The Remember Box Patricia Sprinkle Carley Marshall memoir

memoir mid-twentieth century North Carolina novel by mystery author Patricia Sprinkle

ISBN 978-1-933523-09-5  $16.95
To order online, click on cover

Reissued June 2008 

 
 

Praise for THE REMEMBER BOX

Publisher's Weekly, September 11, 2000
"In this Christian novel, Sprinkle deftly addresses racial tension in the segregated South in 1949. Carley Marshall, an 11 year old white girl, is forced to move in with her aunt and uncle in their sleepy village of Job's Corner, NC, after her mother dies. Having been raised under the influence of her racially conservative grandmother, Carley is startled by the attitude of her preacher-uncle, a firm advocate of biblical equality. The town has similar concerns about him. For the people of Job's Corner, eating meals prepared by blacks is de rigueur, while sitting down at the table with them is another matter entirely. In Uncle Steven, Sprinkle has crafted a strong yet sympathetic character whose ideas on race and social justice are ahead of their time. In his wife, Kate, torn between her love for her husband and her fear of what people will think of them, Sprinkle allows readers to see the toll such visionary leadership can have on a family. Written as a flashback, the novel is aptly named as the grown-up Carley struggles to write the true story of what happened in Job's Corner in 1949 from a box of tangible memories. Readers will enjoy Sprinkle's memorable cast of characters and unexpected plot twists, and be challenged by her message of racial equality."

 Library Journal, November 1, 2000
"Acclaimed mystery maven Sprinkle lends her unique voice to the market with this part whodunit, part black comedy, and part coming-of-age novel. For all collections."

Christian Retailing, November 17, 2000
"Patricia Sprinkle weaves an interesting tale with vivid description ... Unlike much Christian fiction there is no overriding spiritual lesson in this story. It's just a good old-fashioned tale of the happenings in a small Southern town. And Sprinkle may be credited for not trying to include a last-minute spiritual twist simply to end the story."
 

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I am delighted to see the two books of the Job's Corner Chronicles come back into print, for these are my two favorites of all the books I've written.
      The setting for THE REMEMBER BOX and CARLEY'S SONG is based on a small North Carolina farming community we lived in from the time I was two until I was seven. However, Carley Marshall is not me. She's older, for starts, and has a far smarter mouth. Still, she walks roads I once walked, among the same kind of people.
      We, too, had one old store and a tiny unpainted post office in somebody’s front yard. We had one of the few telephones around. We had to deal with racism, within us and around us. We trembled at threats the Russians would drop a bomb any minute. We had to live in the goldfish bowl some people call a manse.
      However, our neighbors were delightful, and we did not have a murder.  

QUOTE: The Remember Box was Aunt Kate’s private place, the one we were sternly forbidden to open. As I reached toward it, a ray of sunlight set golden dust motes swirling around me like little lost worlds. Suddenly I was reluctant, even fearful--a modern Pandora, about to let out our own lost world. That box held one year I’d spent a lifetime trying to forget.

MORE information:
When Carley Marshall receives her aunt’s old box of keepsakes, she knows Uncle Stephen wants her to tell the story of 1949-1950, the dreadful year her Mama died and Carley was sent by her staunch Baptist grandmother to live with her aunt and uncle who serve a Presbyterian church in the little community of Job’s Corner, North Carolina.
"I can’t keep you here, honey, with all this polio." That’s when I knew how scared Big Mama was of polio. It was worse than Presbyterians.
Big Mama had no idea when she sent Carley to the Presbyterian preacher’s family what dire things would happen in that one year. It was the fall Carley found out what her own daddy did, the winter Mr. Baines died, the spring Jay was accused of the murder, the summer Uncle Stephen was tried for a crime too horrible to mention.
Job’s Corner was not the only part of the nation in turmoil. Coal miners went out on strike, cities burned in civil rights protests, Senator McCarthy began his reign of terror, and "Billy Graham came to Columbia, South Carolina, and split our church."
For years Carley has pushed down many of those memories. But as she lifts out Aunt Kate’s mementos one by one and tells the story of each, she gets a new perspective on the past.

 

Please do me a favor: If your public library doesn't have this book, would you ask them to get it for their shelves? An enthusiastic reader is the best endorsement. Thanks!