My second novel is MATTIE, A NOVEL and was actually written many years ago.  Mattie was inspired by my aunt who nursed in a VA hospital--inspired ONLY.  As I was writing this manuscript, I wanted Mattie to become an army nurse in WWII but realized I knew very little about these women.  I began researching and realized there was little to nothing written about them so I decided I would write about them and fill that void.  

 

Years later, They Called Them Angels: American Military Nurses in World War II, was the result.  Please read about it elsewhere on this site.

 

So, Mattie is finally available for you to read, and here are a few paragraphs to get you started:

 

 

CHAPTER 1

 

            The day began as had all the others in that early October of 1937. The temperature was already in the seventies and it was only six in the morning.  Mattie Cooper had been up for an hour and almost had breakfast ready to put on the table.  The biscuits—all two dozen of them—were baking in the oven. The eggs were frying in the bacon drippings in the cast-iron skillet.  The gravy simmered in another skillet, and the bacon waited on a serving plate.

            "Got my breakfast ready yet, girl?"

            Mattie heard the same question and the same heavy footsteps at the same time every morning.  She took a deep breath and answered without looking up, "Yes, Papa."  Though she rarely ruined anything she cooked, she was in constant fear of doing so. She knew what her father's response would be to wasted food, not to mention his missing a meal.

            But there were no problems this morning. The biscuits came to the proper brownness at the very moment the gravy was ready to pour.  Using both hands and a folded kitchen towel, Mattie lifted the heavy black pan and poured the steaming liquid into the chipped pink gravy pitcher.  She returned to the kitchen and pulled the long and awkward baking sheets out of the oven.  After putting the biscuits into a towel-lined basket, she carried them to the table, covering them with the corners of the towel as she walked.  Just as she set down the blue and white platter of bacon and eggs, the bottle of milk, and the pitcher of gravy, her brothers clomped down the stairs and clamored to their places on the long wooden benches on either side of the roughly hewn table.                         

Another morning ritual. How carefree they always seemed, how easy were their lives just because they had been born male. Aaron, Jr., known as Charles (his middle name), was like a moose—clumsy and big-boned.  His raven black hair was stubbornly straight and he was constantly pushing it off of his face with the back of his hand. He had to use the back of his hand because his fingers were usually full of food. Charles was over six feet tall, selfish and conceited,  and always had his way with the girls.  A bully when he was younger, at nineteen he was still a bit quick-tempered but mellowing thanks to a certain redhead named Patsy Quinn. 

            Douglas, at eighteen, reminded Mattie of a fox because of his reddish coloring and agility. He was the athlete—always running, throwing a football, or diving off the Davis Creek Bridge.  Even his middle name, Adam, stood for "lover of outdoors."  Mattie thought Douglas the most handsome brother and admired his quiet but determined attitude.  He, like Charles, was hard to know, but at least he thanked Mattie for her work around the house and, unlike Charles, did not patronize the father who ignored him.

The third child, Theda Magdalene, was called Theda by everyone except her father who couldn't stand having a daughter named after an actress, which is just what Theda wanted to be.  Each morning she entered the dining room as if walking onto a stage where an audience breathlessly waited. Theda pretty much thought everyone waited for her, and she wasn't about to maneuver through the hallways when "those three ruffians" were running rampant. Wasn't it bad enough that the town was dumpy and her parents unbearable and embarrassing, did she have to put up with the boys too?  Surely she must be adopted and was really the illegitimate daughter of some forbidden but fantastical romance between two of Hollywood's biggest stars.

            As she did every morning, Theda sat in her place at the table and waited, with hands in lap, until the boys had served themselves.  Once they settled into eating, she poured herself a cup of coffee, took half a biscuit out of the basket, and covered it with exactly one teaspoon of preserves.  As she sighed with disgust when one of the boys grabbed the half biscuit she'd left and popped it in his mouth, she took tiny bites and chewed slowly.  To Theda, the only ticket out of Hudson was her looks so she watched her figure zealously.  Ever since she could remember, she'd told people that she was heading for Hollywood the day after graduation and not a day later.  And that day was only seven months away.  She certainly had the looks to buy that ticket, and constantly heard comparisons to Hedy Lamarr or Paulette Goddard.  She had inherited her father's black hair and wore it shoulder length and tied back with berets.  Mattie envied her sister's dark beauty—the emerald green eyes, dark brows, perfect teeth, and naturally curled lashes—attributes that had attracted every man in Hudson for years. Though not a tease, Theda was popular, and the fact that Aaron Cooper didn't allow her to date, and punished her severely when he caught her doing so, hadn't kept her from sneaking out many a night.

            Theda and Charles were both graduating from high school this year, and it irritated Theda that she had to share the occasion with him.  Mattie was just relieved that Charles was going to graduate because he'd threatened to quit many times and was already a year behind his classmates. It was only the football team and girls that kept him struggling with his grades.

            Last but not least was Samuel, who reminded Mattie of a deer, a sometimes trapped and frightened deer who, at seventeen, still seemed to be a little boy who desperately needed someone to love and care for him.  His hair was red but with more blond than Douglas's.  He was quiet, a good student, and loved to read.  He had Mattie's love of faraway places and her feeling of not belonging; and he spent hours in a tree or along the creekbank wondering what France or Italy really looked like.  Ernest Hemingway was his idol.  Not only did Samuel remind Mattie of herself but he was so loving and gentle that she felt she had to protect him, especially from their father.  While Charles fulfilled their father's idea of what a real man was like, Samuel was far from it.  Aaron Cooper didn't think gentleness or reading were good qualities in a man and never let Samuel forget it.

            As early as Samuel's birth and barely out of babyhood herself, Mattie was nurturing the others as they came along. Early in their marriage, Sarah and Aaron Cooper’s love had dissipated for each other and their children, so when the last little boy was born, they gave into Mattie’s pleas to name him. The quiet little girl spent hours weighing her choices, determined that she pick the best name possible. When she chose the ones she thought the most Godly and grand, she asked her Sunday School teacher what each of them meant then decided on Samuel ("asked of God") and Zachariah ("whom God remembers"). "Those should keep him safe, huh Miss Briggs?"  Mattie then took charge of little Samuel and vowed to keep him from any harm.