Suffer the Children by John Saul

On the front cover:  Innocence dies so easily. Evil lives again...and again...and again.
This supernatural thriller is about a little girl, Beth, who was murdered by her father, John Conger, a hundred years ago in Port Arbello, New Hampshire.  After the tragic incident, he threw himself over the embankment to the thrashing sea below. 
The Conger family had been prominent in the small town for centuries.  The present day Jack Conger, his wife Rose, and his two girls, Elizabeth and Sarah had fallen victim the Conger curse.  One day while playing in the field, Jack unconciously followed Sarah into the woods and severely beat her.  She survived physically, but mentally she was gone.  She was unable to talk or show emotion at all.  Neither Jack or Sarah knew what had taken control of them that day. 
The spirit of the little girl, Beth, who had died so many years ago by her fathers hand, has taken control of Elizabeth's mind.  Leading her to lure children from the town to a cave at the embankment, where she kept them locked up and eventually killed them.  Elizabeth doesn't remember any of it.  But Sarah, in her mute world, knows.  And she, believed to be insane, is blamed for the dissappearances.  She is taken to an asylum to live out her days. 
Meanwhile, ten years after the murders, Jack Conger takes his wife for a boat ride, and neither of them ever return.  Elizabeth is left alone.  Soon, Sarah, who is still in the asylum, regains her voice and is allowed to visit home.  That is the day that the bodies are discovered in the cave.  Sarah is told that she would have to stand trial and is taken back to the asylum.  Sarah starts to remember.  She suddenly remembers following Elizabeth to the cave, she remembers the flash of the knife, she remembers her sister's face as Elizabeth slashes the  children over and over.  Then her mute face returns.  And Elizabeth, back home, remembers too....
I read this book in two days.  On the edge of my seat.  Chewing my nails.  I often find myself wondering, while reading a book, if it could be made into a movie.  This book could never bemade into a movie because it would be too much for the human mind to accept.  Reading about something horrendous, and actually seeing it are two different things.  Like the movie, Pet Cemetary, where the little boy gets hit by the Semi-truck.  I was okay with reading it, but seeing it on the screen was just too much.  I couldn't watch the rest of the movie. 
This is the third book I have read by John Saul.  I find his style, how should I put it... shocking.  But luring.  I can't resist it. This book was a national best seller and sold more than a million copies.  It was published in 1977 by Dell Publishing. 

Together is All We Need by Michael Phillips

The setting is 1860s Shenandoah, North Carolina at the Rosewood Cotton Plantation.  Sixteen year old Katie Burchard and her half black cousin Mayme, have been keeping a very serious secret.  Both of their families had been killed by marauders after the Civil War.  Katie and Mayme, along with former slave children, have been running Rosewood all by themselves.  Fooling everyone in town to think their families were still alive and well.  Soon, their charade is over when Katie's uncle showed up to find out for himself what was going on and eventually finds out the truth.  But when he tried to make a claim on the plantation and send Katie and her friends away, another uncle showed up with the original deed that had been signed over to him years before.  Apparantly, Katie's parents knew that other uncle would come and try to make a claim. 

This is a story of great human kindness, hatred, and racism.  A time when blacks were very recently freed from slavery, but not by any means free.  A story of determination and dedication to accomplish a sisterhood of love.  This book is part of a series titled:  The Shenandoah Sisters.  I have not read the previous books in the series but plan to soon. 

Michael Phillips is a Christian novelist who has written more than four dozen novels with sales over five million copies.  This book was published in 2004 by Bethany House Publishers.  I believe it was written for young adults but I enjoyed it very much. 

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Just after the Spanish Civil War, Barcelona is in shambles, and Daniel Sempere's mother has been dead so long he can't remember her face.  Daniel is ten years old when his father, the owner of the bookshop, takes him to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books to choose a novel from piles and stacks of books that have been brought there because they were, in essence, forgotten.  This tradition had been passed down for generations by the Sempere family.  Daniel chose a book, The Shadow of the Wind, by Julian Carax.  He is told that the book would be his to keep and protect forever and that he must never tell anyone about the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.  Little did Daniel know that the book he had chosen would alter his future forever.  Little did Daniel know, that the author of the book was involved in scandel and murder, love and tragedy.  His curiousity got the better of him when he decided to find out more about the life of Julian Carax.  And the life of Carax altered the lives of many for better and worse. 

This story is so complex that I cannot even begin to review it in it's entirety here.  Even if I tried, it would give away the ending because the truth doesn't take shape til then.  I can only say that Carlos Ruiz Zafon is a master at his art.  This tale is one that will be etched in my memory for a very long time.  One phrase in particular, gave me goosebumps:  ...so long as we are being remembered, we remain alive...     

Published in 2001 in Barcelona and translated to English and published in New York by The Penguin Press in 2004, The Shadow of the Wind spent more than a year on the Spanish bestseller list and is being published in more than twenty countries.  It has been acclaimed internationally. 

Midnight Voices by John Saul

Brad and Caroline Evans lived in a nice little cozy apartment on the East Side of Central Park in New York City which was a better neighborhood than the West Side with their two children 12 year old Laurie and 10 year old Ryan.  Brad had been telling Caroline lately that he felt like he was being watched and followed whenever he went out.  She thought he was just paranoid, until the night he went running late in Central Park.  He never came back.  He had been murdered, his neck snapped from behind. 

After Brad's death Caroline was skeptical of the park but when the kids insisted that they go and play with their friends, she relented, going with them.  Ryan ran to the baseball diamond and she and Laurie sat on a bench to watch.  Suddenly an old woman and a handsome young man sat down with them and started talking to them.  They seemed very nice.  She unwittingly told them all about herself and the next day the old woman showed up at the antique shop where Caroline worked.  She bought a large vase and asked Caroline to deliver it to her at her home which is the huge old spooky mansion called the Rockwell at the edge of the park not far from where Caroline lived with her children.   When she arrived and entered the building she was greeted by the doorman, who seemed like the butler in the haunted mansion at Disney World.  He spoke in monotones.  Suddenly the handsome man was there introducing himself as Anthony Fleming and told her that the old woman was up to her old tricks, trying to find him a wife.  He made her promise to have dinner with him and they decided to play along with the old woman's game.

That was the beginning of the whole nightmare.  Caroline and Anthony married a few months later and she and her children moved into the Rockwell.  Ryan didn't like it from the start recalling ghost and witch stories he had heard from his schoolmates.  They had told him that Rodney, the doorman, was a troll who lived under the bridge in the park.  He also didn't like Anthony Fleming or any of the other tenants in the Rockwell. 

Soon after moving in, both of the children start hearing noises and voices in the night.  Then people were coming into their rooms at night, particularly Laurie's room and hovering over her, poking her, whispering.  The people in her room were the neighbors, even a creepy doctor who lived in the building, started appearing in her room, crooning over her, touching her.  All three of them, Caroline, Laurie and Ryan, were being drugged through the food the neighbors so generously brought them.  But they didn't realize it at the time.  They shrugged it off as fatigue and nightmares. 

Laurie began being strapped to a gurney and taken out of her room every night at midnight, she was inserted with needles and tubes in every part of her body.  These people, the people that lived in the Rockwell, where hooked to the other ends of the tubes and needles, draining her youth out of her body and into theirs.  Then, one day all the old ladies where missing.  In their places where young ladies, who coincidently looked exactly like the older ladies.  Caroline was also being heavily sedated so that all this could take place without her intervening.  She eventually was taken to some creepy old hospital where she would be out of the way, and locked up there.  But Ryan had sensed something wrong about the neighbors from the start.  Locked in his room, he found a hidden door in his closet and found his way out of the house.  He went and found his mother and freed her, then the two went back to the Rockwell and saved Laurie, whose was close to death. 

While I was reading this book one day, in the middle of the afternoon, mind you, my son knocked on my bedroom door, and I just about jumped out of my skin.  I also chewed my nails, which I haven't done in a long time.  Very scary.  An action packed page turner.  It was published in 2002 by Ballantine Books.

Also see ----->Black Creek Crossing  by the same author. 

Two Souls Indivisible: The Friendship That Saved Two POWs in Vietnam

by James S. Hirsch

This is the true story of a friendship that became legendary between two fighter pilots in a Northern Vietnamese POW camp which the inmates called the Zoo.  One prisoner, Fred Cherry, is one of the first black air force fighter pilot officers and the first black officer captured by the Vietnamese.  The other, Porter Halyburton, is a Navy pilot from the south, who at first couldn't believe that the black man could be a fighter pilot.  The Vietnamese put them in the same cell, believing that the racial barrier would torture the two. 
When Halyburton first saw Cherry, he was badly injured.  One arm, which was damaged in the plane crash, hung limp from his shoulder socket, he needed badly to bathe, and he could hardly walk.  Cherry was sure he would soon die.  Halyburton was also in bad emotional shape due to the daily interrogations and torture sessions, as well as being isolated from anyone for months.  He was taken to Cherry's cell, and told to "take care of him".  Both men had their doubts about each other.  One believing that other was a typical southern racist and the other not believing that his cell mate could possibly be a superior officer.  Halyburton began taking care of Cherry and helped him to bath, walked him around the cell to try and bring him "back to life", demanded that the guards give him medical attention, and often sacrificed his own meek rations so Cherry might gain weight. 

Meanwhile, on the home front, Cherry's wife had moved on with another man, had a new baby, and told Cherry's children that he was dead even though she knew he was alive.  Also, she squandered away almost all of his pay from the air force. $122,098.13 of the $147,184.00 that he had earned. 

Halyburton's wife and child remained faithful although he was thought dead and even had a memorial service in his absence.  After six years, she found out that he was alive and we share her mixed emotions, happiness and fear for husband.  She also plays a huge role in the American battle to bring the POWs home. 
In the end the two men tearfully admit that they had saved each other's lives.

I believe this is a really awesome, well researched book.  Hats off to James S. Hirsch for this story.  He has shown us how racial diversity can be overcome by sheer human kindness.  The book was published in 2004 by the Houghton Mifflin Company.

Black Creek Crossing

Black Creek Crossing by John Saul

Thirteen-year-old Angel Sullivan has always been shunned by other kids, teased and taunted because of her appearance and strange ways.  Then Angel's family moves to Roundtree, Massachusetts.  They are told from the beginning that all kinds of wierd things have happened in the little old house on Black Creek Road, but the lure of a new start for Angel's family beckons and they make the move anyway.  But when Angel is shunned even by her new classmates, she falls deeper into depression.  Until she meets Seth Baker, a fellow outcast.  The two become fast friends, but are constantly harrassed by the other kids as well as their own parents.  The two begin to  research the house and discover that a man had murdered his wife and daughter there.  And every other family who moved into the house hear voices, see visions, and many murders had taken place.  Angel and Seth are led to the basement of the house by a mysterious black cat where they find a very old book of witchcraft and begin to make potions against their enemies.  But once they had begun, there was no turning back.  The spirits of Black Creek Crossing had a hold on them.  And the day of reckoning comes. 

John Saul is the author of the national bestseller Midnight Voices, which I will definitely have to read after having read Black Creek Crossing.  This book was a fast paced page turner and actually gave me a nightmare on the first night that I was reading it!  My nightmare was totally unrelated but I'm positive that it was stemmed from the book.  It has all the classic haunts such as the black cat, the old cemetery with the mysterious big oak tree, witchcraft, and ghosts.  The book was published in 2004 and is a Ballantine Book by the Random House Publishing Group.  Go get it right away, you won't be sorry!

 

Autumn Reads

Having just finished off Maid Marian by Elsa Watson, a novel of Sherwood Forest with all the old beloved characters such as Robin Hood, Little John, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlett, Clym O' the wood, Queen Eleanor of Aquitane, King Richard the Lionheart, and the Sheriff of Nottingham, I have a To Be Read pile in the works that I think are appropriate for the new season:   

The Haunted Abbot by Peter Tremayne   -    a tale of Ancient Ireland                   

Black Creek Crossing by John Saul         -     Supernatural Suspense    

Blood Kin by Henry Chapell              -     A haunting novel of early Texas

I'm excited about these autumn reads and will review each book soon!  Often, I get on theme kicks with my reading and lately it has been 18th and 19th centuries, such as westerns(Larry McMurtry is one of my favorites), early English History(The Dress Lodger), Civil War era(Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier), as well as American Indian novels.  But since the new season has arrived, I have more drawn to the supernatural and the new bestsellers.  Happy Reading.