Pages of Promise (American Century Book #6)

Gilbert Morris

Description

As a new decade begins, the United States enters the war in Korea. From Hollywood to the Ozarks, the sons and daughters of Will and Marian Stuart are living out their dreams and living the good life. The next generation of Stuarts has everything they could possibly want. Will they continue the family's legacy of faith as they launch out to pursue dreams of their own?Book 6 of the American Century series follows several of the younger Stuarts as they cope with war, disappointment, and shattered hopes. Returning to their roots on the family farm in Arkansas, they find love and healing in unexpected ways.

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 01 novembre 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781585585472
• Langue: English

Extrait

© 1998 by Gilbert Morris
Published by Revell a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.revellbooks.com
Previously published in 1998 under the title A Time To Build
Ebook edition created 2012
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.
ISBN 978-1-58558-547-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Scripture is taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
To Jimmy Jordan, my favorite cousin
I think often of the days when we were young and am very grateful for them, Jimmy. May the Lord bless you richly in these latter days.
C ONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
PART ONE W ARTIME
Prologue
1 Growing Up
2 An Old Soldier Gets a Call
3 Truman Was Right
4 Stephanie Goes to a Ball Game
5 Death at High Noon
6 The Vine
PART TWO G OOD T IMES
7 A Trip to Town
8 Country Matters
9 Doing the Right Thing
10 “Find a Cause Worth Living For!”
11 No Man Is a Match for a Woman!
12 Fall of a Man
PART THREE C HANGING T IMES
13 Ye Must Be Born Again
14 “Will You Forgive Me?”
15 A Fork in the Road
16 The First Loss
17 Prison Blues
18 A Surprise for Mona
PART FOUR Q UIET T IMES
19 Out of the Silence
20 Wedding Bells
21 Rock Bottom
22 A Place for Stephen
23 A Star to Steer By
24 The Circle Is Unbroken
Epilogue: The Legacy
In the News
Also by Gilbert Morris
Back Cover
T HE S TUART F AMILY
Part 1
W ARTIME
P ROLOGUE
E lvis Presley and Pat Boone and bobby-soxers and hula hoops are standard symbols of the 1950s in America. It was a postwar era, “peacetime,” generally. But turbulence on a smaller scale characterized the postwar world. The Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin strengthened its control over vast areas of Eastern Europe Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania. Stalin had promised civil liberties, free elections, and representative governments, but Soviet-trained political leaders, supported by military force, gained power. Anti-Communists were soon in jail, in exile or dead.
This aggressive demeanor in Europe prompted the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949, a mutual-defense pact between Canada, the U.S., and most countries of Western Europe. Throughout the fifties, NATO increased in military strength and emphasized maintaining the “balance of power” in Europe between East and West. A “cold” war was under way that often seemed near the flashpoint, it was feared, of World War III of all-out nuclear war. It was an era of competition, tension, and conflict between East and West, Communism and capitalism, national self-determination and totalitarianism.
In many places in the world the Cold War did indeed flash into hot wars, not directly between the “superpowers” but between factions aligned with one side or the other war by proxy, it was called.
The stage had been set for Asia in 1945 at the Yalta conference between Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill. Stalin agreed to enter the war against Japan after the defeat of Germany. The Soviets fought no battles, but by the time Japan surrendered, the Soviet army had moved into northern Korea and much of Manchuria to accept the surrender of Japanese forces there. The Soviets sealed off the Korean border at the thirty-eighth parallel and set up a government run by Soviet-trained Communists. They refused to participate in free elections under UN supervision for one government for the nation, so South Korea elected a separate government. Soviet forces withdrew from North Korea in 1948, leaving behind an entrenched Communist regime and a well-trained and equipped army. Reunification of Korea by force was the goal of the war begun in 1950 by the North Koreans.
In the United States the postwar years were boom years, an era of full employment and peak production, although occasional brief periods of recession and high unemployment occurred. Those who had lived through the privations of a depression and a war were immersed in a sea of newfound economic comfort. People were happily buying new cars, new homes, and television sets.
But prosperity was marred by racial unrest and by fear of Communism at home and abroad. In 1949, eleven leaders of the Communist party were convicted of conspiring to advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government by force.
Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s sweeping accusations against “Communist sympathizers” in the government were opposed as early as June 1950 by Senator Margaret Chase Smith and other members of McCarthy’s party, but it was 1954 before he was censured by the full senate.
Prosperity shifted the focus in American family life. People who didn’t have to worry about subsistence placed children and family life at the top of their priority lists, according to polls. The postwar baby boom was under way, and parents felt their destiny was to make the world better for their children. They were determined that their offspring would not suffer hard times as they had. Some sociologists define the fifties as a “filiarchy” society was not ruled by the willful demands of the young but by indulgent, sacrificing parents. “Do it for the kids” was heard on every hand.
But middle-class conformity and social stability were also challenged, by swaggering antiheroes such as James Dean and Marlon Brando, by the nonconforming beatniks, then, from 1956 on, by Elvis “the Pelvis” Presley and the beginnings of rock and roll music.
In a world of prosperity and in turmoil, the grandchildren and great grandchildren of Will and Marian Stuart looked for a peace that is complete and enduring.
1
G ROWING U P
A street-model hot rod screeched to a stop in front of the split-level suburban house, and the sound of loud, laughing voices broke the silence of the neighborhood. Across the street, Mr. Gunderson opened his window and stared out for a moment, then slammed it shut.
A shadowy form separated itself from the automobile. There were raucous calls, and a female voice cried out, “Be good, Bobby! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”
The car roared off with a screech and the smell of burning rubber. Two people in the house moved away from the window. The knob turned, and the door was opened slowly, as if to keep the sound down. Sixteen-year-old Bobby Stuart entered then stopped stock-still when he saw his parents waiting for him. Shock ran across his face, but his devil-may-care air seldom deserted him. He stood in the open doorway and saluted his father, saying, “Private Bobby Stuart reporting for duty, Sir.” He squinted his eyes and grinned. “What are you two doing up so late? Don’t you have to fly tomorrow, Dad? Mom, you never stay up this late!”
Bobby’s sister, Stephanie, a year older, had sneaked down to the landing. She could not restrain a grin she was glad that her parents could not see it. There was something irresistible about Bobby, and even though he was constantly in and out of trouble, there was a cavalier air about him, a bubbling exuberance for life that made it hard for anyone to be angry with him for long.
His father did not have that difficulty, however. “Young man, do you know what time it is?”
Bobby peered at his watch, holding it close to his face. “I believe it’s twenty minutes till two or to look at it in a little better light, Dad, it’s one forty. I’m a little bit late,” he said cheerfully. “But I just forgot the time.”
Something about the way his son pronounced his words and the way he stood alerted Jerry. Bobby was speaking very carefully, pronouncing each syllable. That’s the way drunks do, Jerry thought grimly. He stepped forward and sure enough holding his face a foot away from Bobby’s he said, “No point holding your breath! I can smell that liquor on you! You smell like a distillery!”
“Dad, I just had one or two drinks.” Bobby shrugged and grinned.
That grin was his undoing. Jerry slammed the door shut and shoved his son backward against it. He had never been very physical in disciplining his children had rarely ever spanked them so his action caught Bobby completely by surprise. Bonnie, Bobby’s mother, gasped and stepped back from them.
With his eyes barely two inches from his son’s as he held him against the door, Jerry spoke with careful emphasis through clenched teeth. “Don’t you ever again come in late and drunk. Never again! Is that clear?”
Bobby’s grin was gone. So was the alcoholic blear from his eyes. For a moment he’d believed his father might hit him. “Yes, Dad,” he said. But in the second before Jerry released him something else showed in Bobby’s eyes resentment and an anger of his own.
Stephanie quietly slipped back upstairs. Richard, Bobby’s twin, was listening in the dark hall outside his room to the commotion downstairs. Stephanie paused outside her bedroom door and whispered, “He’s going to get it this time.”
“No he won’t. Mom will talk Dad out of it. She always does.”
“You couldn’t see from here. Dad nearly hit him! You wait and see, Richard, he’ll be grounded til the century’s over!”
Bonnie had not interfered in the confrontation between father and son. But as she and Jerry lay in bed later, they talked about what had occurred.
“I knew I should have stuck with keeping him grounded, but you said, ‘Oh, he’s only young once. Don’t make him miss out.’ I think he needs to miss out. Maybe it would get his attention,” grumbled Jerry, still angry.
“How could you attack him like that? I was afraid you were about to punch him!”
“I was afraid so, too.” Jerry seemed to finally regain his composure. “I’m sorry I frightened you. But, honey, I’ve had it with him and his carousing friends. He has a terrific musical ability, just like my g