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When the child is finally born, it seems that Cathedral's prediction was empty: the baby appears normal in every way. As the months go by, however, Jewel becomes increasingly afraid that something is wrong with little Brenda Kay--she doesn't cry, she doesn't roll over, she's hardly ever awake. Eventually husband and wife take the baby to the doctor and are informed that she is a "Mongolian Idiot," not expected to live past the age of 2. Jewel angrily rebuffs the doctor's suggestion that they institutionalize Brenda Kay. Instead the Hilburns shoulder the burdens--and discover the unexpected joys--of living with a Down's syndrome child.
Bret Lott has written a novel that spans decades, follows the lives of several characters, and cuts back and forth between Mississippi and California. Given these challenges, a lesser writer might lose focus. Lott, however, has wisely chosen to keep his eye trained on Jewel--a narrator who is smart, perceptive, and above all, honest. He has also bucked the trend toward political correctness by allowing his characters to think, feel, and talk the way white Mississippians of that era would have. ("Mongolian Idiot," "nigger," "cracker," and "buck" are just a few of the epithets sprinkled throughout the text.) The language may be discomforting to some readers. Few will deny, however, that Bret Lott has crafted a clan that is all heart in this bittersweet paean to the enduring strength of familial love. --Margaret Prior
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Book Description Condition: New. Book is in NEW condition. 0.9. Seller Inventory # 0671038184-2-1
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Book Description Paper Back. Condition: New. Thirty-nine year-old Jewel Hilburn is already the mother of five as she quietly announces to her husband Lester that she's bearing a sixth. Their marriage is a good and loving one, though keeping food on the table in their hardscrabble backwoods home circa World War II Mississippi is a struggle. Not long after sensing the new life quicken in her, Jewel is visited by her devoutly Pentecostal black childhood friend, Cathedral. Expecting to hear a word of joy and best wishes on the coming child, she hears instead her friend reluctantly but obediently deliver an oracle: 'I come to prophesieth unto you about coming hardship you or nobody ain't ever be ready to bear.I say unto you that the baby you be carrying be yo' hardship, be you' test in this world.The Lord.telling you right out. He letting you know. He smiling on you this way.' So begins the harrowing saga of Jewel's-let's put it biblically-'working out her salvation with fear and trembling.' Disregarding questions of authorial intent, Jewel could be read as a narrative theology of the mystery of human and divine synergy in the unfolding of Providence, as a powerful pro-life drama, as a lesson in the costs shared by loved ones in the pursuit of one's vocation. Like all the greatest novels, Jewel brings before us life with all its grittiest and greatest questions engaged. But whatever your reading might be, the certain intention of Bret Lott to write a true and great story, and his readers' opportunity to enfold themselves in it, have been manifestly fulfilled. 358 pp. Seller Inventory # 55407