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| Category: Fiction:Suspense |
(requires Adobe Reader)
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| About the Book | |
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As word spreads around town, it comes to the attention of a fanatical preacher who decides to make it his duty to deal with this abomination. In his effort to triumph over this evil within his community, he elicits help from an equally fanatical social worker whose beliefs mirror his. With the unlimited resources of the state child welfare agency, the social worker threatens to seek custody of Claire's daughter. Because Claire can see and hear from those no one else can see and hear, the social worker alleges Claire has a mental illness that poses a danger to her daughter. Unbeknownst to anyone, the social worker has a split personality that poses an additional danger to Claire and her daughter. Nick Devaney is a retired cop from Biloxi. He is tired and used up. He rents a room in the same boarding house as Claire. He is a raging alcoholic and has been since the deaths of his wife and son, who were killed in an automobile accident some years ago. Nick quit his job some days ago, having tolerated enough of man's inhumanity. He bought three bottles of whiskey and drank one in the truck on his way home from the job. His plan was to get in his truck and ride until he got to a town that felt right. Too drunk to drive, he boarded bus after bus until he arrived in the small town of Sheffield, Alabama. On the night he planned to kill himself, he is interrupted by Claire who has been contacted by Nick's deceased wife and informed of his plan to commit suicide. Claire saves him from the suicide and thus enables Nick to begin a new path in life. Because the social worker has very little factual evidence to prove Claire actually has any mental illness, she is convinced by her psychologist who treats her self-mutilation tendencies, to have a 'reading' with Claire. She is convinced by her psychiatrist that this is the only foolproof way to ascertain the truth about Claire's ability. The reading is so shocking to the social worker that she is hospitalized, which evokes her alternative personality to come forward to handle what needs to be done. The alternate personality is the 'badass' that the dominant personality could never be. The 'badass' personality threatens and convinces Claire to go before the preacher's church to admit she is a fraud and that she will leave town. If Claire will agree to this, the social worker will not file custody for Claire's daughter. Claire agrees and does just that. Before Claire and her daughter leave on the 10:20 pm Greyhound, the preacher arrives with the Sheffield police to keep Claire from leaving. Claire is terrified of the police intervention fearing arrest and losing custody of her daughter. Unbeknownst to anyone, the preacher wants to hire Claire as a co-pastor. He tells her that if he can continue to do what he does, which is to provide scriptural basis for biblical beliefs and if she can do what she does, which is to provide evidence of life after death, how can it not work. Claire is obviously shocked but eventually accepts. After the first year as co-pastor, Claire is moved to open her own church, 75 miles away in Huntsville. Over the next ten years, Claire created a dozen churches spreading her message up the east coast as far as New York, then out to the mid-west and as far west as Nevada. The Church of Eternal Life is alive and thriving spreading the true reality that life is eternal.
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| About the Author | |
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Judson Emens was the Child Welfare Supervisor for the Alabama Department of Human Resources for twenty-nine of his thirty-three year career. He supervised staff in child abuse / neglect investigations, child protective services and foster care. WHITE CROW is his second novel, the first being FIVE DAYS in OCTOBER. |