I'm baaack!
And ready to begin a new week. Robert Walker has graciously shared an excerpt today form his latest Children of Salem.
Excerpt from Children of Salem
Chapter Four
…this soft-spoken, cat-padding little woman had been around Samuel Parris for more years than most of his flock. She’d come with him and his wife and child from their last known residence, Barbados, where general knowledge had him trading in his sea legs to become a trader, a businessman.
Does Tituba hold the key? She appeared to both fear and hate her master. Not the best of relations.
Jeremy had an enormous task facing him. What had drawn this former merchant of Barbados to Salem? Not the mere promise of the parsonage and its damnably small apple orchard and rickety out buildings? There had to be more.
Jeremy thought of how Parris had ordered the black woman out of her bed as if she were a detested cur. And that look the servant had shot the minister when he turned his back on her—pure, unadulterated hatred and venom.
How that venom came to be, wondered Jeremy.
A great deal could be learned—and thus reported—about a man just in the manner of how he handled those in his care, and those he called his servants, and those he called his congregation.
Jeremy had uncinched and unbridled the horse, and he now placed the saddle on a rail. He used his own bedroll to place across Dancer’s back.
“May I have it?” asked Tituba in a surprisingly resonant, deep voice that filled the small outbuilding.
“May you . . . have what?”
She pointed, her nail like a talon. “Your saddle, Massa . . . ”
“My saddle?”
“For my head rest with pillow.” She lifted her pillow.
“You miss Barbados?” he asked as he placed the saddle where she’d created a bed of hay.
“I do . . . my family all there. My baby, too.”
“You left your baby in Barbados?” Jeremy was incredulous, and he heard Parris’ warning again at the back of his head. “Don’t talk to the woman.” All the more reason to speak to her.
“Dead baby . . . dead an’-an’ buried.”
“I . . . I’m terribly sorry. I can imagine no worse torture on earth than to lose a child.”
“There can be worse.”
“Really?” Jeremiah squinted at her. “Such as?”
Her eyes met his squint. “Not never holding your child, ever.”
“I . . . I don’t understand.”
“N-Nor seeing it.”
“You never saw the child?”
“Not never no.”
Chapter Four
…this soft-spoken, cat-padding little woman had been around Samuel Parris for more years than most of his flock. She’d come with him and his wife and child from their last known residence, Barbados, where general knowledge had him trading in his sea legs to become a trader, a businessman.
Does Tituba hold the key? She appeared to both fear and hate her master. Not the best of relations.
Jeremy had an enormous task facing him. What had drawn this former merchant of Barbados to Salem? Not the mere promise of the parsonage and its damnably small apple orchard and rickety out buildings? There had to be more.
Jeremy thought of how Parris had ordered the black woman out of her bed as if she were a detested cur. And that look the servant had shot the minister when he turned his back on her—pure, unadulterated hatred and venom.
How that venom came to be, wondered Jeremy.
A great deal could be learned—and thus reported—about a man just in the manner of how he handled those in his care, and those he called his servants, and those he called his congregation.
Jeremy had uncinched and unbridled the horse, and he now placed the saddle on a rail. He used his own bedroll to place across Dancer’s back.
“May I have it?” asked Tituba in a surprisingly resonant, deep voice that filled the small outbuilding.
“May you . . . have what?”
She pointed, her nail like a talon. “Your saddle, Massa . . . ”
“My saddle?”
“For my head rest with pillow.” She lifted her pillow.
“You miss Barbados?” he asked as he placed the saddle where she’d created a bed of hay.
“I do . . . my family all there. My baby, too.”
“You left your baby in Barbados?” Jeremy was incredulous, and he heard Parris’ warning again at the back of his head. “Don’t talk to the woman.” All the more reason to speak to her.
“Dead baby . . . dead an’-an’ buried.”
“I . . . I’m terribly sorry. I can imagine no worse torture on earth than to lose a child.”
“There can be worse.”
“Really?” Jeremiah squinted at her. “Such as?”
Her eyes met his squint. “Not never holding your child, ever.”
“I . . . I don’t understand.”
“N-Nor seeing it.”
“You never saw the child?”
“Not never no.”
"What happens in Robert Walker's novels shouldn't happen even to fictional characters." JA Konrath.
A graduate of Northwestern University, Rob Walker has published consistently since 1979 and has to date over fifty titles in print and ebook publication. Children of Salem has been his life's work, begun as his dissertation at NU for his Masters in English Education and now a Kindle Original title. His long-running critically acclaimed Instinct Series, his Edge Series, and his City Series have sold in the hundreds of thousands of copies over the years. He currently teaches at West Virginia State University and is working on a novel tentatively entitled Curse of the Titanic, a retelling of that fateful night with a wild twist that makes it a thriller. Rob lives with his writer wife, Miranda Phillips Walker and four children in Charleston, WV. His website is http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment