Introduction

Charleston's past is full of romance. Does Anne's future hold the same?

Charleston's Anne Brumley has long dreamed of love while ringing the bells at St. Michael's, but those dreams are beginning to fade. Her sister Alisha and cousin Della encourage the thirty-six year old to move somewhere new for a fresh start.

Widower Roy Summerall has happily ministered to the country folks of Church of the Good Shepherd for years. So why would the Lord call him and his daughter away to Charleston--the city that Roy remembers from his childhood as pretentious and superficial? Surely the refined congregation of St. Michael's won't accept a reverend with a red neck and a simple faith.

Meanwhile, Anne's sister, Alisha, struggles with her husband's ambition, which seems to be taking him further from their dreams of a happy family. And Cousin Della's former fiance has returned to Charleston, making her wonder if she chose the wrong path when she married her gifted but unemployed-artist husband.

Family, friendship, and faith converge in a beautiful story about how God's transforming love works in the Holy City of Charleston.

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Excerpt

Roy’s right eyelid began to twitch when he sat down in the
small antique chair across from Bishop Boatwright. He pulled
at his stiff white collar. It was an XXL, but it fit his thick neck
snugly, and he often undid the metal tab toward the end of the
day to give himself a little relief. He repositioned his broad
frame, and the small chair creaked. Then he rubbed his wide,
sweaty palms on his khaki pants and looked up to meet the
bishop’s gaze.
“Church of the Good Shepherd is thriving, isn’t it?”
Roy nodded his head. “I can’t tell you what a blessing it
is to serve in my hometown, Bishop. It couldn’t be better for
me and Little Rose.” Roy had a thick South Carolina sandhills
accent, very different from the slow, round tidewater
drawl of Charleston. The sandhills accent was clipped and
most of Roy’s e and a vowels made the short i sound so that the word heck or hack both sounded like hick. It was the kind
of accent folks in the metropolitan areas of the state called
country or redneck, and he tried to temper it when he met
with the bishop, whose office was at The Cathedral of St.
Luke and St. Paul in the center of downtown Charleston.
“Why do you think it’s going so well?” The bishop’s
question seemed more directed to the stack of papers on his
desk than to Roy. The old man tugged at his white muttonchops
before looking up.
The young priest cleared his throat and puffed up his
broad chest. “Well, we keep it simple, I guess. I stick to the
Gospel in the pulpit every Sunday, and we pour all that we
have into our Alpha Course, which folks have attended from
as far afoot as Darlington, Hartsville, and even Florence.”
The bishop patted the left pocket of his pressed purple
shirt. He wore a large and ornate gold cross around his neck
that he kept tucked in his pocket when he wasn’t decked out
in his heavy robe and ruffles.
Roy looked out of the thick glass panes of the third-floor
corner office. It was a Holy City view if he ever saw one,
with the largest, most historic steeples in the country dominating
the skyline—St. Philip’s on Church Street, St.
Michael’s on the corner of Meeting and Broad, St. Matthew’s
on upper King, St. John’s on Archdale, and the Unitarian
church right next door which he had forgotten the name of.
He smiled when he thought of his simple red brick sanctuary,
circa 1967, back in Ellijay, with the lettered marquee
in the front. This month it read, Distressed? Try This Address!
(Every Sunday at 10 a.m.)
He turned back to the bishop, who watched him steadily
as if he wanted him to say more. “It’s my kind of people at
Good Shepherd, sir. The kind I grew up with, and we speak
the same language, you know?” He tugged at his collar and
smiled. “They trust me, and I know just where they’re coming
from. Then it’s not long before one or another brings in a
friend or a neighbor or coworkers . . .” The chair creaked as he
sat back. “And that’s why we’ve grown, I reckon. ’Cause we
know and understand each other.”
Bishop Boatwright made a steeple with the tips of his
fingers, then he raised his white bushy eyebrows, forming
two symmetrical arches. “I called you here because I have a
new position I’d like to recommend you for, Reverend.”
The twitch in Roy’s right eye turned into a flutter. He
reached up and rubbed it, then he leaned forward, resting his
elbows on his wide knees. “Bishop, you know it’s been a
tough few years for me personally.”
“Of course I do.” The bishop squinted. His pale blue
eyes shot a sharp look that Roy recognized as a complicated
blend of love, concern, and most striking of all, appraisal.
He kept on. “And now Rose and I are hunkered down in
Ellijay. She loves her school, and my mama sold the farm
and bought a house just down the road from us. Plus, my
brother is only ten miles away over in Robbin’s Neck.” Roy
bit his bottom lip hard. “It’s been real good for me to be back
in my old stomping grounds after losing Jean Lee.” He patted
the left side of his chest. “I feel like the Lord’s had his
hand on my heart, and he ’s been binding it up.”
“Undoubtedly.” The bishop balled his right hand into a fist, his large, gold ecclesiastical ring catching the afternoon
light. Roy had been a second-string offensive guard for
Clemson University before he became an Episcopal priest,
and the bishop’s gold band always reminded him of a Super
Bowl ring. This made him chuckle a little, imagining Bishop
Boatwright at the ten-yard line giving some defender the
Heisman before running toward the goal.
Bishop Boatwright held out his fist and leaned forward.
“You know what happens after you receive healing, son?”
Roy wasn’t sure how to answer this. Was it a theological
question or a personal one? He wasn’t bookish like the
bishop; he just knew the Holy Spirit and felt its daily presence
like the air his lungs inhaled or the soft light that fell on
his face on his morning walk to work.
“Sir?” he said.
“It’s been my experience these short seventy-six years”—
the bishop pounded his fist twice on the arm of his chair—“that
after you receive healing, the Lord calls you out to a new frontier.”
He pursed his pink lips and leaned forward. “He takes
that fresh strength and puts it to a new test.”
Roy tilted his square chin. He was a big, handsome fellow
with a head full of thick brown hair and dark brown eyes
to match. Bishop Boatwright had confirmed him when he
was twelve years old. And he’d ordained him the same year
his wife died some fifteen years later. Both times he had laid
his stubby hands on Roy’s head full of hair, his gold ring rubbing
against the boy’s scalp, blessing the holy ceremony with
the presence of the Almighty One he represented. The truth
was, this man was in authority over Roy, and like Saul on the road to Damascus, there was no use kicking against the goads.
He exhaled and uttered a prayer of mercy. “What did you
have in mind, sir?”
“Phil Rainey is retiring this spring.”
Phil Rainey, Phil Rainey, Phil Rainey. Roy ran the vaguely
familiar name through his mind as he thought about the other
churches in the middle part of the state. The only Phil Rainey
he knew was the rector of St. Michael’s in the center of downtown
Charleston. The fancy old church on the corner of
Meeting and Broad where his Aunt Elfrieda used to drag him
during his miserable summer visits.
Roy reached up to steady his right eyelid again. “I’m . . .
you don’t mean . . . ?”
Bishop Boatwright nodded. “Yes. St. Michael’s here in
Charleston. I’d like to recommend you to their search committee.”
He looked toward his desk as if his mind had already
concerned itself with his next appointment. “I think you
could be the man for the job, Reverend Summerall.”
Roy felt the burn of perspiration beneath his arms. He
blinked several times and set his jaw. “With all due respect,
Bishop, I’m not the kind of fellow that can lead a Charleston
church, especially a South of Broad one.” He looked around
the room at the shelves and shelves of books as if to find
proof. Then he pointed to his mouth. “Just listen to my
accent.”
The bishop turned back and cocked his head in curiosity.
“Or this.” Now that Roy had the bishop’s attention, he
smiled and pushed a little bit of his tongue through the gap
between his two front teeth. “I need braces.”
The bishop furrowed his bushy brows and Roy continued,
counting off the examples like a verdict.
“I drive an all-terrain vehicle on the weekends, I go to the
races for fun, I wear gold jewelry. Heck, I even vacation at
Myrtle Beach by my own choice.” Then Roy said with a firm
whisper, “Bishop, did you know that I have a tattoo of a
Clemson tiger paw on my right shoulder?” He rolled his shoulder
forward at the mention of it. He had dislocated it his junior
year, and his senior year he had torn so many tendons that he
had to have an operation. It still gave him a fit. “Sir, I wouldn’t
know the first thing about ministering to those ‘mind your
manners’ and ‘just where do your people come from?’ folks.”
The bishop took his time standing up, then ambled over
to his desk where he thumbed through his stack of papers.
“You spent your boyhood summers in Charleston, as I recall.”
He glanced toward Roy, who was peering out of the window
at St. Michael’s massive white steeple with its clock tower and
weather vane and one-ton bells that had called the city to worship
since before the Revolutionary War. He remembered
reading about how the steeple was painted black during those
days so the British ships wouldn’t spot it. Only it backfired.
The black made the church all the more noticeable from the
harbor, and the troops were quick to ransack it.
“They were the worst summers of my life.” Roy rotated
his right shoulder again. “My brother, Chick, and I were
treated pretty harshly by the local kids.” Roy could still hear
Heyward Rutledge calling him a “Neanderthal” when he
asked the fellow’s crush to dance at one of the Friday night
parties at East Bay Playground. He’d had to go home and look that word up in Aunt Elfrieda’s encyclopedia, and then he had
to take the scientific definition and translate it into the slang.
The bishop chuckled. He sniffed the air and scratched
his muttonchops.
Then he looked down at Roy and whole seconds passed
before he nodded once. “You might be just the man for the
job, Reverend. I want you to be open and trust me in this.
I’m going to recommend you to the search committee and
the vestry, and you’ll be hearing from them.”
Roy sat back in his chair as though he had been hit by a
three-hundred-pound nose guard. The chair seemed to waver,
and for a moment, he thought it might collapse under his
weight. He pictured Rose, his five-year-old daughter, curled
up in Mama’s lap on the front porch this morning. Charleston
was the last place he wanted to raise her. Jean Lee was gone.
Why in the world would the bishop, why would the Lord even,
want him to entertain this outlandish idea?
The bishop bowed his head and started to pray, but Roy
didn’t hear the words. When he heard the old man say,
“Amen,” he stood and firmly shook the bishop’s hand. Then
he got back in his pickup and drove quickly down Interstate
26 toward Interstate 95 where the live oaks and palmettos
gave way to the scrub pines and the flat lands of the only
place, this side of heaven, he ever wanted to call home.

“What did high-and-mighty have to say?” His mama was
sporting her new rhinestone-encrusted flip-flop heels and white shorts too short for a sixty-five-year-old woman. She
was flipping pancakes on his griddle while her new husband,
Donny, and Roy’s office manager, Skeeter, sipped coffee at
the kitchen counter.
“Breakfast for dinner, Daddy!” Little Rose abandoned
her piano-playing in the den and ran into his arms. He picked
her up and squeezed her tight, overcome as he often was by
how her little embrace soothed his very soul like the balm of
Gilead.
Mama turned down the eye of the stove and stacked
three fluffy pancakes on a plastic Dora the Explorer plate.
She coated each one with a thick pat of butter and set them
on the little round table in the corner of the room.
“Enjoy ’em while they’re warm, Rosebud,” she said.
“This is a one-plate-at-a-time meal, and I’ll do your daddy’s
next so y’all can overlap.”
“What’s news around the church house?” Roy massaged
his bum shoulder and looked to Skeeter, who blew a
bubble with the pink gum she always seemed to be gnawing
on. He watched the bubble deflate as she pulled four white
slips from her Day-Timer. “Here are the messages, but the
most pressing matter is Brother Jackson.”
Roy winced, his dark brown eyes narrowing. “He looked
real good a couple of days ago.”
“Well, hospice told Mrs. Jackson that they figured that
was a last burst of energy. They think the end is near.”
Roy nodded and looked at his watch. “I’ll take him the
Eucharist tonight.”
“Can I go too?” Rose said. She was dipping a fork-full into a pool of syrup she had poured right on Dora’s oversized
head.
Rose loved Mr. and Mrs. Jackson, who used to sing in the
choir until they found cancer in his pancreas. And she often
made sick visits with Roy. She was no stranger to Ellijay
Memorial and the Darlington County Hospice Center or the
Robbins Neck Funeral Home for that matter, and the nurses
and caretakers usually set aside a lollipop or some other little
trinket from the dollar store in anticipation of her next pastoral
visit.
He nodded yes as Mama handed him a stack of pancakes.
“What did Bishop Boatwright want, son?”
“He wants to recommend me for a job . . .” Roy shook
his head in disbelief as his kitchen got real still. “In downtown
Charleston, of all places.”
Mama’s eyes widened. “The Holy City!” She clicked
her long, silver fingernails together and winked at Rose.
“Now wouldn’t that be something!”
“Charleston?” Rose’s eyes lit up. Her granny had taken
her there once and bought her a pair of red, glittery shoes.
“Oh, that’s my dream city, Daddy!”
Roy pushed his pancakes aside. He turned to Donny.
“Why do all females go ga-ga at the mere mention of
Charleston?”
Donny shrugged his shoulders and smiled.
Jean Lee used to love Charleston, too, Roy now recalled.
She’d begged him to take her to some historic bed-andbreakfast
on their first anniversary, and he had complied,
though he didn’t care much at all for the squeaky old bed or the ridiculously high rate or the bathroom down the hall that
they had to share with four other guests.
“Don’t get too excited, gals,” he said. “I don’t think the
bishop has really thought this thing through. And if it was up
to me, we’d never leave Ellijay.” He gently laid his paper napkin
over his plate. “I’m going to run over to the church to get
what we need for Brother Jackson’s Communion.”
“Well, who is it up to?” Rose said. Skeeter popped her
bubble gum and Mama cocked her head, her big, amplysprayed
hair shifting in one cohesive clump.
Roy shook his head like an exasperated teacher and pointed
upward with his index finger. “Now who do y’all think?”

Late that evening after administering the Eucharist to Mr.
Jackson, who the hospice folks predicted would meet his
Maker within the next forty-eight hours, Roy lifted Rose out
of the pickup and tucked her into bed.
Then he went to the hall closet where he kept Jean Lee ’s
stuff. He often came in here late at night and took comfort in
the touch of her shimmery blouses, her cowboy boots, and
the sweaters folded neatly on the shelf above that still contained
just the faintest hint of her sweet and powdery scent.
He thought about Bishop Boatwright and his surprising
request to submit his name to the search committee of what
was arguably one of the oldest, stuffiest, most affluent
churches in the whole diocese. He didn’t want to minister in
some historic monument where the parishioners might shudder with disdain at his country accent or shoo him out
with the business end of the broom the way Aunt Elfrieda
did when he forgot to put the napkin in his lap during one of
her Sunday afternoon dinners. Truth was, he couldn’t even
imagine relating to those folks. It was a ridiculous idea.
Maybe Bishop Boatwright was slipping as he tilted toward
retirement. Maybe he was downright delusional.
Roy tucked his hands into the satin-lined pockets of the
pink leather jacket Jean Lee bought on a vacation they took
to Six Flags in Atlanta. She had stood in front of the threesided
mirror at one of those strip malls on the outskirts of the
city and said, “Tell the truth now, Roy. Is this too much for a
future priest’s wife?”
“Nah,” he said. “It’s you, baby.” And it was. It fit her in
all the right spots, and he knew in his heart that God wanted
her to be herself—lipstick, teased bangs, and all—like the
first day he laid eyes on her in the parking lot of Ellijay High
just days after his sixteenth birthday.
It had taken years to get used to life without her. And he
was just beginning to feel (after much urging from his mama
and daughter) that he could maybe meet someone one of
these days. He had even thought about asking Skeeter out but
the bubble gum bothered him, and he just never seemed to get
around to it. Maybe now was the time. Or maybe now he was
ready to meet some of those daughters and nieces the ladies at
church kept trying to introduce him to.
Roy’s unspoken hopes were becoming clearer in his heart
and mind. And they were these: that he might love again and
expand his family right here in Ellijay with his mama down the street and his brother, Chick, and their lively brood just a
few miles away.
“My life is here, Lord,” Roy said as he buried his face in
the pink leather jacket. “Don’t allow this to be taken away
too.” [Chapter 1 The Reverend Roy Jessup Summerall Jr.
April 3, 2008]
... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

1. Why doesn’t Roy want to move to Charleston? How
does his view of Charleston society, particularly the parishioners
of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, change
over the course of the story?
2. Describe Roy’s faith and his approach to ministering to
his new flock. What makes his ministry effective?
3. The children play a crucial role in the three narratives
of this story. How do both Rose and Cozy shed a new
and hopeful light on the struggles of their parents?

Weblinks

»	Publisher's Book Info
»	Author Beth Webb Hart's web site

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