What do the following events have in common?

• the Great Chicago Fire of 1871
• the assassination of President McKinley in 1901
• the women’s suffrage movement from 1865 through 1920

 Answer: These events are covered in an extremely well-researched historical novel, Angels at Sunset about a woman who relives these episodes as she reads a biography about herself in 1920. Little does she know she is being followed by a revengeful man who is intent on killing her and her family. Who is he, why is he following her, and why does he want her dead?  (The answers lie in this book, which you will find hard to put down.)

The novel begins in 1920 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where Jessica Radford listens to the very first radio broadcast on KDKA, which broadcasts the presidential election returns.  Because of the passage of the 19th Amendment, this is the first time she has ever voted. Many years earlier, she advocated against slavery and pushed for equal rights of the freed slaves.  Later, she joined Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and other suffragists–not only for the right to vote but for other rights women ought to have, such as the right to speak in public, the right to have a profession, the right to have  property and the right to her own children if she got divorced, as well as many, many other rights denied to them simply because they were women. It was a hard-fought struggle and Jessica relives it as she reads her a biography that her daughter had written about her.  AND–all the while, unknown to her, a man is planning to kill her. How will it end?

If you’d like to receive a sample chapter of this book absolutely free, simply send your request to: Free Sample Chapter, Hill Song Press, PO Box 486, Lawrence, KS  66044  This sample describes the first woman to run for President of the U.S.–in 1872.

Best-selling mystery author Nancy Pickard said that “Tom Mach brings the accuracy of a historian and the insight of a novelist to his dramatic and entertating story.” The Midwest Book Review says that “Angels at Sunset is an excellent pick for community historical fiction collections.”

To get an author-signed copy of ANGELS AT SUNSET send $16.95 plus $3.05 postage to: Hill Song Press, POB 486, Lawrence, KS  66044.  For a non-signed copy you can either buy through Amazon.com or order it by calling 1-800-BOOKLOG.

Down deep inside everyone’s soul is a need for love, but that need can be fulfilled if we give that love away freely to someone else. That’s why I want to tell you about Jessica Radford.

Jessica is a 19-year-old woman who comes home to Kansas after spending a year at Carlotta College. She’s attractive but her head is filled with dreams that appear unrealistic in view of the fact that her parents are poor and that her uncle (who provided money for her education) was killed at Shiloh. Oh, did I tell you that this takes place in Lawrence, Kansas in 1862?  Well, how would you feel if I told you that she has an adopted 16-year-old black sister named Nellie who insists that she sees her guardian angel named Sissy? And how would you feel if I told you that both of her parents are burned alive that evening by border ruffians? I think you might say that Nellie is disillusioned (no one else sees Nellie’s guardian angel) and if your parents were killed like that you’d want revenge. Right? That’s exactly where Jessica found herself.

But the question is–How do we go from that horrible situation to a place of forgiveness for the murderer who got away?  Well, in my history-inspired novel Sissy! and in the following two books on Jessica called All Parts Together and Angels at Sunset, she struggles with the issue of forgiveness. I can relate to that because a member of my own family refused to forgive her brother for something he did many years ago. Forgiveness is tough but forgiveness is a decision and not a feeling.

It might help you to know a little more about Jessica Radford. I tell my readers that she’s a 21^st century woman living in the 19^th century. Jessica believes there should be no distinction between men and women as far as all rights were concerned. To see for yourself why Jessica was so different than other women of her time, read the opening to Sissy!

        “Thank you, but I’m not helpless,” nineteen-year-old Jessica Radford said when the stagecoach driver offered her his hand after she opened her door.

         The man narrowed his eyes in surprise as he dropped his hand. “Sorry, ma’am, I was only askin.’”

         Jessica hope she didn’t sound rude, but men shouldn’t assume all ladies were helpless. After all, she used to plow Pa’s field and chop wood at home, didn’t she?

Jessica asserts her independence again—as well as her abolitionist feelings toward slavery  in All Parts Together when, the day after her town of Lawrence was destroyed by invaders, she walks through the rubble with Tinker a former black slave….

     “You were right to feel outrage, Tinker,” she says. “Why yesterday some of these rebels heard an infant cry, and they ran into a cornfield, shooting a man dead—with the man’s infant still in his arms. These pigs don’t deserve compassion.”

     “Except, Miz Jessica, the Good Book say dat we should—”

     “I don’t care what the Good Book says.” She stopped, spun around, and glared at him. “Tinker, this is foolish. Walk next to me. I don’t have any dreaded disease that you have to walk behind me the whole time.”

     “I jest don’t feel comfortable walkin’ next to a nice, respectable white lady. But I’ll come up if yah say so, Miz Jessica.”

      “I do say so, Tinker.”

Later, in Angels at Sunset, Jessica again asserts her free spirit and her “I don’t care what you think” attitude when she meets a suffragist named Alice Paul and Ms. Paul’s planning committee, which includes Lucy Burns and Crystal Eastman. Lucy speaks first….

 “Mr. Wilson will be a challenge. When he was president of Princeton University, he discouraged negroes from applying for admission. He will likely do the same with women in denying us a hearing concerning our right to vote.”

“Exactly,” says Crystal. “That’s why we plan to humiliate him.”

Jessica opens were mouth in surprise. “How?”

Alice leans forward in her chair and dissects Jessica with piercing eyes. “Any suggestions?”

Jessica is taken aback by Paul’s unexpected rudeness, but she meets her eyes with an angry stare of her own. “Alice, we need to find a way to slap some sense into his stubborn head.”

Alice Paul finally betrays a hint of a smile. “Ah, Jessica, I see you are a woman of courage as well.”

“I am also a woman of rage,” Jessica adds.

Yes, at times, Jessica is a woman of rage, but she is a woman who tries hard to ignore the little girl within her who is  weeping in pain for the need to be understood. (Isn’t that what compassion is all about anyway—the need to understand others?)  In Sissy, her heart is broken when her parents are killed. In All Parts Together, her heart is broken when her much-admired President Lincoln is assassinated, and in Angels at Sunset, her heart is broken when she finds she was wrong to condemn a wonderful man who married her daughter.

Incidentally, Angels at Sunset is being released in February 2012 as a printed book, but if you want to get a significant discount on this book by pre-ordering it now please press the “Contact Me” button on this page and I will provide you with more information.

I have asked other authors to share with me examples of compassion or lack of compassion from ther books.  Here are four that I have received….

Barbara Boatright wrote a memoir entitled Impaled on the Horns of the Devil. She describes a scene where she undergoes an abusive marriage to a man named Floyd. He has just told her he felt sorry for a prostitute who struggled to raise her little girl by herself. So he kept her company at her house for two weeks. Floyd tells Barbara: “Don’t you have any compassion for people who are down and out?” And Barbara answers: “Don’t talk to me about ‘compassion’! What about your wife [meaning herself]? Did you already forget that you’re married?” With arrogance he said he saw nothing wrong with sleeping with another woman and didn’t know why I was so hurt. He said that what he really wanted was an open marriage anyway. This is a good example of the extreme indifference some people have about the feelings of others. Barbara’s blog is http://barbaraboatright.authorsxpress.com 

The stories in Sandy Humphrey’s book Hot Issues, Cool Choices: Facing Bullies, Peer Pressure, Popularity, and Put-Downs are all based on actual bullying experiences students shared with me during my school visits, and my book is dedicated to a 12-year-old Minnesota boy who took his own life as a result of being bullied. This is an excerpt from my Author’s Note:

 “The Golden Rule is an old rule, but it’s still a good rule to live by. My hope in writing this book is that it will help you to become a kinder, more compassionate human being and that you will treat others the way you want them to treat you. 

 Did you know that there are kids out there who don’t even want to get out of bed in the morning because they know what going to school means for them? It can mean being teased and taunted by other kids. It can mean being excluded and rejected by other kids. It can mean being afraid that you’re going to be physically assaulted and possibly hurt.And, unfortunately, sometimes it can even mean that you just can’t hang in there any longer, so you give up and take your own life.” Sandy’s website is: http://www.kidscandoit.com

Catherine Green, the author of Love Hurts, wonders whether her characters feel compassion for each other. Her  heroine, Jessica Stone, believes herself to be an independent and compassionate woman. She does not show prejudice, she lives a good honest, hard working life, and she is friendly to everyone that she interacts with. But when she discovers that the man she loves is a vampire, and his brother is a werewolf, her morals go out of the window. In her confusion she experiences adultery, pain, heartbreak and terror.

Following her tumultuous experience after the revelations of the people she loves, Jessica is thrown into turmoil about her own feelings. Her friends and lover have betrayed her in the worst possible way. Will Jessica show compassion and remain faithful to her vampire Jack Mason? Or will she share herself with his werewolf brother Danny? [Tom Mach's observation: Oftentimes compassion is a decision, not a feeling.] Catherine’s website is: http://www.catherine-green.co.uk

In his short story collection, 200 Shorts, Salvatore Buttacia describes some characters who make the leap from self absorption to concern for others in the space of under 1,000 words. In his story “Georgie”, neighborhood boys poke fun at Georgie who has a cleft palate. They ostracize him from street games of stickball and laugh when he speaks. Then one late-autumn afternoon Georgie went skating on thin ice and drowned. Everyone turned out for the 14-year-old’s wake, even the 14-year-old Anthony Lanzetti who narrates the story and learns a lesson in compassion that he will take with him for a lifetime.

        We stood up, made the sign of the cross, turned to
        Mrs. Hogan, and my father said, “I’m Frank Lanzetti, 
        Anthony’s father. My boy was good friends with your
        son. We’re gonna miss him.”

In “The Emperor’s Iron Rule,” we meet Sister Versalis, whom her fourth-graders call, behind her back, “Emperor.” Like the Ancient Roman despots, she doles out punishment by iron ruler at every opportunity.  When Elizabeth Brillo raises her hand and tells Sister somebody stole her green pencil sharpener, the nun asks the thief to confess by raising his hand. No one does, which results in Sr. Versalis’ walking up and down the rows smashing her iron ruler down on the knuckles of every outstretched hand. Finally, Elizabeth is ecstatic. She’s found her eraser. It had fallen out of her pencil case.

        Sister smiled. Why? Did that suddenly make everything
        all right? The class had been knuckle-wrapped for no
        reason and the Emperor was smiling, all the while tapping
        her iron ruler down on the bent arm of her black habit. 
        Was she going to ask Brillo to extend her non-writing hand
        now so the rest of us could feel some consolation? 
        “Take out your writing paper, boys and girls. And your
        pencils too.”

Salvatore Buttacia’s blog is http://salbuttaci.blogspot.com

By the way, please let me know if you’d like me to email you a free copy of AN INNOCENT MURDERED if you are willing to give me a review on it when you’re finished. Just click on the “Contact Me” button near the top of my site to let me know.

Penelope, a character in my novel, Sissy, takes pity on the men running away from Quantrill’s raiders, who, in 1863, killed nearly 200 men in Lawrence, Kansas.  One of the raiders approaches her.  “Men keep disappearing here,” one of the men growls, looking down at her with black, contemptuous eyes. “Yeah,” says another. “Where’re they hiding?” She glares back at them. “I’m not going to tell you.” Who did they think she was, she thought, a fool? The first man draws his horse nearer to her and pulls out his pistol, aiming it at her face. “Tell me, lady, or I’ll shoot you!” No man, Penelope thought, should ever dare tell her to do the wrong thing. She lived her life believing that. And she’d die—if she had to.“You may shoot me if you will, but you won’t ever find out where the men are.”

On the opposite extreme is a lack of compassion. In my historical novel, All Parts Together, Jessica’s friend Matt asks her to give widows comfort after the 1863 Quantrill raid.  “I am not capable of giving others comfort,” she finally says. “That is the reason I could never be a nurse like my friend Mary helping the wounded in this horrible war. Ask me to drive a team, charge the enemy on a battlefield, or even rescue negroes from slave states, and I would gladly do it.” She adds: “I wish I were like other women,” she said, her mouth twitching. “Docile, humble, obedient, and helpless. I wish I had all those qualities you would expect in a lady.”

Even in the 21st century, there is a great shortage of good Samaritans in the world. While part of it may be our preoccupation with ourselves and our busy lives, another part may be due to fear of litigation.  I recently received the following from a Twitter friend named Ruoxu from China. Here’s his story:

Hello, I want to tell you about a situation involving compassion in China. A few years ago, a famous lawsuit was started by an elderly lady. She was struck by a car and plummeted to the street. A young man came to her aid and took her to a hospital. However, instead of thanking him she sued him, claiming he was the one responsible for her injuries.

Since there were no witnesses or other evidence conflicting with her testimony, the court rules that the young man must compensate for her injury because ‘generally speaking, people in China have rarely helped someone in situations like this.’

This ruling all but killed any compassion people may have felt for others. After the lawsuit, most people were convinced that helping someone in desperate need was dangerous. A few days after this happened, a Chinese newspaper reported that another elderly lady fell down in the street, but this time no one came to help. She was left there in the street, severely injured, and died.

Peng Yu is the name of the young man who wanted to be compassionate. His “crime” in helping out the elderly lady was to pay her 45876.6 yuan as compensation.  [Note the photo accompanying this blog is Pena Vu while the other is a caricature of an elderly man who falls down but no one dares to help.]

Fear of getting sued by the victim precipitated Good Samaritan laws in our country. But these laws only protect the rescuer if the rescuer is not compensated monetarily for his or her own actions.  In other words, a policeman or fireman who attempts to rescue someone can still be later sued by the one who was rescued. Also, if the rescuer is later rewarded by anyone (including the person rescued), he or she can still be sued.

While fear of legal retaliation may be one reason some people may feat being a good Samaritan, I believe another major factor is preoccupation with our own selves. Now that we have all kinds of electronic devices and don’t really have to communicate face-to-face or by handwritten letters that require more thought that emails. I hope I don’t sound as if I’m judging anyone. It’s just the way things are these days.

Hard-hitting examples of compassion–or the lack thereof–exist in all of my books…can be found in all of my books. Even in a children’s chapter book called HOMER THE ROAMER. Click the cover on the right-hand of this page to get an idea about this story. You’ll wag your tail as I tell this tale about this lost and loveable little cat.

• You wanted to kill those bastards who did it.
• You couldn’t believe it.
• You were scared.

When I wrote a historical novel named Sissy, I had a character named Jessica Radford in 1862 who was shocked to learn her parents were brutally murdered–burned alive in their house–by a border ruffian named Sam Toby. Jessica’s words were: “He’s the wretch I’m going to send straight to hell.”

In my murder mystery, An Innocent Murdered, I had a detective named Matt Gunnison who couldn’t believe that a certain someone killed a sweet 8-year-old girl.  Matt later goes to a church and weeps. A friend of Matt’s offers him a tissue. “Hey, I’m all right,” he said, embarrassed that she had seen him cry. She dries her own tears. “This is a good place to go when you’re in a lot of pain,” she says wistfully. “Yeah,” he says, “I guess it is.”

Audrey, a level-headed intelligent astronaut becomes unglued in my novel Advent when she finally tells Greg she now believes the earth may be on a collision course with a celestial body called Nemesis “Oh, Greg, I’m frightened. Even Bowles is now curious about your SOR21 star. He said he wanted to gather all the available data on it from other observatories and see if he could make some sense from all of it. I’m sorry I was so stubborn, Greg. Why can’t I see things the way they really are?” With the state of the world being as it is, what are we to do when our child is born?” Greg frowns. “What do you mean?” “Oh, Greg, I think I may be pregnant.”

When the attack on the Twin Towers occurred on 9/11/2001, our initial emotions were probably a mixture of shock, anger, and grief, probably all mixed into one. Mine was one of fear as I dropped to my knees and prayed to God, believing that the entire country was under attack. But now that I’ve sorted through all of this ugliness, all of this unbelievable horror, I realize that some good came from this tragedy. Signs of compassion were evident just about everywhere.

Take 33-year-old Todd Beamer, for instance. Todd and other passengers on the ill-fated United Airlines Flight 93 learned via cell phones and air phones that two other airlines were hijacked and flown into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. There was no doubt in his mind that UA 93 was probably headed for its next target–either the U.S. Capitol or the White House. A normal reaction would have been one of shock, followed by climbing into one’s shell to prepare to meet his or her Maker. I mean if you know you’re going to die, you shut everything else from you mind and concentrate solely on thinking about yourself and your loved ones. Not Todd Beamer. Yes, he thought about his family–his wife Lisa, his two young sons, and a daughter who was to be born four months later. But he also felt a sense of duty and a compassion for our country should UA 93 meet its intended target. While on an air phone with a GTE supervisor named Lisa Jefferson, he told and Ms. Jefferson that he and other men on the plane would jump the hijackers. Then he prayed the “Our Father” with her, but his last two words–full of unselfish determination–were “Let’s roll.”

I’ll continue this discussion on a future blog about 9/11 and what it might have to do with angels. But in the meantime, you might be interested in learning what role compassion played or didn’t play in Lincoln’s assassination. My historical novel All Parts Together, will give you some interesting insight into the matter. I hope you will at least click on the book cover at the right of this page and read the summary. I think you will discover why this novel was seriously considered for a Pulitzer Prize nomination.

Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia was once invited to judge a contest. It was an unusual contest in that he had to read entries that were to describe the most caring child. Mr. Buscaglia certainly must have cried as he read the following entry–

On one particular cold day in December a number of years ago, a boy who was probably about 10 years old, stood on the roadway. Barefooted, he shivered in the cold as he peered through a store window.

A lady took noticed and approached the lad. “My, but you appear to be in such deep thought staring at the window.”

The boy nodded. “I am asking God to give me a pair of shoes.”

“Well,” she said, “we’ll see what we can do about that.” She took his hand and went into the store, crowded with customers. Finally, the clerk appeared and she asked him to find her a half dozen pairs of socks for the lad. “Oh,” she added, “would you also get me a basin of water and a towel.”

The clerk frowned at the strange request but brought it to her anyway. The lady took the boy to the rear of the store. “Just sit here,” she said, as she removed her gloves. Kneeling down, she washed his little feet and then dried them with a towel.

At about this time, the clerk returned with socks she had requested. With a smile, she placed put the socks on the boy’s feet. “Let’s get a pair shoes for you, too,” she said. After finding a pair that was just right, she put the new shoes on his feet. Then she tied up the remaining pairs of socks and handed them to the lad. Patting him on the head, she said, “Well, I’m sure you will be far more comfortable now.”

As she turned to leave, the astonished boy latched onto her hand. Looking up at her, with tears streaming down his cheeks, he asked, “Are you God’s wife?’

The dictionary defines compassion as “a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanies by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.” History is filled with stories about compassion and its antithesis–apathy. I suspect we all would like to think we’re compassionate, but in this world of commercialism and greed, many of us at times need to question that.

The events of 9/11 were a catastrophe, but it also gave rise to examples of compassion. Thousands of people lost their lives that day, and all sorts of emotions erupted–grief, anger, disbelief, horror, sorrow, and confusion. But there were also examples of compassion. An accountant with a military background rescued two police officers buried in the rubble. He had to bluff his way past roadblocks so he could search for survivors even when rescue workers themselves felt it was too dangerous. Firemen rushed through the Twin Towers to hopefully save lives even though they realized this may be their last day on earth.

In future blogs, I’d like to focus on compassion because it is so closely entwined with forgiveness and mercy. It’s a selfless emotion, and one that I put into all of my works. While other authors may want to make a profit from the sale of their books, I simply want to put into the heart of my readers the realization that we’re all in this together, that we put our thoughts and feelings of others first, before we worry about ourselves. I think that’s why the Dalai Lama once said: “Compassion is essential for human survival.”

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