Please-Don't-Rain Suitcase
Please-Don't-Rain Suitcase

Author: K.L. Smith

Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

Published: 2020-06-22

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 1098030834

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Please-Don't-Rain Suitcase is a fictional novel that tells the story of the hardships and adjustments that Blake Davis experiences when he becomes an orphan. The story highlights the emotions he feels when he loses everything in life that matters to him. He is forced to put the shattered pieces of his life together and move forward through his tears, grief, fears of the unknown, feelings of hopelessness and emptiness, and the loss of dreams. In 1950, eight-year-old Blake Davis is thrown into foster care after his mother dies and his father is unable to care for him and his siblings. The Welfare Department intervenes, and the siblings are split up and scattered. Blake's story highlights the good and bad experiences that he lives through in foster care and later in an orphanage. Blake is placed in three different foster homes over a six-year period. He experiences both good and bad foster care. Blake is powerless and at the mercy of his caregivers. Not having a mother or father to intervene in his well-being leaves him vulnerable to abuse. The instability of foster care makes it impossible for Blake to put down roots. At the age of fourteen, Blake is placed in an orphanage in Western North Carolina. The story follows Blake through his years in the orphanage and how the orphanage helps prepare him for life in the outside world. When he graduates from high school, the orphanage sends him out into the world with a Bible, a twenty-dollar bill, and a please-don't-rain cardboard suitcase. All his belongings are packed into the one flimsy suitcase. Blake's story follows him into life outside the orphanage and focuses on how he copes and overcomes the circumstances of his shattered life in his search of love, happiness, and the place where he fits best in the world.

Tom Malone
Tom Malone

Author: Joyce Vick

Publisher: Sword of the Lord Publishers

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 9780873988940

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Among a generation of giants that brought fundamentalism to a position of prominence and influence in the twentieth century is "The preacher from Pontiac," Dr. Tom Malone, founder and longtime pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church of Pontiac, Michigan, as well as founder and president of Midwestern Baptist College. The reach of his ministry has been worldwide. Although a prominent, influential figure today, Dr. Malone truly had a humble beginning. Reared in a broken home in the rural South in the Depression era, he struggled through the hardships of the times to prepare for the life of service that God had planned for him. Here is the story of Tom Malone, his wife, Joyce, and the great ministries that have come about through their labors. It will excite you and encourage you to see what God will do through His faithful servants. - Back cover.

Manhattan Beach
Manhattan Beach

Author: Jennifer Egan

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2017-10-03

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13: 1476716757

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A New York Times Notable Book Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction The daring and magnificent novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author. Named One of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, Esquire, Vogue, The Washington Post, The Guardian, USA TODAY, and Time Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to visit Dexter Styles, a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. She is mesmerized by the sea beyond the house and by some charged mystery between the two men. ‎Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that once belonged to men, now soldiers abroad. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. One evening at a nightclub, she meets Dexter Styles again, and begins to understand the complexity of her father’s life, the reasons he might have vanished. “A magnificent achievement, at once a suspenseful noir intrigue and a transporting work of lyrical beauty and emotional heft” (The Boston Globe), “Egan’s first foray into historical fiction makes you forget you’re reading historical fiction at all” (Elle). Manhattan Beach takes us into a world populated by gangsters, sailors, divers, bankers, and union men in a dazzling, propulsive exploration of a transformative moment in the lives and identities of women and men, of America and the world.

Valley of Shining Stone
Valley of Shining Stone

Author: Lesley Poling-Kempes

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 1997-07

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780816514465

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

North by northwest from old Santa Fe is the winding road to Abiquiu (ah-be-cue'), Ghost Ranch, and el Valle de la Piedra Lumbre, the Valley of Shining Stone: mythical names in a near-mythical place, captured for the ages in the famous paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe. O'Keeffe saw the magic of sandstone cliffs and turquoise skies, but her life and death here are only part of the story. Reading almost like a novel, this book spills over with other legends buried deep in time, just as some of North America's oldest dinosaur bones lie hidden beneath the valley floor. Here are the stories of Pueblo Indians who have claimed this land for generations. Here, too, are Utes, Navajos, Jicarilla Apaches, Hispanos, and Anglos-many lives tangled together, yet also separate and distinct. Underlying these stories is the saga of Ghost Ranch itself, a last living vestige of the Old West ideal of horses, cowboys, and wide-open spaces. Readers will meet a virtual Who's Who of visitors from "dude ranch" days, ranging from such luminaries as Willa Cather, Ansel Adams, and Charles Lindbergh to World War II scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer and his colleagues, who were working on the top-secret atomic bomb in nearby Los Alamos. Moving on through the twentieth century, the book describes struggles to preserve the valley's wild beauty in the face of land development and increased tourism. Just as the Piedra Lumbre landscape has captivated countless wayfarers over hundreds of years, so its stories cast their own spell. Indispensable for travelers, pure pleasure for history buffs and general readers, these pages are a magic carpet to a magic land: Abiquiu, Ghost Ranch, the Valley of Shining Stone.

I Miss the Rain in Africa
I Miss the Rain in Africa

Author: Nancy Wesson

Publisher: Modern History Press

Published: 2021-05-01

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1615995749

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

At a time when her friends were planning cushy retirements, Nancy Wesson instead walked away from a comfortable life and business to head out as a Peace Corps Volunteer in post-war Northern Uganda. She embraced wholeheartedly the grand adventure of living in a radically different culture, while turning old skills into wisdom. Returning home becomes a surreal experience in trying to reconcile a life that no longer “fits.” This becomes the catalyst for new revelations about family wounds, mystical experiences, and personal foibles. Nancy shows us the power of stepping into the void to reconfigure life and enter the wilderness of the uncharted territory of our own memories and psyche, to mine the gems hidden therein. Funny, heartbreaking, insightful and tender, I Miss the Rain in Africa is the story of honoring the self, discovering a new lens through which to view life, and finding joy along the path. "Inspiring and educational when it comes to what we can accomplish when we put our best foot forward, I Miss the Rain in Africa shows how Nancy Daniel Wesson and others are putting the needs of others ahead of themselves-and what we can all do when it comes to stepping out on faith and choosing to act." -- Cyrus Webb, media personality and author, Conversations Magazine "I would think that many of us could learn or strive to live life to the fullest by following Nancy's example. Imagine venturing into new realms-especially at a later time in life when we possess meaningful knowledge for analyzing, but also for applying a critical philosophical perspective on new experiences." --Gary Vizzo, former management & operations director, Peace Corps Community Development: African and Asia "I Miss the Rain in Africa is an absorbing record of the exploration of self by a woman who, at age 64, enters a remote area of Africa to work with an NGO. Part adventure, part interior monologue, this is an account of a 21st century derring-do by an intrepid, intriguing and always optimistic woman who will, undoubtedly, enjoy a fourth and maybe even a fifth act wherever she may find herself." --Eileen Purcell, outreach literacy coordinator, Clatsop Community College, Astoria, Oregon "Wesson offers a montage of stories and experiences that introduces the reader to the colorful people and challenging life in Uganda. Wesson's observations are shared with humor, respect, and compassion. For anyone who has ever wondered what serving in Peace Corps or immersing oneself in a radically different life overseas might be like, this book provides a portal." --Kathleen Willis, Retired Peace Corps Volunteer-Community Organizer, former organizational development consultant Learn more at www.NancyWesson.com

A River Bend
A River Bend

Author: Doug Knight

Publisher: WestBow Press

Published: 2013-08

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 149080157X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Josh Crockett, a thirty-three-year-old psychologist and author, travels back home to Melo, Indiana, at the request of his high school best friend, Paul Palato. Having read Josh's book, Living Faith, Paul invites Josh to come for an extended visit and teach the church's youth the concepts found in the book. Because it is the church his father founded and where Josh grew up and because Paul is still one of his closest friends, Josh decides to answer Paul's invitation. Josh involves himself in the lives of several people in Melo, such as Marcy James, who has inherited several businesses in Melo, including the Riverbend Apartments where Josh and Marcy both reside. Their chance meeting and subsequent other meetings grow into a very strong bond of friendship. Desmond Niemeier, the head deacon at the church, believes Josh Crockett is too good to be true. He works to uncover dark secrets from Josh's past and exposes suspicious behavior, such as the hours Josh spends with Marcy since his return back to Melo, Indiana. Josh questions why God allows this to happen. He also struggles with whether his true feelings for Marcy James are love or physical attraction. Josh feels too that God is pulling him in two directions by giving him good opportunities to stay in Melo and equally noble motives to return to his home and practice in Corona, Florida. How will he know which is God's will? What is to become of Marcy and Josh?

Panic in a Suitcase
Panic in a Suitcase

Author: Yelena Akhtiorskaya

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2015-08-04

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1594633827

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

“A virtuosic debut [and] a wry look at immigrant life in the global age.” —Vogue Having left Odessa for Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, with a sense of finality, the Nasmertov family has discovered that the divide between the old world and the new is not nearly as clear-cut as they had imagined. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, returning is just a matter of a plane ticket, and the Russian-owned shops in their adopted neighborhood stock even the most obscure comforts of home. Pursuing the American Dream once meant giving up everything, but does the dream still work if the past refuses to grow distant and mythical, remaining alarmingly within reach? If the Nasmertov parents can afford only to look forward, learning the rules of aspiration, the family’s youngest, Frida, can’t help looking back—and asking far too many questions. Yelena Akhtiorskaya’s exceptional debut has been hailed not only as the great novel of Brighton Beach but as a “breath of fresh air … [and] a testament to Akhtiorskaya’s wit, generosity, and immense talent as a young American author” (NPR).