Daddy Ballard had been easier to convince than Hattie. “What about all the white people in town that wouldn’t think of checking out the same books as us?” she had protested.
Daddy Ballard had a simple answer. “Why, Hattie, I reckon they can drive on down the road to a library I didn’t pay for.”
Hattie wasn’t done, though. “How you gonna make sure the librarian don’t turn people like me away when you’re not lookin’?” she asked.
“Ain’t Junie looking for a job?” Daddy Ballard countered. “She can be the librarian.”
At last Hattie was satisfied. Daddy Ballard asked Principal Harwell to have the school librarian teach Junie the basics, and that was that.
It was a small but pretty brick building, with hardwood floors, tall windows, and two long wooden tables dotted with reading lamps and lined with comfortable chairs. Iris had chosen all the books and paid for half of them. The rest were donated by members of Hattie’s church and the families she had worked for.
While most everybody roamed among the stacks to see what they had to choose from, Pete and Dovey lingered in the foyer. They stood hand in hand before a large portrait of Isaac painted by a Birmingham artist. Dovey’s father had made the frame. The portrait hung above a simple but elegant entry table—also John’s work—with Isaac’s wingback chair next to it. At the base of the frame was a small engraved plate.
In loving memory of Isaac Reynolds, a dear friend forever
Mr. and Mrs. Pete McLean
Pete ran his fingers across the plate as he gazed at the portrait. It was a wonderful likeness. Just as he felt himself drifting back, missing Isaac too much to truly celebrate his friend’s memory, Dovey tugged him away from the portrait and led him inside the library. There, in a corner set aside especially for children, they spotted two of Isaac’s young nephews huddled around an oversized, illustrated Treasure Island—Isaac’s favorite book.
As Pete stood there watching their faces light up with each turn of the page, he slowly broke into a smile. For the first time in a long time, he felt connected to Isaac, not forever separated. He squeezed Dovey’s hand and kissed it. Together they had lightened the burden of his sorrow to something he could carry, and there was room in his heart at last for happy memories of his friend.
As he and Dovey walked hand in hand out of the library and started home, Pete felt it deep down in his soul—he was free. And so was Isaac.
Both of them were finally free.
Acknowledgments
Stories came out of the woodwork where I grew up—a farmhouse with a tin roof (rain never sounded better) and a big front porch (breezes never felt better) in Shelby County, Alabama. I’m so thankful to my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins for filling my childhood with stories.
Just as my parents made sacrifices I’ll never even know about to educate me and give me the tools I needed to write, my husband, Dave, has stood by me through my abundant insecurities and moments of self-doubt. All three of them have offered nothing but love and support.
Special thanks and much love to Bill and Jeanetta Keller. I lost count of how many times they read my story because they read every version, always offering support and encouragement. Special thanks also to Tanner Latham, my storytelling friend, who edited the first draft of this book and helped me shape characters over fried green tomatoes at a Birmingham cafeteria. And a big shout-out to Gary Wright for talking me up in the Big Apple and encouraging me.
I met Leslie Stoker of Stoker Literary when we both landed on the same nonfiction project, Southern Living 50 Years. Her editing skills amazed me daily, and when she agreed to represent me, I was on cloud nine. A few months later, when she told me Kelsey Bowen at Baker Publishing Group wanted to chat, I just about had to reach for the smelling salts. Kelsey, like Leslie, has been a real champion for my manuscript and an incredible editor and writing coach.
As this manuscript progressed, I had the opportunity to work with still more talented people at Revell. Jessica English is an insightful and sensitive editor who saved me from myself more than a few times. Cheryl Van Andel and the creative team produced a beautiful, evocative cover. Hannah Brinks Korns has guided me through the marketing plan so that someone might actually buy this book we’ve all worked so hard on. And publicist Karen Steele has put my little fictional Southern town on the map. Many thanks to the entire team at Revell.
Photographer Mark Sandlin has shot beautiful images of people and places from Nepal to New Orleans, but I think his greatest challenge must have been dealing with a camera-shy writer in her own backyard. Thank you, Mark, for the portrait on this book (and the whole portfolio you shot, which my mother is busy framing).
I also owe a great debt to Southern Living magazine, where my former editor in chief, John Floyd, used to tell me, “Put your faith and your family first, and this magazine a distant second.” Martha Johnston was a constant “you can do it” mentor there—and still is. When I was completely green, Dianne Young, John Logue, and other literary writers at the magazine taught me the difference between stringing together sentences and telling a story. Fast-forward about thirty years, and I’m still learning from Sid Evans, Krissy Tiglias, and an incredibly talented Southern Living staff, including Nellah McGough, who has pushed and prodded and nudged and cajoled me to make sure I never gave up on this book.
Through Southern Living and friends I made there, I met wonderful people who somehow made time to read and critique this book for Revell, serving as my “official” editorial board: authors J. I. Baker, Nancy Dorman-Hickson, and Michael Morris; HGTV Magazine editor in chief Sara Peterson; a couple of straight-talking, free-thinking Southern lawyers, Sabrina Simon and Sally Reilly; my favorite literary scholar at the University of Alabama, Yolanda Manora; and my longtime friend Carole Cain, who has read every version of this manuscript (and who has such a sharp Southern wit that she daily says funnier things than I write).
If I try to name everyone who has read versions of this book—from magazine writers to my girl cousins to story-loving friends back home—I will surely leave someone out. And that would put me in hot water with Mama. I don’t want to be in hot water with Mama. So to all the friends and family who spent some time in Glory and helped me on my journey, I count you among God’s blessings to Dave and me.
One last word of thanks to my dear friend Jane Cain for her encouragement and enthusiasm for my book and for giving me one of Geneva’s best lines: “I mean!”
Valerie Fraser Luesse is an Alabama native who has spent most of her life in the Deep South. She is best known for her work with Southern Living magazine, where she has specialized in stories about unique pockets of Southern culture—those places where the people and their landscape are intricately intertwined—such as the Gulf Coast, the Mississippi Delta, Acadian Louisiana, and the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The many years that she spent crisscrossing the South, meeting local people and listening to their stories, have lent her fiction its authentic color.
Luesse is a graduate of Auburn University and Baylor University. Missing Isaac is her first novel.
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Missing Isaac Page 27