Tag Archives: slavery

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.