SURFNETKIDS GROWN-UP FICTION BOOK CLUB Got shopping? Get discounts! Visit Surfnetkids: Coupons, Deals and Bargains for hundreds of discounts from dozens of online stores. This week's book: AUGUSTA LOCKE by William Haywood Henderson *New to the book club? Just click on the Missing Read link below for any emails you may have missed. Go to: (Today's book starts after the "Dear Reader" column.) Dear Reader, Remember, if a book isn't a good match for you, simply hit the delete key. We start a new book every Monday. Keep the book club fun and guilt-free reading. Looking for some good new recipes? Be sure to visit my Recipe Box at and see some of my favorites--and you can view the recipes from readers who have sent in their favorite recipes, too. If you'd like to contribute a recipe to my Recipe Box, send it to: Today is the last day to enter the March Chocolate Chip Cookie Giveaway. I'd love to bake for you. See photos of some of last month's winners and enter: Have a wonderful weekend. Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends. Warmest regards, Suzanne Beecher *Read the Classics: THE OUTSIDERS by S. E. Hinton and enter the free Penguin Classic's Drawing. Go to: Surfing the Net with Kids: Email me: Missing an email? Go to: =====TODAY'S AUGUSTA LOCKE by William Haywood Henderson (fiction) Published by Viking Penguin A member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. ISBN: 9780670034916 Copyright (c) 2006 by William Haywood Henderson To reference this email: AUGUSTA (Part 5 of 5) A Note from Author William Henderson for Book Club Readers: Hi, all! Bill Henderson here, author of "Augusta Locke." I'm happy to have my novel included on the Email Book Club list, and I'd love to participate in the forum. If you have any questions about "Augusta Locke" or writing in general, post them and I'll jump into the discussion. Looking forward to seeing your comments. Thanks. Visit our reader forum at: (continued from Thursday) When Brud was gone, the house was silent, unless Leota didn't sleep, and then Gussie heard the clatter of china, the metal snip of scis- sors, rustle of magazine leaves, small flame in a hurricane glass. Leota's restless sounds pushed at the walls, crossed and tangled with themselves. And then Brud returned. His sleeping breath was like the quaver of loose leaves, the outside hush of night settled inside. Leota had transformed the old bachelor cabin into a house with par- lor. The trees were cleared to beyond the new fence. Honey-suckle screened the path far down the front yard to the gate, where white- painted stones edged the dirt road. With the seasons, Leota adjusted the furniture to the angle of the sun. Leota liked the way the sun- light diffused off the surface of her mother's table, brought to these woods in the dowry wagon from Duluth, liked the way it lit her face, as reflected in her mother's silver bowls. She studied the sterling curve of her chin, the faint blush. She tipped the chair a bit to the left, moved the table closer to the window, removed a doily from the cherrywood to clear the way. And from down at the front gate, Gussie often saw her mother far up at that window, saw the illuminated face, a startling white delicacy, with the dark pine eaves looming beyond. When a man paused at the gate, looking up at Leota's bright face for long minutes, Leota emerged onto the front step with a broom in hand, made a show of sweeping the immaculate stoop, made a show of noticing the man as he waited, unmoving, shading his eyes for clar- ity, to be sure of what he saw. "It's a lovely spot, ma'am," the man said. Leota came down the steps to the path and said, "I've put my elbows to the place, but I'm just getting started." And then she wended among the honeysuckle until she could see the man clearly, stopped and went no farther, didn't make it to the gate. The man wasn't half the measure of Brud--no man who paused at the gate ever was. Leota and Gussie bathed together. In the kitchen, in the dimness of the north-facing window, they filled the tub with the plash of hot water from the kettle, crumbled rose petals, inhaled the earthy steam. Gussie was nine years old, still small, still unsettled in appearance, her features shadowed beneath Leota's slender height. Together they stood in the tub, stooped and dunked sponges, washed each other. They turned, brushed elbow to shoulder, chin to rib. Gussie worked over her mother's skin, turning the white to pink with her pressure. Leota slogged her sponge through the water, wrung it out above her daughter's head, dabbed at the girl. Gussie cleared the water from her eyes, attended to the crease beneath her mother's weighted breasts, the faint hairs beneath her arms, the recesses behind her knees. A seamless expanse. A sublime translucence. "Why do men look at you?" Gussie said, unable to look away. "Because I deserve it." Alone before dawn, Gussie learned that if she listened long enough there were sounds to the darkness, sounds that circled against the coming sun. And then the swoop above the clearing, a raven alone in the first high gray, or a pair of ravens scanning the ground, a black gaze, cutting beyond the pines. She didn't know where the ravens traveled or how they found their way. The ravens' calls slid across winter ice, drove deep into summer evenings through the insect buzz. And their calls sometimes took on the shape of other sounds--a mimic of dogs, other birds, voices, machines--a game, a ruse. She practiced her mimic of the ravens, tried to feel the meaning of their calls on her tongue. She saw ravens like dark ash buffeted by the wind, high against the clouds. She saw them far across a field, mobbing a carcass. Brud told her that ravens would recruit a wolf to crack a newfound car- cass and expose the yellow fat and the meat. Ravens gave her a tremor--the razor of their bills, their plummeting mirror courtship from a great height, the way they seemed to hold to each other head- long and then catch the air just above the ground. Brud told her stories. When he was a child her age, eight years old, he and Einar trapped by scent as much as by sign. Blocking off the sky in huge cold sheets, the northern lights rose far beyond the reach of the small fire where Brud and Einar circled their camp, where they waited through the deepest snows in a bower of paper birch, the gold leaves dangling like Christmas from the ceiling. He told her of the ravens, how they roosted sometimes in huge numbers, a thousand or more, how a great horned owl might swoop through the darkness and snatch one with its talons. Would the ravens know that one of their kin was missing when there were so many others? She understood that ravens were dark like her father, sleek and smart, that they were vulnerable. He told her of his first view of Raven- glass, how it seemed a crowded roost, those big bundled wooden houses crackling full of life, and she understood. She wandered farther from home. She found veins of open air in the pine forest, lay there and watched the sky. For hours, only clouds passed, only sounds from some other quarter, and then a whisper drew through the air, the sharp call of a bird, and a raven passed above that bright cleft of the pines, and in that flash Gussie saw the bird scan the ground, saw how it focused on her lying there, how quickly it judged her dangerous or worthless and moved on. She ran after the raven--she wanted to see again how it looked at the earth--but she ran into a black explosion, ravens rising all around, their voices loud and close, broad wings in the air, nothing she could follow. She was left there. A deer lay exposed to the heat, eyes pecked to murky pools, bottleflies making a green buzz. That night, Gussie dreamed. 'A raven skimmed the treetops. With his speed, the vantages shifted and fell away, but still he knew what each gap in the canopy held-- good fortune, ripened seeds, death, meat to cache. And there was a small figure running, no more than a girl. He moved on. He might return one day to taunt her, to draw her along until she leaped, frustrated, trying to follow up onto his trails, but she was bound by her weight, her stupid clumsy stumbles. She couldn't see the world, the sky, the full hot course of the sun.' Gussie stole a large mottled green egg from a raven's nest, took the long slide down the pine trunk. The black parents called harsh- ly, snapped twigs from the branches with sharp moves of their bills, and the twigs fell twenty feet to the ground. Gussie kept the egg against her warmth. For a week it nestled inside her shirt or in the hollow of her neck when she slept. She listened to its tiny sounds, tested its fragile weight. And when it was ready, she peeled away the green shards and dried the creature on her palm, blowing softly. She chopped food for it, dropped morsels into the gaping bill with the white edge. She fed it chicken eggs and shells, frogs, insects, fat, and it took whatever she offered. She watched its eyes move beneath the pink skin. It made a terrible scream when it was hungry. Its stubby wings twitched. She wanted to hug it but couldn't, feel- ing the bones inside its skin. Within a week, the pinfeathers tipped from the wings. The skin showed the black shadows of feathers beneath the surface. She watched him--he might already know the paths across the plain of the world. When he had bulked, when he was glossy black, she car- ried him near to his nest, watched the ravens come and go, feed and preen. She sat there with him in her lap, and as the young ravens squawked in the nest he raised his head and listened, looked up at her, agitated his wings, waited for her to speak. She had no idea what to say to calm him. He flew, rose up into the pine woods. He called. She didn't understand. Such beautiful strokes taking him higher, impossible trails she'd have to learn for herself. Gussie traced Brud's trails. She followed him through a grove of paper birch, but he was already gone. A cold breeze rattled the peeling sheets of white bark, curled the pages back from the underbelly of the trunks. She followed him to the edge of town, but he dove in through the fenced gardens and scented brush, and she lost him. She crouched there and watched lights drift through dusk. Silence settled on Ravenglass in gradual steps, with someone at a lit window looking into the darkness, retreating, extinguishing the flame, and then the lights all faded, and the sounds all lost their shape and died away, and the woodsmoke lay in a thin layer above the ground and dissipated. Hardcover: Today's read ends on page 24. Monday we begin the book WHITEHORN WOODS by Maeve Binchy. =========BUY Use this link to get the best price on this week's book: To locate or purchase OTHER BOOKS use this link: =======SHARE THE You can forward this email to your friends and relatives. Encourage them to join our book clubs. It's a great way to stay in touch even if you live thousands of miles apart. Questions, comments or book suggestions? Contact me, Barbara J. Feldman, at: Inc., 991C Lomas Santa Fe Dr. #415 Solana Beach, CA 92075 You are currently buy onlined to as: To purchase send a blank email to To join any of the free Surfnetkids Book Clubs, visit:

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