My Father's World (The Journals of Corrie Belle Hollister Book #1)

Michael Phillips, Judith Pella

Description

When her mother dies, Corrie Bell Hollister is left with four younger siblings to care for. Hoping to find her uncle, she arrives in Gold Rush territory determined to be strong and make her own way. But her long-lost father's so-called land of promise is a dangerous place, and she has never felt so alone.

Sujets

• Historical fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 01 février 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781441230751
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 1990 by Michael Phillips and Judith Pella
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016948378
ISBN 978-1-4412-3075-1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
Judith Pella is represented by The Steve Laube Agency
Dedication
To Patrick Jeremy Phillips
Map
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Map
Prologue
1. Getting to California in 1852
2. Why We Came West
3. Sacramento
4. Miracle Springs
5. In Front of the Gold Nugget
6. The Town Business Woman
7. Mrs. Parrish Talks to Us
8. Picnic in the Wilderness
9. A Surprise for Us All
10. Another Wagon Ride
11. Our New Home
12. The First Few Days Together
13. My Idea
14. The Indians
15. An Eventful Day in Town
16. The Horses
17. Alone at the Cabin
18. Breakfast with Marcus Weber
19. An Unexpected Visitor
20. The Sheriff Pays a Visit
21. Miracle Springs’ Big Day
22. Dinner with Alkali Jones
23. Some Time Alone
24. A Talk With Uncle Nick
25. The Argument
26. A New Beginning
27. A Talk Over Breakfast
28. The Gold Nugget Church
29. A Surprise
30. Christmas Dinner
31. New Dresses
32. A Talk with Mrs. Parrish
33. Trouble at the Mine
34. Later That Same Night
35. Overheard Conversation
36. A Revelation of Family Ties
37. The Cave
38. The Newspaper Man
39. A Family Talk
40. Spring in the California Foothills
About the Authors
Books by Michael Phillips
Books by Judith Pella
Back Ads
Back Cover
Prologue
A few months back, Uncle Nick said to me, “You oughta make that diary of yours into a book.”
“Who would read it?” I said. “No one cares what a little girl wrote when she first came West.”
“You ain’t a little girl now, Corrie Belle Hollister,” he answered. “No, siree. You done a mite lot of growin' since you came to California ten years ago. Why, I remember that day I walked into ol’ Drum’s place and saw you standin’ there—”
He paused for a minute with a smile on his face.
“Besides,” he went on, “I think a whole lot of folks back East would read anything you wrote, now that you’re a famous reporter from one of the Union’s newest states.”
“Aw shucks, Uncle Nick,” I said. “I’m not famous, and you know it!”
“That ain’t what Drum says.”
“He doesn’t count,” I said back. “He’s prejudiced!”
“Your name’s in all the big papers in Chicago and St. Louis and New York. If that don’t make a body famous, then I reckon there’s no gold in them hills, neither.”
“There really is about none left, Uncle Nick,” I said.
“Well, the gold may be gone, but they’re still readin’ what you’re tellin’ ’em, and that’s a fact, Corrie.”
“Nobody cares about a reporter’s name,” I told him. “They only read the story, that’s all.”
“Your ma taught you not to lie, Cornelia.” His voice was stern, but that little twinkle in his eye said he was just teasing me. “Lord knows our pa taught us both better’n that, though your ma kept to it a mite straighter than I did. But, Cornelia,” he said again, “You know people are interested in you, not just what you write. A young lady reporter, sendin’ stories all ’round the country from the rough and wild gold fields and minin’ towns of California’s mother lode—why to them city folks, somebody like you makes the wild West a romantic and interesting place. I reckon you’re just about one of California’s most famous young women.”
“It ain’t so,” I argued, and I tried to make my voice stern, but he saw right through my act. He always does. He’s still kid enough himself to understand me, even though he’s seventeen or eighteen years older than me. He’s just like my ma. She was always a step ahead of me, and Uncle Nick’s got that same Belle blood and quick eye.
I wouldn’t talk any more about it to him right then. But he kept badgering me about the idea, and pretty soon I found myself getting used to it. I still couldn’t see why anybody would want to read my diary. But seeing a book with my name on it was a thought I couldn’t get rid of.
I asked my editor at the Alta about the notion of a book.
“That’s the most fool idea I’ve ever heard,” Mr. Kemble said. “You’re a reporter, Corrie . . . a hack. You’re no book author.”
“And you reported in 1848 that there was no gold in California,” I said quietly.
“What’s that got to do with it?” he shouted, not liking to be reminded of his infamous story in the California Star .
“Maybe your prediction about me’ll be the same way,” I said timidly.
“Come on, Corrie, we’ve got real news to cover! Here the country’s in the middle of a war with itself. People pouring into California by the thousands. Folks back East are interested in what kind of place this is out here. They don’t want to read the reminiscences of some runny-nosed kid.”
I guess Kemble’s words riled me some. Pretty soon I found myself taking Uncle Nick’s side on the idea of a book.
By that time, though, I suppose I should have known my editor better than I did. He may have put up a blustery front, but he wasn’t one to turn his nose up at an idea that might be good. The day after our talk he fired off a letter to a friend of his who worked for a publisher in Chicago.
Then two months ago the friend wrote back and said that his company wanted to make a book based on my diary. Mr. Kemble brought up the subject again, and told me what he’d done.
“The narrative portion of the story will be edited, of course,” said his friend in the letter that came addressed to both of us. “But we want you to retain the colorful phrasing and homespun flavor of the language in the dialogue. We feel it will add realism and authenticity to what you say.”
I was so happy I threw my arms around Mr. Kemble and hugged him.
We got right to work on it. I was only fifteen when I came to Miracle Springs, and my writing was pretty rough. But we worked on the sentences, trying to correct the grammar without losing any of the “homespun flavor,” as Mr. Kemble’s friend Mr. MacPherson put it. He did say, after all, that he didn’t want me to try to make every single word into high-sounding book English.
But until then, here’s what happened, every so often in just the words I used in my diary, with a few things added here and there so you can make some sense out of it.
Uncle Nick says you will like reading it. Mr. Kemble still says he think’s the whole notion’s foolhardy, though down inside I think he’s just as excited about it as I am.
I don’t quite know which one to believe. I reckon you’ll have to make up your own mind.
Corrie Belle Hollister Miracle Springs, California 1862
Chapter 1 Getting to California in 1852

M a always told me I should keep a diary.
“Corrie,” she’d say, “when a young woman’s not of the marryin’ sort, she needs to think of somethin’ besides a man to get her through life.”
I think she was making a roundabout comment about my looks, though she never came right out and said I wasn’t comely enough to snag a husband. I guess she figured a diary would be a good idea, too, since I had my nose in a book all the time, and I ought to get some practical use from all that reading.
“It sure ain’t gonna get you no feller though,” she’d say, “any more’n that nose full of freckles!”
“What’s keepin’ a diary got to do with marryin’?” I asked her.
“No man wants a wife that’s smarter’n him—” She paused, then added with a sly wink, “Leastways, not so’s it’s obvious!”
Then she took my chin in her rough, work-worn hand, and smiled down on me with that loving look that was almost as good as a hug, and said—as if to make up for saying I wasn’t a marrying kind of girl—“I reckon you’ll do okay though, Corrie.”
I was just a kid then, probably not more than ten, though I can’t exactly remember. I didn’t know what all the fuss was about. The last thing I wanted back then was to marry some ornery, dirty-faced boy. So what she said didn’t bother me. I was perfectly content with my books.
“You could be a teacher, Corrie,” Ma said more than once. Then she’d go on to speculate, “Teachin’s a right respectable way for a spinster to get by in this world.”
She talked a lot about women getting on in the world alone, probably on account of Pa’s leaving like he did. It was hard on Ma, being left with the farm to tend, and four kids and another on the way. I suspect more than once she wished she’d been a spinster herself!
Back then, when I remember her first talking to me about what I ought to do, I didn’t have the faintest notion what a spinster was, and I was hardly of a mind to start preparing for my future. But whatever spinster meant, I did know what a teacher was, because I liked our Miss Boyd. As for teaching myself, I’d have to wait and see.
“If you’re going to know book learnin’ and all that, Corrie,” Ma said, “you gotta do more’n just read. You gotta learn how to write good, too. And I figure there ain’t much better a way than to keep a diary.”
Well, maybe Ma was right. Though I never did much about her advice after that.
Until I got to be fifteen, that is. By then I knew what a spinster was, and I knew about plain-looking girls. And I knew why the two always went together. So I began to see what it might be like to be alone in the world, and to figure maybe