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Plot Summary:Aditi: The Journey to Terencil-A Novel by Beverly Mitchell Dodd

Do you remember hearing stories of individuals who seem to disappear from the face of the earth? Or stories of people who suddenly desert their loved ones without goodbye or explanation? Families, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances are left bewildered and wondering why.

Aditi: The Journey to Terencil is a story of desertion and the person who deserts also wants to know the reason why. Perhaps her journey across the United States, her many adventures as well as misadventures, and her stay with Aditi and the other women at Terencil, will give her the answers she seeks.

Excerpt 1:

I am sitting here, Aditi, in the room Nadine and Sandi shared. I am writing. Do you remember when you told me I should resume my writing? Everything was so different then. Now the many rooms, the long halls of Terencil, are silent. Everyone is gone. I found some food in the basement, canned things, to add to what I already have; it’s enough to get me through to the middle of summer perhaps. Spring this year was cold, and the summer isn't a lot warmer. Not like last summer, up here in the mountains, with you.

Excerpt 2:

I allowed myself to go limp, to fight against the compulsion to fight, denying self-preservation. With all the strength I could muster, I surrendered. A few more seconds of excruciating pain and he let me go, to fall unhindered by any apparent reflex to the concrete where he stood over me for a long time. I stared into the sky and ordered my eyes to see only darkness. So that I might live, I lay on the ground and silently called up the ambience of the finality of death.

Excerpt 3:

You knew everything that went on beneath the canopy. Except for that one time. Why, Aditi, why? I can't for the life of me understand. But, no, no, I can't think of that now. There's so much more of my story I have to tell before I attempt to recount that day.

Plot Summary:Preacher's Wife-A Novel by Beverly Mitchell Dodd

A horrific accident forever alters Abigail's vision of the future. While her life as a young minister's wife unfolds, she struggles with shocking secrets of the past and a rigid religious system in the present. After meeting Reece, a man struggling with his own tragic secrets, she begins to understand the high cost of freedom.

Excerpt

"Hello, he said to her as she turned in his direction. "Abigail, isn't it?"

"Yes," she said and for a moment stared at him as if he had intruded on her deepest, most secret thoughts. Then she grabbed one of the skulls and made a move to return it to its shelf in the cabinet.

"No, leave them," he said. "I need to borrow them for my class tomorrow."

She said, "Dr. Connelli gave me permission to get them out. I like to study them. I guess they fascinate me. I wish…"

"What?" he asked, crossing the room to stand on the opposite side of the counter from her. "What do you wish, Abigail?"

She shook her head. "Nothing, nothing really." Then changing her mind, she burst out with, "I wish I had known about them before."

"Before? Didn't you learn about them in high school?"

"He taught me a cursory amount, just enough about evolution to pass my equivalency exam. He told me it was wrong, evil…"

He watched the color rise in her face as he listened to the fierceness in her voice. Realizing she was embarrassed by her outburst, still he could not stop himself from asking, "Who, Abigail? Who taught you?"

"My father, He was a minister," she said..

Plot Summary:Between Midnight and Morning-A Novel by Beverly Mitchell Dodd

When she turned eighteen, Lena left her home, her family, and a religion that had caused her much fear and despair. She told the man she loved and married that she had freed herself from the painful past. She did not mention those moments when the fear and despair still haunted her. Then the unthinkable happened, and Lena found herself trapped again in that place, unable to cross to the light of the future, unable to penetrate the darkness of the past.

Excerpt 1:

"Niagara Falls, Lena?" he was saying. "Everything is frozen there."

"It doesn't matter now. We can't go."

"Why the hell not?"

"You're not supposed to be here."

"What are you talking about?"

"I've had this dream many times."

"Wait till we're in a steamy hot tub. You"ll see then where I'm supposed to be. You ready to go?"

"No. Don't you remember? I looked when you turned, and I saw, even through the snow. How could you not have seen?"

"That must have been the dream, Lena."

"No, this is the dream."

Exerpt 2:

She twisted the diamond Mark had given her back and forth on her finger. The beautiful music Maureen Faber had taught her to sing, the music that made her weak and vulnerable, that made her want to cry, was summoning her now. If she followed its beckoning down the aisle to the altar, she wondered if a miracle in her mind would take place. Finding the answers to the questions she had asked her Sunday school teacher years ago might seem unimportant then. All she might feel would be the rush of peace that comes with surrender.

Excerpt 3:

Behind her, through the rest of the house, descending winter twilight meshed into a dense barrier. Fire shadows from the fireplace leaped across the walls that surrounded her. This was some middle place in which she was caught, she decided, a chasm which prevented her from crossing to where her son was or from penetrating the barrier behind.

And on Christmas Day with her family, she realized the possibility that she had always been caught here, perhaps before Maureen Faber had become ill and died, in childhood even, sitting on a braided rug, numb with fear of the Rapture having taken place, or before that, perhaps in birth itself.