ReadBooksBy.Faith

All about author Faith Phillips

Oklahoma

*Rise Up by Leslie Christian*

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Rise Up tells the raw, true-life account of what it feels like to mourn a child lost to tragedy from the perspective of an entire family and their community. This is a story of what it feels like to suffer unspeakable grief and still cling to your faith.

Good morning, Frequenters of the Flog! What a year, eh? I reviewed my journal entries this morning and I must say this was one that defied prediction in so many good and bad ways, as life happens. We’re decidedly ending 2021 with The Good by announcing the opening of our pre-sale period for Leslie Christian’s “Rise Up”. This sales period is exclusively for subscribers to ReadBooksBy.Faith and the Leslie Christian Facebook Group, “Rise Up” until January 3, 2022, when sales will be opened up to the general public. The book is 125 pages long. Pricing includes shipping costs. Copies will be shipped out in order of purchase. Our first printing is a limited series of just 250 copies shipped out January 31st. Please be sure your shipping address is accurate on your PayPal account. The pre-sale link is live here and now!!! Click below to be the first to order:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/rise-up-leslie-christian/1140911569

This was a year of great change. My students became #MMIW activists, appeared on Frontline PBS, published their own books, placed Cherokee poetry in the Chicago Field Museum, debuted an original stage play, and basically just slayed, in general. My teaching career came to its conclusion in May and I returned to my true love: writing. But before that, I wrote in April: “I’m writing a screenplay about my teaching experience. Mark it down, dude, we are going to make a film.” I had no idea those words would come true within a matter of months. I signed my first contract with a production company in June.

The students lit a fire in me to figure out some way to continue serving our community and showcase the overwhelming talent of our people. I brought in a number of stakeholders from the Adair County community and the Oklahoma Arts Council to make a plea for an Arts District. The response was immediate and overwhelming. Watch for major, exciting announcements about this in the first quarter of 2022.

We suffered devastating loss this year. Our grandmother died in June, taking with her a source of light and pure joy that, for us, can never be replicated in another human being.

My friend, Lindsey Wise Spirit, who took me in and made me her sister at Standing Rock, died of COVID-19 after many weeks in the hospital. She leaves behind a grieving husband and four precious babies. They are my family. The pandemic continues to wreak havoc in society. Perhaps even worse than the virus is witnessing our fellows tear each other apart in political and religious hatred.

In the face of grief my answer is clear. Lean in and love. Do all things in love. Work to unify even when it seems impossible. That’s what I’ve been sent to do. I am a peacemaker. Above all things this year, this book by Leslie Christian has taken precedence. That’s because its ultimate message is one of love, service, and unification. Consider this excerpt:

Facebook Entry, Leslie Christian:

August 31, 2020 – 6:04 a.m. 

We are so humble and thankful for every prayer, word, deed, and financial support. They pour into our broken hearts. 

Kayden’s lungs are struggling. We knew this might be the road but watching the struggle unfold is scary. These words give our family sustaining breath when we are not sure how to breathe. 

More than anything, we desire this horrific time to have eternal meaning. So share, speak up to lost people, ask each other and yourself, “If I die today, where would I spend eternity?” If you cannot without hesitation say, ‘In heaven, because I ask Jesus to forgive my sin that separates me,” then today is the day. We are so thankful Konner only knew love and that God holds him for us until we meet again. 

“God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved when morning comes.” Psalm 46:5

These words! One more for Jesus.

Facebook Entry, Jody Pruitt:

August 31, 2020 – 7:32 a.m. 

We all have a habit of taking life for granted. We all wake up and proceed with our day thinking, “there will always be tomorrow.” As we know, that is not always the case. Our days are given to us as a present and never promised. 

I unfortunately found this out the hard way, ten years ago, when I lost my baby brother to an accidental drowning. 

I have learned since then to love my children day in and day out. I make my life around them so that they know if anything was to happen to me or them that their mother loves them until her last dying breath.

To see the Miller family going through what they are going through right now breaks my heart and makes me even more open to letting my kids know that they are never unloved, nor a mistake in my life, nor an option. It makes me realize that there are more things that I need to correct in mine and my children’s lives. We need to be a child of God and draw closer to him.

It is sad that it takes a tragedy to open people’s eyes, but sometimes it does. You have to take it and learn. You have to grow and realize that your life and every life around you is a gift. You are to conquer everything God throws at you.  Know that he gave it to you for a reason. You will not know that reason right away but it will soon come to light. 

Just remember your life may be hard today. It may be hard tomorrow. But God loves you and He is teaching you. He’s teaching people around you, maybe using you as an example. Just be strong and pray every day. Love your family, show them you love them, tell them you love them. Never take one day for granted, because it might be your last.

Ok, that’s all for now, my friend. I am always grateful for your love, trust, and generosity. Let us meet again in 2022.

Donadagohvi, Faith.

Burning All The Time

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Christopher Murphy’s short fiction collection, Burning All the Time, feels like pulling back a curtain to peer in on a strange and hidden world. The collection of twenty-three shorts, with stunning cover art by Roy Boney, bursts with all things NEOK: dark humor, deep affection, wonder and dread. The book is delivered with an undertow, much like this land that keeps pulling us back, even against our own will at times. 

Within these contemporary sketches the reader comes to understand characters on an intimate basis. Murphy manages to capture the people of NEOK so well that we know them. The reader continues to mull over the possibilities long after the book is closed. Was it her, one wonders? 

Burning carries a mysterious thread throughout its pages, with a distinctive style akin to Ondaatje’s Billy the Kid. Its secrets are interwoven with skillful technique, sometimes apparent and other times camouflaged, providing the reader with a satisfying intellectual pursuit. Murphy’s powers of observation prove exceptionally keen here. He captures our families and friends, even our enemies, with such precision that it almost feels embarrassing. He caught us. He got us down. 

It is written that a Joycean epiphany is “showing forth” a disclosure of one’s authentic inner self. That masterful literary technique is on full display here, with the writer disclosing his affection for the flawed gem of this land and her people, even as he lays her bare. This is a work from an observer who’s been around long enough, invested enough tears and blood of his own, to have earned a turn at the mic to speak on the subject. Murphy doesn’t waste time or words getting down to business from the first turn of the page.

Herein, we experience Tahlequah and northeastern Oklahoma as a landscape with a hole; a figurative exploration of concealed caves where once there existed a shallow sea. We know because we still find the fossils of those old sea creatures in our hills. It is representative of the holes and fossils left behind in us, bored by generations of grief and trauma that we constantly seek to fill. It is a collection of broken hearts rendered too tough to do anything about it except to rage. We experience this place as one of isolation and concealed honor. He takes us on an outsider’s tour of the Trail of Tears exhibit and helps us understand the emotional complications of the experience. For some, the subject is too complicated to fully unpack. It’s ok for Murphy to say it out loud because he has soldiered alongside. He gets to tell the truth, fiction as it may be.

The English professor’s grasp of technique is awe-inspiring. He builds sentences like skyscrapers, grand in scope yet meticulous down to the element. One such example: “There are elements in this town like carcinogens: everything is literal; there are pocket cruelties, apathies and disenfranchisement; distrust in general.” How did he do that? 
Our very own dark humor is on display here – the kind of jokes we make about our own families but, by God, nobody else better. Sometimes the work is naught but pure, ecstatic joy: “they vaped moon pie weed until it steamed roaches out the wall“.

Christopher Murphy demonstrates in Burning All the Time that while he is, by definition, an Observant Transplant here, his words feel like the kind you’d allow from an uncle. He has witnessed it all: Del Rancho, e-coli, Tyson chicken houses, Travis Meyer and Jose’s Mini-Video …

It’s too late now, y’all, we have been exposed. “A weary world rejoices.”

Burning All The Time is published by Mongrel Empire Press. http://mongrelempire.org/catalog/fiction/BurningAllTheTime.html?fbclid=IwAR2NtpC4zppKPQm8pccLXSLXZ9VnkDkGnYSf_TWma6b_6QYMxGIgBcotA-A

Wherein I Bathe With My Editor

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Under the River Bridge

We were supposed to go to the courthouse to file our marriage license. Couldn’t find the license at first … but Trophy Husburnd hunted it down in the back of the truck. It was just a *little* rumpled. Still good though. We went to the courthouse. The clerk took one look at it and said, “you don’t have a second witness,” and sent us away. It was my one job to have my mother sign the marriage certificate. I failed.
So, conveniently, we were on our way to meet Mom and Dad for breakfast. She signed it. So we went back to the courthouse for the second time. The clerk started the filing process. For some reason I felt shocked and said, “WHEW! It’s really official!” I didn’t realize all the people in the office were listening. They started laughing. ALL OF THEM. At first I thought they must be laughing at an inside joke but, no, they were laughing at us. One of the ladies said, “your entire face just turned beet red!” And then everybody had another good round of laughs.

Finally, a nice young gentleman standing in a window box offered a word of encouragement. “Well, now at least no more stress or anxiety,” he said. I nodded my head in agreement. “Sure,” I replied, my eyes bugging out. “No stress. No anxiety.” Everyone just stood there in silence for one moment more, then they burst into laughter again. I felt like I was doing a 7 minute set at the Loony Bin.

I’m glad my Trophy Husburnd seems ok with this version of life. We often say to each other, and I actually believe it to be true, that no other human could tolerate either one of us long-term. He takes it all in stride. For the first time in my life I have granted someone editing rights over my work. If I write something that offends him and he lets me know, I will edit it out. It’s one of the perks of the job. I made the dude my Editor-in-Chief. It’s a BIG STEP. I memorialize life almost every day in some sort of writing – my journal, a silly facebook post, this blog… Not many people are willing to tolerate that level of intrusion. I happen to think he’s the only one up for the task.

After we took care of the marriage license business I said, “take me down to the river bridge.” We bathed in the river. It was 47° Fahrenheit. When we were done I asked, “do you wish you had a normal wife?” He just said, “No,” without further explanation. See what I mean?

I’m soaking up these verses about freedom from fear today:

Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the Lord thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.
Deuteronomy 31:6

The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?
Psalms 27:1
I like to recognize my fear and then run at it HARD until it is overcome.

I still feel very uncomfortable/insecure about the health part of this blog but I’m just going on with it until it either becomes something or I just get bored with it altogether.

Day 2 Menu

Ham and cheese omelette

Leftovers: Butternut squash, 5 oz hamburger

Spinach and blueberry tuna salad, Primal Kitchen vinaigrette, sunflower seeds (LAY OFF ME IM STARVING)

Oh yeah, I’m also drinking half my body weight in water ounces (!!!) That’s a lotta watta.

Honesty: I lost four pounds, then I gained eleven back and now I lost another four. I’ve never been good at math but I think this means I’m WINNING

(I also had 3 glasses of pinot noir tonight)

Ok, see you soon. #okienoir

Stella and A Parliament of Owls

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Original painting by Cherokee artist Kindra Swafford.
https://www.kindraswafford.com

Let me tell you a little story about owls. Some of you know the peculiar tale about how a parliament of owls gathered around the night I told my sisters the story that became my first fiction novel. It scared my baby sister so badly that she ran away and cried.

But this is not that story. This is yet another true and very bizarre tale about what happened one night in Proctor, Oklahoma. I stayed over at my family home that night for some reason I cannot now recall. I woke up in the 2 o’clock hour with the strong urge to make water. I might’ve consumed some of my Dad’s wine before retiring. I stumbled into the bathroom and felt struck by a strange compulsion to look out the small bathroom window. Again, I can’t explain why. An old Oak, some wild blackberry bushes and honeysuckle were the only things to be seen back there. Our neighbor Herbie’s field stretched out beyond the fenceline.

My eyes were still bleary with sleep when I peered out the window. But the spectacle I witnessed in the backyard caused them to go cold-sober and wide as saucers. There, sitting on the lowest branch of the old Oak under the yellow light of a full moon was the largest bird I had ever seen. He looked to be four feet in height, his eyes easily the size of my mother’s tea cup saucers. The owl was looking down, directly below his perch. I followed his gaze with my own. Sitting there on her haunches and looking up was Stella, my mom and dad’s gentle-giant St. Bernard. She was a beautiful darling and we treated her as such. My parents sometimes put a pastel beret on her head, which she wore with aplomb.
So there they sat, these two, just staring at each other. I had to get closer for I could scarce believe the spectacle before my own eyes. As I bolted to the door I thought it must have all been a hallucination. By the time I eased the screen door open and crept along the side of the house I had convinced myself that nothing would be there. I knew I would go back to bed feeling very silly.

I slowly maneuvered around the corner. To my horror and great delight there they sat even still, only now I could hear a very strange sound the owl made at Stella. It wasn’t a hoot at all but rather a rapid series of low staccato sounds. I shouldn’t have done it but I felt I had to move closer. The moment I took a forward step, the great horned owl dropped out of that tree like an open-air glider. The staggering sight of it was made all the more spectacular by the whipping sound of those massive wings as they carried him away, off into the darkness. Stella looked at me and if I didn’t know better, I’d believe she had a countenance of embarrassment on her face, to have been caught cavorting after the midnight hour with, of all things, a creature of the night.

When I think about it now I know that it is one of those visions in life that will go with me to the grave. One of those lucky snapshots that can never be replicated. Stella is gone now and she is sorely missed. But she never quite looked at me the same after that. I guess I will spend the rest of my days wondering what message he delivered to her that night, perched up on the gnarled old Oak branch in the light of a full Harvest Moon. #okienoir

Okie Noir and the Waters of Renewal

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Pictured here: the Mark Twain portion of the Mississippi River Tales Mural. The paintings cover the Great River’s flood-wall in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. (I think he likes me, he really likes me…)

 

What is Okie Noir? It is the struggle and pain, survival and rebirth of people in this land, the place where we descend from outlaws and survivors of attempted genocide and the Dust Bowl. Speaking of Okie Noir, can I get a do over and can I get a witness about these last two months? Remember that song A Long December by Counting Crows? Specifically the part where Adam Duritz sings:

“it’s been a long December and there’s reason to believe Maybe this year will be better than the last…

If you think that I could be forgiven I wish you would…”

That song’s been fluttering around my brain for weeks now and not just because I’m a Gen X’er with a penchant for melancholy 90’s tunes. The end of 2018 stretched on so looooong, I wasn’t sure it was ever going to let us go, even into January. 

Life’s been rough around here of late, from illness and death, depression and anxiety, friends and loved ones wrestling with old ghosts we believed long buried, myself included. While we know these things are continuously present in existence it’s still difficult to grasp what others experience until those same birds come home to roost with you. The one good thing that comes from a painful struggle is renewed empathy for your fellows. Empathy can pull us from the brink when we put it into practice as a community. When you discover the person who disagrees with all your politics and all your dogma just lost a beloved family member all those things that created a gulf between you go right out the window (or at least they should). The proper human reaction is to go to him and offer comfort of some kind. You don’t ask questions, you just go.

January was supposed to be the month I neared completion of my masterpiece, my fourth book that I optimistically like to call my River Book. Let us just say that as of today, I’m three weeks behind schedule. Nonetheless, I intend to publish my River Book this year (***Lord, please let me live long enough to finish my River Book***).

The book is inspired by the true story of bones my sister found on a creek bank in Adair County. That discovery inspired me to imagine this person’s life in the place where we call home. It is the story of all of us in the Ozark foothills; our struggles, connections, spirituality, addiction, grief, humor, music and family… all set alongside the life giver of the Illinois River and its tributaries that tumble down to us from the mountains. This book will be my ultimate expression of #okienoir . 

I’ve known all along that water would be a central character in this book. The Cherokee people are intrinsically connected to the water as a source of food, medicine, celebration and cleansing, to name just a few. The river was known as The Long Man with his head(waters) in the mountains and his feet in the sea.  The ancient ritual of “going to the water” was a cleansing practice performed every morning to start the day. Cherokees would go to the river to pray and submerge themselves regardless of the temperature. The old Cherokees would wade out waist deep just after daybreak and throw water over their heads and pray, “wash away anything that may hinder me from being closer to you, Creator.“

Research for the River Book caused me to seek out some of the most amazing locales in the Ozarks.  The headwaters that flow clean and clear down ravines come together to create a mighty force greater than anything man can control. Gushing underground rivers bubble up out of mountains in some places, the source of which remains quite unclear, even to geologists. These things stoke my fire and renew my dedication to remain childlike with wonder and awe even in these days when I feel like an old woman, weary of the world.

I make no attempt to obscure the obvious influence of Mark Twain in my own work. Life on the Mississippi is the reason why I’m calling this fourth book my River Book. The genius in what he did was to shine light on the darkness and even mine humor from it at times. If my River Book is done correctly it will do the same. Sometimes we are the shadow, sometimes the sun. 

Now you must pardon me as I submerge myself onecet again.

“wash away anything that may hinder me from being closer to you, Creator.“

 

Your Exclusive First Look At the True Crime Novel ‘Now I Lay Me Down’

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Original book cover design by Oklahoma artist Kalyn Fay Barnoski.

This is your exclusive first look at the true crime novel Now I Lay Me Down, the third book from author Faith Phillips. Sign up with your email at http://readbooksby.faith/ to be notified when the book becomes available for purchase. You can be the first to order your copy of this riveting summertime page turner!

 

 

Chapter 1

The Prosecutor

 

The prosecutor stood in the road. She surveyed the scene and said not a word. A denim blouse hung loose on her slender frame. She stared at the ditch, one hand shoved deep in her back pocket. She remembered.

This particular stretch of County Line Road had once been an obscure place in an obscure county, familiar only to the few locals who made their homes on the back road. Obscurity is just another way of saying concealed, and the town of Weleetka meets that definition. Interstate 40 runs just a few miles north as the crow flies, ferrying interlopers past long-forgotten Oklahoma towns. It is very much concealed and out of view, hidden by stands of trees in rural Okfuskee County. An outsider would never expect to come across a town in this pastoral location. Out of sight, out of mind.

The quiet lane that runs through Okfuskee County’s back country is populated by trees, underbrush and an occasional family home. The lawns often hold collections of defunct automobiles and plastic toys left out to fade in the weather. Maxey Parker Reilly hadn’t been sure she could find her way back again without some sort of navigation. It had been such a long time since she last visited. She careened her S.U.V. along the blacktop and slowed at each turnoff, eyeing the road signs. But when she came to County Line Road the physical reaction was instant. Total recall took hold and she cut a sharp right. She didn’t need to look for signs now. She remembered.

The topography along the road was flat and tree-lined, strewn with thick underbrush. Stationary oil wells provided a gaudy juxtaposition to the otherwise quiet countryside. After a couple of miles hints of color appeared in the ditch like a mirage. Glints of sunlight reflected from multiple points of glass and metal. At first glance it appeared as though flowers had managed to spring up and out of the drab undergrowth. But then a fraction of light angled down from a tree limb, and a plastic whirligig spun in the wind. Then came the teddy bears at the heart of the place, long worn by exposure. Wind chimes played a hollow tune and a light bulb hung from a tree.

The dusty white crosses finally identified the place as a roadside memorial. They are a familiar sight along Oklahoma’s highways; a family’s way of marking the mournful spot where a loved one drew their final breath in a violent clash of glass and steel. But this roadside memorial was atypical. Small details indicated something very different from a car crash. An American Girl doll with long dark hair and platform heels lay smiling in the dirt. It was the first hint that something might have happened to a little girl here. In the midst of all the odd memorial objects an angel arose. She stood, once gleaming white, now covered in layers of dust thrown up by passing vehicles.

The statue as it stood that day was four feet in height; an elegant effigy with shoulders proud and tall; folds in the long ceramic robe revealed a bent knee. The delicate wingtips of the angel nearly touched the ground. At her bare feet a ceramic puppy and a smiling bear sat on guard next to a basketful of plastic lilies and sparkling beads. The angel cradled a great bouquet of field daisies across her chest. The statue’s presence represented a statement to onlookers. Someone had cherished the person who was lost in this place. The angel was carefully chosen to memorialize a child. It was meant to solemnize and express community grief. They placed her at the center of all the other tokens of loss left behind.

But then someone came along, pointed a shotgun at the angel’s head and blasted it clean away. It was not the first time the memorial had been violated. Maxey was filled with emotion and anger at the sight of it.  Snapshots flashed in her mind from a hot summer evening ten years previous. That night she had been called away from her newborn child to this place on County Line Road.  It was one of her very first jobs as the new Okfuskee County Assistant District Attorney. Fresh out of law school, she had imagined that her first case might be a drug prosecution or perhaps domestic violence. But the pretty young woman was afforded no chance to ease herself into the prosecutor’s role. She had been thrown in the deep end by the brutal execution of two little girls on County Line Road, just a few miles outside of Weleetka, and she had no other choice but to swim.