dream aside. She decided to become an English professor at some obscure college and write murder mysteries. Surely then she'd be able to afford her own horse.
Instead, Carolyn went to graduate school and earned her master's degree from the University of Memphis, then became a developer of continuing education programs in business. She wrote technical manuals and marketing pieces on such stirring subject as Statistical Quality Control, about which she knew as much as she did about quantum physics. Those years of writing on demand, however, honed her skills as a fiction writer and self-editor.
During that time, her daughter fell as much in love with horses as Carolyn had. Carolyn bit the bullet and bought Megan her first horse-not a very fancy horse but a good guy nonetheless. Ayear later she owned three horses, including a mare in foal. She finally came back to riding.
Over the years she's known many veterinarians, farriers, trainers, riders, dog and cat fanciers, and general animal people, all of whom love to tell stories.
The editors of BelleBooks heard some of the stories and decided they deserved to be shared. Thus All God's Creatures was born.
Excerpt from Carolyn McSparren's story in SUMMER AT MOSSY CREEK
LOUISE and JACK
by Carolyn McSparren
Ida Hamilton Walker stuck her head around the kitchen door and said in a frazzled voice, "Louise, we're running out of potato salad."
"Here." My daughter Margaret handed her a Tupperware bowl straight out of the refrigerator. I would have dumped the salad into a crystal bowl, but didn't suggest that. This was Margaret's first foray into the world of Southern post-funeral feasts, so I refrained from correcting her. I doubted those Visigoths eating me out of house and home in the living and dining rooms of Aunt Catherine's little cottage would notice.
I'd only bought the ham and the turkey, of course. Half the town had descended on Aunt's house with food the minute they heard she had breathed her last. They brought everything from sweet potato casseroles to homemade coconut cakes. They filled Aunt's refrigerator and mine as well.
Good thing, too. Unlike Moses, I couldn't call down manna from heaven, and after Aunt's funeral, practically the whole town of Mossy Creek came back to her house to chat and eat.
And eat some more. I swan, you'd think it was a church picnic instead of the aftermath of a funeral for a ninety-two-yearold woman. But she had wanted a great big party, and I was glad to help her get her wish.
She was actually my great aunt, and one of my few remaining relatives. I'd been run off my feet arranging the viewing at the funeral home, picking what she was going to wear into eternity, and organizing folks to meet and greet during the viewing at the funeral home before they moved her to the church for the service.
Her old lady friends had demanded an open coffin, and I wasn't prepared to put up with their complaints if I closed it. Lying in state, Aunt looked like a generic "aged crone" from Madame Tussaud's gallery of waxworks, but that was unimportant. She was long gone from that body. She would have been the first to agree that if the empty husk that was left gave pleasure to her friends, it was fine with her.
I also had to get folks to stay at both her house and mine during the actual service and the trek out to the graveside. According to Amos, the Police Chief, thieves actually read the obituaries. Then while the family is away burying old Uncle Victor or whoever, the thieves break into the empty house and steal everything in sight. Talk about tacky.
Despite being the chief mourner, I'd spent most of the last three days in Aunt's kitchen and on the telephone. Thank heaven for my Garden Club. They'd pitched right in with flowers and food, made sure the house stayed presentable, and saw to it that every dish and bowl was labeled and entered so that it could be returned to the right person with a thank-you note. Plus somebody was always available to greet folks who came by either the house or the funeral home.
I've heard men boast that a girl only becomes a woman when she loses her virginity. Typical. As though that frequently uncomfortable and bloody encounter with a male is the defining moment in the female life.
A girl truly becomes a woman when she is first initiated into that cadre of women who keep every sort of ceremony humming from behind the scenes. They are seldom appreciated, except by one another. They are the Marthas who spend most of any event around the kitchen stove and the sink.
Read more of this and other stories in...
The MOSSY CREEK HOMETOWN SERIES is available at www.BelleBooks.com
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
All God's Creatures Page 40