Is Anyone Out There Interested in a Serialized Novel?

Did I mention it’s free?


     Fifty-odd years ago I began writing the great American novel. I actually finished it, but…I’d become so attached to my characters that I couldn’t let them go into that final world of publication. I kept coming up with more scenarios, more supporting characters, more everything. I just couldn’t turn loose.


     The other night while talking to my writing partner Sharon Davidson (see her novels on Amazon under the name S.M. Davidson), I broached the idea of letting go of the story, the characters, and my dream of the great American novel. She read the first few chapters and said, “Go for it.”


     So, I’m broaching the idea of serializing the book on my website—free, of course—if I find any interest—and maybe even if I don’t. I need to lay Tank, Francie, Vic, Peggy, Bix, and Peaches to rest once and for all.


     The story, Blest Be the Tie, follows the lives of six high school classmates from the depths of the Great Depression through World War II, their post-war lives, and eventually, their deaths with the tie that bound them still unbroken.


It is set in and around the mythical small West Texas town of Danford, where Tank’s parents, Dutch and Grace Tankersley own the largest ranch in six counties. Dutch runs beef cattle but, as a hobby, collects longhorns to preserve the breed, and pampers them like pets. He and Grace also collect people, building a family around their own cherished son and his friends who have been cast adrift by their own families.


     Though Dutch only made it through eighth grade, because the schools in Danford only went that far at the time, what he knows about the land—about people—and about the Lord who created both—has earned him the respect of everyone in the area.

Grace, whose father sent her away from home to complete her education, taught in a one-room school before marrying Dutch and becoming his wife, partner, and best friend for over fifty years. What she knows about love and family built more than a herd of longhorns on the Tankersley Ranch.


 


Meet the Characters of Blest Be the Tie

James Bixford “Bix” Matthews, Jr.


     Bix was eight years old when his father, head bookkeeper at the Danford National Bank, was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. His little sister Laura was born a few weeks later, and as soon as she could, his mother Nelle went back to work as a nurse at the Danford Hospital.


     Seven years later, Jim Matthews died when he tried to intervene in a fight while working on a chain gang and had his skull split open by another inmate. On the day of the funeral, Dutch put Bix in his truck and drove him around while he cried and threatened to kill the men who had convicted his father. “Bix, nobody believes your father was guilty. Your legacy will be to live the life he would have lived if justice had really been done,” Dutch told him.


     In high school, he finds himself paired off with Marian Fancher Kroll, daughter of the bank president, but their innocent relationship has to be kept a secret. He graduates valedictorian of his class and gets a scholarship to UT where he works three jobs to make up the difference between the scholarship money and his expenses. He and Marian go their separate ways, at least for the time being.


     But his bitterness and desire for revenge remain with him. “Someday I’ll be so rich and so important that I’ll come back and make those people pay for what they did to my father.”



Marian Fancher Kroll “Peaches”


     The only person in her family who loves her is her adored older brother Edward. Even he can’t protect her from the cold emotional abuse inflicted on her by their parents or from the ravages of polio when she is seven, leaving her crippled both physically and emotionally.


     The Depression affects everyone, even the wealthy, socially-prominent Krolls, so Marian is taken out of a private school in Dallas in order to meet Edward’s expenses at Harvard. Back in Danford, she reconnects with Francie Walinsky and meets Peggy Baily.


     Marian plays the piano like a virtuoso, paints and draws like an old master, and suffers from terminal self-pity and cynicism. For self-protection, she tries to keep people at bay with her foul mouth and mean, often cruel, attitude. She is attracted by the camaraderie of Tank, Vic, Francie, and Peggy, though she doesn’t admit she’d like to be part of them. Pairing off with Bix is just another act of rebellion—and a dangerous one at that.



Victor John “Vic” Gianchinni


     The son of second-generation Italian immigrants, Vic lives with his family in the compound of the Cambaugh Chemical Plant where his father is the nightwatchman. When he is four, his mother dies in childbirth, and his older sister Maria takes over as the woman of the house. When she dies of diphtheria just five years later, and his father begins to drink away his paycheck, Vic is on his own.

     Dutch and Grace take over to do what they can, but Vittorio Gianchinni refuses to entertain the idea of his son moving to the ranch. Grace keeps Vic fed and clothed and loves him as her own.

     On the outside, Vic is seemingly oblivious to what anyone says. He picks up odd jobs around town and at the plant in order to have some money in his pocket. By the time he gets to high school, where he becomes known as the fastest quarterback to ever come out of Danford, he is determined to win the football scholarship to the University of Texas and get out of his hometown for good.

     Then he meets Peggy Bailey, and his life changes forever. For the first time, he recognizes someone as miserably unhappy and trapped as he is, and it melts the hard shell he’s formed around his heart. He would do anything for her, including die—or kill anyone who hurt her.



Margaret Irene “Peggy” Bailey


     Life is hand-to-mouth for Irene Bailey who grew up as an orphan and was widowed in World War I. But she has her daughter Peggy, and together they manage until Irene is diagnosed with tuberculosis. Faced with going into a sanitarium, she places Peggy temporarily with the aunt-by-marriage of her late husband Clifford Bailey.

     Min Bailey, in Francie’s words, “drinks like a fish and is mean as the devil even when she’s not soused.” Peggy soon finds herself working harder than she knew possible in the kitchen of Min’s boarding house and trying to stay out of the way of the rough boarders, most of whom work for Cambaugh Chemicals.

     A small, thin, fearful fourteen-year-old, she is terrified of Min and the men who seem to be everywhere in the three-story house. All she wants is for her mother to get well so they can go home to Lubbock.

     Then she meets Vic who becomes, in her words, her mother, father, brother, and best friend. But even he can’t protect her completely.





 

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