Guest Host, David Parks

The Boy Who Closed the Sky by David Parks, one of my critique partners, is the best book I’ve read in a long time. Thanks for joining us, Dave.

 

Family in Fiction

Birdie—my one remaining sibling—phoned. She had read to page eight of The Boy Who Closed the Sky, A Novel of Elijah the Prophet. 

“I’m disappointed my baby brother didn’t give credit to our mother. Sunday afternoons she read Egermeier's Bible stories to us and would be proud her little boy published a Bible story.”

Mother read to us of David and his five smooth stones? Sorry. I only remembered Oliver Twist and Chuchundra, the muskrat, who never came out into the middle of the floor, but always crept round by the wall.

Birdie forgave my poor memory, and I told her to keep reading.

She’ll find family in a line I dug from the archives of 1946. With my spoon standing in the oatmeal, I leaned across our porcelain-top kitchen table and asked Dad, “Why doesn’t God just kill the devil?”

A few chapters later Birdie will phone again when Elijah says, “Small matter, pal.”—a phrase our dad used so often people called his business Pal’s Place.

Two lines, though, I’ll have to show her.

The first comes from Oboth, the desert spot where Moses lived in 1293 BC. When my wife, Delphine, and I lived there in 1984 AD, one night she looked up at the Lord’s brilliant star show. “The sun goes down and the sky is ours.”

The second line comes from a custom of my mother-in-law.

Elijah turned to his brother, Nathan, “Remember how mother takes your cheeks in both her hands?”

“Mm-hm. To help you listen. She holds your face and looks into your heart.”

So, bits from my family did work their way into the Elijah novel. Hmm… Had Mother’s Bible stories been the thumb in my back which nudged me to complete this book?

Elijah faced the king then glanced at the open gate.

Vendors and shoppers blocked his escape.

Lord, you’ve gotta get me out of here.

He leaned toward the king. “As the Lord lives—the God of Israel whom I stand and serve—for these next years we will have neither dew nor rain unless I say so.”

Guards lunged.

Elijah sprang for the gate and smacked into a donkey loaded with onions. “Uhh!” The air left his lungs.

“Grab that kid!”

The Elijah story for purchase: TinyURL.com/ElijahClosed

Or -  https://www.amazon.com/dp/1737353709?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860

The first chapter’s free. Click on “Look inside.”