Do you sometimes wonder what God has in store for you?

Has God ever led you to a place where you didn't want to be? What did you do?

 

In Love Lives On, fifty-four-year-old Karen Williams is reunited with Brian Donelson, her college sweetheart, after thirty years apart only to learn a step-son she's never met has filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against her for back child support. Brian has the assets to settle the law suit, but she won't let him. Her marriage to the young man's dying father was out of compassion and she feels she is only being sued because of Brian's money.

Her decision to fight the shadows from her past puts her marriage and life in jeopardy. While fighting the claims, she takes time away from her new life with Brian to respond to the charges. And, while doing so, she is being stalked by someone who is threatening her life.

A lifetime Christian, Karen begins to wonder why God put her in such a situation. Karen turns to George McCullough, the 79-year-old father of Brian's best friend, to talk to about her doubts. George tells Karen she has the gift of encouragement and has devoted herself to helping others. That is why she wants to fight the lawsuit. Not for herself, but to help the ones suing. You just want to jump into the fray because you believe that's what God wants of you. (Romans 12:8)

George also tells Karen, "Remember in Acts 9 where God asks Ananias to go put his hands on Saul, the man who jailed Christians? You're like Ananias. You're a good Christian, but you've been called to get into this lawsuit for some reason. The results can be devastating. Be open to what God is calling you to do. And, remember, it may not seem like it sometimes, but eventually, good overcomes evil. Ananias was asked to step outside his comfort zone. God works through others to help us. Aren't you curious about what God has for us next?"

While Brian is in California tending to his mother's medical condition, someone sabotages the bookmobile Karen drives and she ends up inside the vehicle as it rolls down a hill. Brian returns as soon as he learns about it and sits with her in the hospital, praying that she will regain consciousness.

I hope you'll read the book to find out what happens.

Bicycling Memories of Austin, Texas

A year or so ago, I pedaled around Sun City in Georgetown, Texas for my health. In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have gone quite so far the day after donating two pints of blood. Also, if I had it to do over again, I would have eaten breakfast first or at least had some orange juice. I thought about all this while parked on the side of the road trying to decide if I should call 911 or just fall down and hope someone found me.

After some deep breaths, staying close to the flower garden at the woodworking shop in case I had to throw up, I managed to get past the nausea. I had already thought of a way to hold on to the branch of a tree for support if needed. But soon, I felt better and was back on the bike heading for home.

Perhaps I was delirious, but as I rode the rest of the way (mostly downhill, by the way), I had vivid memories of bike riding as a kid. I remember sneaking off when I lived near Clarksville in Austin, so I couldn't have been more than nine years old. My friend, Bobby Bayer, went with me. We told our parents we were just going to see someone a few blocks away and we ended up in deep South Austin. I felt terribly guilty for lying to my mother. But not guilty enough to keep me from repeating the trip several more times on other days.

Those memories and reminders of the guilt I felt, made me think about Brian, the male protagonist in Where Love Once Lived. Don't forget I said I may have been delirious at the time all this was going through my head.

In the novel, Brian had been brought up in a Christian family and attended church every Sunday. What's more, he loved to go to church and continued to go while he was away from his California home attending the University of Texas. Then, he committed a sin and, even though he knew better, the guilt is so strong he believes he is being punished by God. His punishment is to be in a loveless marriage.

He drops out of church for the next thirty years. This is all leading up to my wanting to tell you this is not a biographical story. It didn't happen to me. I was brought up in a Christian home and while there were some times in my life where I missed church because Sunday mornings were the only time I could rest, I never left the church completely the way Brian did in the story.

I am still friends with some of the people I met at church as a youth and we still get together frequently. I continued to be involved in church in college and while in the marines. After marriage and kids there were times when I wasn't involved as much as I should have been, but that didn't last long. I may tell you about that period of my life someday, if I'm ever delirious again.

How about you? When did God become a major part of your life? Have you ever dropped out? What brought you back?

Texas State Capitol Memories

Where Brian Donelson and
George McCullough Walked

A novel is fiction. It's not true. Pure imagination. Right? Well, yes, but... I suspect every novel contains some little something from the author's past. Where Love Once Lived is no exception. While I didn't make the same mistakes Brian did, there are events in my life I wish hadn't happened. But I trust God lead me to where I am today.

In the following excerpt, I describe a scene at the Texas state capitol that I had with my mother and dad and sisters when I was a child. Photos reminded me of the event for years after it happened. My dad tricked me into drinking the sulfur tasting water that day cementing the memory forever. I also remember a time when I wondered if people were staring at me and a fellow marine who happened to be black as we traveled from California to Texas.

When we finally reached my parent's house in Austin, I was concerned about their reaction since, as far as I knew, Bill would be the first black person in our home. However, he was accepted graciously. My dad even drove us the rest of the way to Houston, saying we were probably too tired to drive further.

In this excerpt, Brian had asked to meet with Mr. McCullough, the 78-year-old father of Brian's best friend Phil, because Brian wanted advice on being close to God. You'll have to read the book to find out more. I only included enough here to describe the setting.

“You know,” Mr. McCullough said as he and Brian walked through the capitol grounds, “a few years back, ever’one would be staring at us.”

Brian was six foot two, and Phil’s dad was five two or three at the most. Mr. McCullough had just gotten off work at the Driskill and still had on his white shirt and bowtie. Brian wore shorts and Birkenstocks. Still, Brian knew Mr. McCullough was talking about race, not stature or clothing. Mr. McCullough was from a time in history Brian could never fully understand, but he’d read about how blacks suffered. It was a time of segregation.

The Water Fountain and Bench

Mr. McCullough looked around. “When I was jus’ a kid, nine or ten I’d say, my parents brought me here.” He motioned toward the spot where they sat. “My daddy told me to drink from a sulfur fountain that was here. Said it’d be good for me and make me healthy. But there was a problem. Back then, you see, we had separate drinking fountains. One marked ‘white’ and one marked ‘colored.’”

He paused, but Brian waited for him to continue. “There was only one sulfur fountain and it wasn’t marked one way or ‘nother, colored or white.” He laughed. “Didn’t matter. We sneaked a sip when no one was about. Only once, though.” He shook his head and made a face. “Terrible stuff. Smelled like rotten eggs.”

I would love to hear from you. Do you have family memories about visiting places like the state capitol? What caused the memory to stick in your mind? Have you experienced racial segregation? Have you ever felt people were staring at you because you did something out of the norm? Please comment below or email me: sidfrost@suddenlink.net.

Making Dreams Come True – Part 3

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If you haven't read the previous parts, you may want to do so first. See:

·         Making Dreams Come True – Part 1

·         Making Dreams Come True – Part 2

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In the last post, I told you the bookmobile novel idea changed as I learned more about writing. Once I understood the book was about Karen and Brian and how they get back together after thirty years, and Liz the bookmobile librarian was a supporting character, and once I had taken several writing classes, the book began to take shape. It began to look and feel like a novel. In fact, I felt more like all I had to do was write about what the characters were feeling. They took over and told the story.

I set the story in Austin, Texas, because that's where I grew up. While a student at the University of Texas, I worked as a bookmobile driver part-time for the Austin Public Library. Brian, who had sold his business in California before returning to Austin to pursue Karen, bought a bookmobile to impress her. As it turns out, it does the opposite. I used the bookmobile in a third of the scenes to make the setting smaller and more manageable. Supporting characters come aboard the bookmobile as needed.

Is it a romance?

The story is told by the two main characters, Brian and Karen, alternating from one to the other so that the reader can see what's going on in their minds without one character knowing what the other is thinking. With two protagonists and the points of view alternating between male and female, plus the title of the book (Where Love Once Lived), early readers thought the book was a romance. Not knowing any better, I went along with that belief. I joined the Romance Writers Association and, in 2007, the manuscript won several contests. It took first place in the romance division at the Writers League of Texas contest and first place in the inspiration division in New Mexico. Plus a third place in Houston and finalist in California.

The book talks about going back to where Brian was last happy. He sells his company, moves from California to Texas, buys land and builds a house at the same location where he and Karen had once been happy together, he buys a bookmobile because that's where they had been together so many times. The title, Where Love Once Lived, seems to be describing these actions. However, I soon learned the story is really about where the love of God had once lived in Brian's heart and his struggle to regain his faith.

In the next post, I'll tell you about trying to find a publisher.

Trying to Ignore God's Nudges

The idea for writing a bookmobile story came to me while driving one back in the 1960's. I was a college student at the University of Texas assigned to drive for a feisty librarian who got us into trouble with the head librarian several times because of helping our patrons in ways unrelated to books. I wanted to write a humorous novel about her, but quickly learned I didn't know much about writing.

The writing urge hit me again a few years later, and I started a fictional account of my time in the marines in the 1950's and my true-life experience of driving with a black friend from California to Texas. I had read enough books to know it was an interesting idea and would have made a great novel. But once again, I was reminded I didn't know how to craft a novel. After that I settled for non-fiction writing.

The nudge to write the bookmobile story came again in 2004, and this time I said no because I knew it was too hard. The very next Sunday, my pastor, Dr. Jeanie Stanley, said this: "Trust the Lord God with your dreams and He will help you achieve them." This gave me the idea to turn the whole project over to God. To remind myself I wasn't alone, I wrote a prayer which I printed and taped to the computer monitor.

Dear Lord, be my source of inspiration. Give me the words you want the world to hear. Help me create the story and the characters to convey your message in such a way as to be desirable to the business world of publishers. Guide my hands and stay in my mind and my heart while I write and while I edit. Amen

By then I was smart enough to know I needed help so I started taking online basic fiction writing classes. At the time I was in the Austin Lyric Opera Chorus and rehearsing three times a week for eight or nine months out of the year, and didn't want to take on a large writing project. But, God wouldn't let me use that as an excuse. I retired from the chorus, continued to study and started writing Where Love Once Lived. That's when I met my teacher, Bonnie Hearn Hill. More about her later.

I don't want this to come across as me believing my book is the word of God. Far from it. All I'm trying to say is that I had a strong urge to write and publish Where Love Once Lived. I hope it makes you laugh and cry, and if just one person should happen to move closer to God because of it, then all the effort was worthwhile.

How about you? Have you ever felt compelled to do something so strong you wondered if God was trying to tell you something?

Austin, the Friendly City

Where Love Once Lived is set in the current time in Austin, Texas. However, the male protagonist has lived in California for the past thirty years and his memory of Austin is different than the way the city is today. It doesn't bother him that Austin's slogan has changed from Austin the Friendly City to Keep Austin Weird. He doesn't even notice. He finds the place on Dry Creek near Mt. Bonnell Road where he and his college buddies rented a cabin and he builds his house there, including a replica of the cabin that had fallen to the ground from decay. Brian is determined to recapture his youth, and marry his college sweetheart. He buys a bookmobile, because that was the last place where he had been with Karen, and makes a deal with the city to try it for a year as long as he pays the expenses.

In addition to the cabin, scenes take place at an elementary school built in the 1950's, Mt. Bonnell, Clarksville, and the city library (the old one, not the new one), the University of Texas campus, and Manor.

It was fun revisiting the Austin of the past while writing the book, and I hope you'll enjoy reading about it. I was born in Austin and went through school there. I joined the marines after learning I wasn't ready for college, and didn't get back to Austin for 20 plus years. It had changed so much by then I hardly knew where I was. But, it didn't matter. Everywhere I went I could see and feel the past, the place where the memories lived. Once, I told an old friend I'd meet him at the drug store. When we both got there, we noticed the corner we'd been thinking about was now a strip mall and there wasn't a drug store anywhere near there. Another fun thing is that we, my buddies and I, know routes through town that newcomers don't.

How about you? Have you experienced a change in your life or your surroundings that made you wish for the good old days? Were the good old days as good as you remember? How do you handle change? Do you embrace it or fight it? Place is not as important as who you are. You can take your beliefs and faith in God wherever you go. Likewise, you can't move to another place to get away from problems. They go with you, too.

In Where Love Once Lived, Brian never recaptures his youth, of course, because that's impossible. But he does learn that what he was searching for was the love of God.

Book Signing: Clarksville Family Fun Fest

In Where Love Once Lived the male protagonist is white and his best friend is black. I'm not sure how that happened, but it made the story more interesting by providing thoughts about race relations.

In the following excerpt Brian is the white friend, Mr. McCullough, who is black, is the seventy-eight year old father of Brian's best friend and Cindy is Mr. McCullough's granddaughter who is about to announce her engagement to a white man:

"It's called historical, now," Mr. McCullough said holding a fork in the air. "It use' to be a ghetto, you know." He glanced at Brian. "I don't guess Cindy told you that. Most of the Negroes lived east of Austin, but there was a colony here in Clarksville."

Mr. McCullough continued. "When I was growin' up, there were boundaries, you see. We couldn't jus' live anywhere we wanted. Ever'one knew where the lines were. Our street here was as far south as we could live."

He shook his head. "Today, it doesn't matter. No one's shocked when black and white marry, even." He locked eyes with Brian, then moved his gaze to Cindy.

"When was this neighborhood a ghetto, Grandpa?" Cindy asked. "I've heard the story, but I think Brian would like to hear about it, too."

"Let's see." He touched a thumb to his fingers. "I'd say up until sometime in the 1950s." He pointed south. "Over at Mathews School, on 9 ½ Street, that was white. Our lot touched up to a white family's back yard." He laughed. "I'd forgotten about that. Fact is, back in the 1930's or 40's, I use' to play with the little kid who lived there. Well, not play, really. We mos'ly jus' talked through the chicken wire. My Mama and Daddy told me not to, but I did anyway."

In real life, I'm the one in his seventies who lived in the Clarksville area at the time. These are my memories. The difference is I lived on the white side of the border.

It's different there now. Sunday, April 17, 2011, I was invited to set up a booth in the artisans area at the annual Clarksville Family Fun Fest to sell books. I took a map showing the five places where I lived between 1936 and 1945 to show my credibility to be there. The map only brought up exclamations of how young I look.

I left only two books there. One I donated to the Silent Auction sold for $8.00, and the other I donated to the pastor of the Sweet Home Missionary Baptist Church.

Rev. Steve Manning, the pastor of the church had stopped by to talk about the book and the history of Clarksville. When he returned later with his checkbook, I told him I wanted to donate the book to him for the church. He let me know he was prepared to pay for the book, but I told him I had donated copies of the book to other churches in Austin and Georgetown and it only seemed right to donate one to the church in the area where several scenes of the book take place.  He promised to read the book and let me know his thoughts about it.

After the Clarksville Family Fun Fest was over I drove by each of the places I had lived. I was flooded with memories, not just of the segregation that existed then, but I remembered World War II, going to school for the first time, the Confederate Home that abutted up to the end of the street, my childhood friends I biked with, my sister Barbara who took me school, my cousins who visited, the chickens and ducks we raised in the back yard, the time spent with my father, the birth of my sister Patty. So many wonderful memories of the time.

A few negative experiences popped into my head as well, such as cutting my arm on a broken coffee jar in the vacant lot playing soldier with Billy T. Nitschke, cutting my hair, eating an April Fool's Day sandwich filled with cotton made by my sister Barbara, falling on a sidewalk while running to meet my dad when he got home from work.

The memories of the time I lived in the area were good for me, but the Clarksville of today is not the same as it was when I lived there. People of all races without an apparent notice of the fact played side by side. The woman at the church's booth displayed historical photos showing an all-black church membership, but the church today stressed that it is a church for everyone in the area.

Rev. Manning is a 58-year old black man born in Louisiana and brought up in Lockhart, Texas, with a year in Oakland, California, just long enough to become an A's fan, a fact that was advertised on the shirt he wore. His degree is in biology, but he had a calling to preach. He said it was not the clear spoken calling some get, but it was a quiet, definite one. He is the type of person I could be friends with in an instant because of his openness and warmth.

While writing Where Love Once Lived, I thought about visiting the church in Clarksville, but never did. After meeting Rev. Manning, I'm planning to visit there soon.

Growing Up White Next to a Black Neighborhood

The area of Austin called Clarksville is different than it was when I was born December 6, 1936. At that time, and up until the time we moved to South Austin in 1945, the former slave neighborhood was located between West 10th and Waterston Avenue with West Lynn Street on the east extending west to the railroad tracks that are now in the middle of MoPac.

It's hard for my children and grandchildren to understand that time in Austin's history when schools and neighborhoods were segregated by race. Only blacks lived in the area called Clarksville and the children didn't go to Mathews Elementary where my sister and I went.

My family lived in four different houses just outside the black neighborhood. At one house our backyard was up against a black family's backyard. That's where we lived when I was between five and nine, and I remember talking to some kids over that fence there often, or until my parents told me not to. Since most other blacks lived east of Austin, living where we did gave me an opportunity many white kids didn't have. I got to know some of my black neighbors, even though I had to keep it a secret from my parents.

I grew up in a segregated town, not really understanding why, and it wasn't until I was in college in 1954 that blacks in Austin began to be reluctantly accepted in some places. I left Austin in 1956 to join the marines. One of my friends was a black private from Houston. In California, we could go to restaurants together and the beach and just about anywhere we wanted. My friend rode back to Texas with me once and by the time we got to Austin, without discussing it, we started getting our food to go.

Perhaps due to my early experience growing up in Clarksville, I've always believed in equality of the races. I included a character in my novel, Where Love Once Lived, who is about my age and is black. I gave him my experiences, from the other side of the fence, however. Several scenes take place in the neighborhood, including memories of the neighborhood, Mathews School, the Confederate home, and what it was like to live in a segregated area. There is also an interracial marriage in the book.

Now, I have the opportunity to return to the neighborhood. Sunday, April 17, 2011, between 1:00 and 6:00 p.m. I'll be signing books at the Clarksville Family Fun Fest in the parking lot of the Clarksville Neighborhood Center. I know the neighborhood has changed, but it is my hope that someone who remembers that time in our history stops by the booth. I'd love to talk to someone who lived in Clarksville back in the 1940's, and most of all I'd like to hear what they think of my Clarksville fictional characters.

Hearing From Readers Is Fun!

One of the fun things for a writer is to hear from readers. Here is an email received recently followed by my response.

From: Vivian

Sent: Friday, March 11, 2011 8:14 PM

To: sidfrost@suddenlink.net

Subject: Where Love Once Lived

Sid, I am glad that you left your card with me when you came to visit in January.  I asked at the library for your book and found that it was in circulation, so I put it on reserve.  I finally got a copy March 6 and enjoyed it very much.  It is an excellent novel, and I wonder if this is what earned you first place in the Southwest Writers conference? 

Your characters are well developed.  I suspect they are not all fictitious!  Your training as a Stephen Minister is especially apparent in the dialogues of Brian, Karen, Phil, and his Dad, and even the feisty Cathy and Liz.  They are affirming, supportive, and non-judgmental.

I hope to see more of our neighbor and promise to read whatever you write!  You might not appreciate my “editing,” but I need to know how Brian resumed ownership of his company in California.  Perhaps he delegated that responsibility to Ron while he went honeymooning in Germany!

Best regards, Vivian

Here is my response:

Thank you so much for writing and telling me about reading Where Love Once Lived. As you probably know writing is a lonely business and writers don’t hear as much from readers as they would like to. And when we do get comments, the readers don’t go into much detail. Of course I savor every “enjoyed it” and “great”, but I am especially pleased to get feedback such as yours.

I don’t know if you’ve check on my blog, The Christian Bookmobile, http://christianbookmobile.blogspot.com/, but this is where I talk more about the book. The blog is aimed toward Christian readers and writers. It also has a touch of Austin history in it.

Some of the characteristics of some of the characters in the book were taken from people I know or have known. The idea for writing the book came to me because a bookmobile librarian named Jean Siedo. Liz’s appearance and actions on the bookmobile were copied from the real person. However, Jean had a husband and two daughters. I made Liz’s husband an alcoholic because I was married to one, and placed Liz’s grandson in prison because my son was in prison for DUIs.

George McCullough, Phil’s dad, has the same memories as I do of the time he grew up in the Clarksville area. The only difference was that I grew up on the white side of the imaginary line.

In real life, my mother had Alzheimer’s and my father reacted the way Brian’s father did in the book.

I tried to close up all the loose ends in the book, but I guess I didn’t do a good job on the California company. While writing the sequel, however, I noticed it and had Brian ask his daughter to manage the company. She said no, since she wanted to finish her MBA in Austin. However, she suggested Darrell Johnston, the young man who organized the collection for Liz’s trip to England. I haven’t written that part yet, but I know Brian likes the idea and I think Darrell will accept the offer.

By the way, the honeymoon in Germany doesn’t go as smoothly as you might think. There needs to be a major conflict for the new book. But, this time the conflict is not between Brian and Karen.

Thanks, again for writing, and please recommend the book to your friends.

Sid

As I prepared this article, I noticed I hadn't responded to one of Vivian's questions. I sent her this:

I just noticed I forgot to respond to your question in the first paragraph re the Southwest Writers Conference. Yes, Where Love Once Lived won first place in the Inspirational or Spiritual Novel category in the 2007 contest. It also took first place for Romance in the Writers League of Texas contest in 2007. Thanks, again, for writing.

Sid

Trying to Ignore God's Nudges

The idea for writing a bookmobile story came to me while driving one back in the 1960's. I was a college student at the University of Texas assigned to drive for a feisty librarian who got us into trouble with the head librarian several times because of helping our patrons in ways unrelated to books. I wanted to write a humorous novel about her, but quickly learned I didn't know much about writing.

The writing urge hit me again a few years later, and I started a fictional account of my time in the Marines in the 1950's and my true-life experience of driving with a black friend from California to Texas. I had read enough books to know it was an interesting idea and would have made a great novel. But once again, I was reminded I didn't know how to craft a novel. After that I settled for non-fiction writing.

The nudge to write the bookmobile story came again in 2004, and this time I said no because I knew it was too hard. The very next Sunday, my pastor, Dr. Jeanie Stanley, said this: "Trust the Lord God with your dreams and He will help you achieve them." This gave me the idea to turn the whole project over to God. To remind myself I wasn't alone, I wrote a prayer which I printed and taped to the computer monitor.

Dear Lord, be my source of inspiration. Give me the words you want the world to hear. Help me create the story and the characters to convey your message in such a way as to be desirable to the business world of publishers. Guide my hands and stay in my mind and my heart while I write and while I edit. Amen

By then I was smart enough to know I needed help so I started taking online basic fiction writing classes. At the time I was in the Austin Lyric Opera Chorus and rehearsing three times a week for eight or nine months out of the year, and didn't want to take on a large writing project. But, God wouldn't let me use that as an excuse. I retired from the chorus, continued to study and started writing Where Love Once Lived. That's when I met my teacher, Bonnie Hearn Hill. More about her later.

I don't want this to come across as me believing my book is the word of God. Far from it. All I'm trying to say is that I had a strong urge to write and publish Where Love Once Lived. I hope it makes you laugh and cry, and if just one person should happen to move closer to God because of it, then all the effort was worthwhile.

How about you? Have you ever felt compelled to do something so strong you wondered if God was trying to tell you something?

Note: This is repeated from 4/5/10.

Austin, the Friendly City

Where Love Once Lived is set in the current time in Austin, Texas. However, the male protagonist has lived in California for the past thirty years and his memory of Austin is different than the way the city is today. It doesn't bother him that Austin's slogan has changed from Austin the Friendly City to Keep Austin Weird. He doesn't even notice. He finds the place on Dry Creek near Mt. Bonnell Road where he and his college buddies rented a cabin and he builds his house there, including a replica of the cabin that had fallen to the ground from decay. Brian is determined to recapture his youth, and marry his college sweetheart. He buys a bookmobile, because that was the last place where he had been with Karen, and makes a deal with the city to try it for year as long as he pays the expenses.

In addition to the cabin, scenes take place at an elementary school built in the 1950's, Mt. Bonnell, Clarksville, and the city library (the old one, not the new one), the University of Texas campus, and Manor.

It was fun revisiting the Austin of the past while writing the book, and I hope you'll enjoy reading about it. I was born in Austin and went through school there. I joined the Marines after learning I wasn't ready for college, and didn't get back to Austin for 20 plus years. It had changed so much by then I hardly knew where I was. But, it didn't matter. Everywhere I went I could see and feel the past, the place where the memories lived. Once, I told an old friend I'd meet him at the drug store. When we both got there, we noticed the corner we'd been thinking about was now a strip mall and there wasn't a drug store anywhere near there. Another fun thing is that we, my buddies and I, know routes through town that newcomers don't.

How about you? Have you experienced a change in your life or your surroundings that made you wish for the good old days? Were the good old days as good as you remember? How do you handle change? Do you embrace it or fight it? Place is not as important as who you are. You can take your beliefs and faith in God wherever you go. Likewise, you can't move to another place to get away from problems. They go with you, too.

In Where Love Once Lived, Brian never recaptures his youth, of course, because that's impossible. But he does learn that what he was searching for was the love of God.

Note: This is repeated from 4/2/10.

Suds In Your Eye by Mary Lasswell

This is a humorous story by Mary Lasswell about three retired women, Mrs. Annie Feeley, Miss Agnes Tinkham, and Mrs. Erna Rasmussen, who live in Southern California, probably San Diego, during World War II. Mrs. Feeley is a widow who runs a junk yard called Noah's Ark (it has two of everything) with the help of Old-Timer (her working man) after her husband died. She is uneducated and can't read.

Miss Tinkham, a retired music teacher, relies on rent from a home back east and she is looking for a less expensive place to live when she meets Mrs. Feeley.

Mrs. Rasmussen, also a widow, is a nationalized citizen from Denmark living with her daughter and her daughter's family, paying rent, cooking and taking care of the grandchildren. They insist that she get home by 10:00 p.m. Worse yet, her son-in-law doesn't drink and is a vegetarian.

Mrs. Feeley has no children, but she has a nephew, Danny Malone, who is a Chief Yeoman stationed on a ship, who apparently has lost his parents.

Mrs. Feeley invites Miss Tinkham and Mrs. Rasmussen to move into her one-room house and they build walls to provide privacy between the beds. Mrs. Rasmussen does the grocery shopping and prepares the meals. Miss Tinkham plays the piano. The two things the three have in common are their love of beer (thus the title) and their ability to get things done.

While Danny is home briefly, Miss Tinkham invites them all to visit the Spanish class she is taking and Danny falls in love with the teacher, Kate Logan, and she is instantly attracted to him. We know this quickly because of the viewpoint. Books written today are most often written in one character's point of view for each scene. However, this book came out in 1942 when it was more popular to use limited omniscient viewpoint, which means you have a God-like perspective of the story and can switch viewpoint from one character to another as needed, even within a scene. In other words the reader can read the minds of all characters in a scene, not just one.

The three ladies are struggling financially and manage to get by only by pooling their resources. Danny offers to help and is turned down. Then his ship leaves for a military mission and he is unavailable to help even if his aunt would let him.

Mrs. Feeley learns her junk yard and home are being sold because she hasn't paid her taxes for several years. Turns out the lawyer she'd hired to take care of it has stolen the money. If Miss Tinkham hadn't been there to read the letter to Mrs. Feeley, it would have been too late.

The three ladies and Old-Timer go to work at the tuna cannery to raise the money for the taxes by the deadline, plus a little extra for the trip to Tijuana the Spanish class has planned.

This book contains a few profanities that you wouldn't find today in a humor book and the only mention of Christian was this: Mrs. Feeley was glad to see that Kate Logan was a Christian when it came to drinking beer. It would have been almost too much of a disappointment if she had turned out to be the kind that liked the sweet stuff.

They manage to pay off the taxes and penalties and end up with enough money for the trip to Mexico with the class. While there, they find the lawyer and help the police catch him. Later, back in the United States, they get a reward for catching him.

Danny comes home and marries and Kate Logan and they have a huge party at Noah's Ark.

Great story.

There was more of a plot to the book than I remembered from reading in back in the 1950s. Although we didn't learn about the possible loss of the property until half way through the book, it was a significant event that put tension on the ladies to find a solution within a fixed time frame, the recipe for a good novel.

I think the reason I thought about Suds In Your Eye when I started writing about Liz Siedo and the bookmobile was that Liz gets things done and has a positive attitude about life, just like the three women in Mary Lasswell's books. I don't know yet, but I suspect Liz might enjoy a taste of beer from time to time.