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  ACCLAIM FOR JAMES MARKERT

  “In All Things Bright and Strange, James Markert melds the ordinary and the extraordinary to create a compelling tale. Can miracles be trusted? Are the dead really gone? Can we be undone by what we wish for most? The citizens of Markert’s Bellhaven must confront these questions and more, with their fates and the existence of their entire town at stake.”

  —GREER MACALLISTER, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE MAGICIAN’S LIE AND GIRL IN DISGUISE

  “Mysterious, gritty and a bit mystical, Markert’s entertaining new novel inspires the question of “What if?” Many characters are nicely multilayered, providing a good balance of intrigue and realism. The fascinating glimpse into the process of distilling bourbon—and the effect of the Prohibition on Kentucky and its bourbon families—adds another layer to the story.”

  —RT BOOK REVIEWS, 3 STARS ON THE ANGELS’ SHARE

  “Folksy charm, an undercurrent of menace, and an aura of hope permeate this ultimately inspirational tale.”

  —BOOKLIST ON THE ANGELS’ SHARE

  “Distinguished by complex ideas and a foreboding tone, Markert’s enthralling novel (A White Wind Blew) captures a dark time and a people desperate for hope.”

  —LIBRARY JOURNAL

  “Markert displays great imagination in describing the rivalries, friendships, and intense relationships among the often quirky and cranky terminally ill, and the way that a diagnosis, or even a cure, can upset delicate dynamics.”

  —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ON A WHITE WIND BLEW

  “The author’s ability to weigh competing views against each other, and the all-too-real human complications are presented with a remarkable understanding of conflicting ideas that makes even villains human eventually. The author writes well and reads easily; you’ll finish this book in a day or two and wish for a sequel.”

  —BOOKPAGE ON A WHITE WIND BLEW

  “A tuberculosis epidemic, as seen through the eyes of a sanatorium doctor driven by his love of God and music.”

  —KIRKUS REVIEWS ON A WHITE WIND BLEW

  “[Markert’s] debut novel, A White Wind Blew is set in Waverly Hills, that massive Gothic structure that is said to be one of the most haunted places on earth.”

  —RONNA KAPLAN FOR THE HUFFINGTON POST

  “The book is at its best when Pike, McVain and their eclectic band of musicians are beating the odds, whether against tuberculosis or against stifling institutional mores.”

  —CHERYL TRUMAN, KENTUCKY HERALD-LEADER

  “Markert has interwoven three seemingly unrelated subjects—tuberculosis, music, and racism—into a hauntingly lyrical narrative with operatic overtones.”

  —BOOKLIST ON A WHITE WIND BLEW

  ALSO BY JAMES MARKERT

  The Angels’ Share

  All Things Bright and Strange

  © 2018 by James Markert

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.

  Thomas Nelson titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

  Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Epub Edition November 2017 ISBN 9780718090258

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Markert, James, 1974-author.

  Title: All things bright and strange / James Markert, James Markert.

  Description: Nashville : Thomas Nelson, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017039713 | ISBN 9780718090289 (softcover)

  Subjects: LCSH: City and town life—Fiction. | Good and evil—Fiction. | GSAFD: Christian fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3613.A75379 A79 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017039713

  Printed in the United States of America

  18 19 20 21 22 LSC 5 4 3 2 1

  Can humanity stand the universe without its

  supernatural?

  I don’t know.

  PROTESTANT MINISTER, 1920S

  For my parents

  It would be impossible to create a fictional pair who

  could rival the pure goodness of the real thing.

  Thank you.

  CONTENTS

  Acclaim for James Markert

  Also by James Markert

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  After

  Discussion Questions

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  1917

  The boy shuffled his feet in the dark basement.

  His momma had told him not to stomp—only to pretend to dance.

  They’d been warned not to make noise. Couldn’t risk being found yet. The lady had risked her life for them. And two days wasn’t long to wait, even in the dark.

  But the piano music above was so loud the boy couldn’t help but groove and hoof. He wasn’t much of a dancer. His gift was different—a gift his momma said had finally put them on the lam. But not being good at something had never stopped him before. Their dance floor above was his ceiling below. Light crept through the floorboard cracks. Shadows moved in accordance with their rhythms and gyrations up there. All of them in glad rags, smoked on giggle juice, having them a swell time just like the lady said they always did.

  And come to think, she said next time they’d be able to join in.

  “This town is different. You’ll be welcomed here.”

  The boy ate a corn bread muffin from a basket the lady had sneaked to them before the party started. He’d already eaten three, but his stomach still felt empty. The wagon trip had been a long one with no food, and by the looks of his thin arms he knew he’d lost weight.

  He wiped his hands of the crumbs and silent-shuffled with his thumbs hooked in his trouser pockets. String instruments started above. A violin and something deeper that made his heart thrum warm.

  Two wooden crates rested under the stairs. He stacked one atop the other and climbed up like he’d done a few times during the day when there was no risk of being noticed. Up near the ceiling under the first step was a patch where the boards didn’t line up flush, an opening just big enough to see the floorboards above.

  His momma would tan his hide if someone noticed his eyes lurking. She turned her back in defiance but a minute later was next to him, holding
the crates so they wouldn’t topple.

  “Well?”

  The boy squinted, bent his knees for a better angle, and now saw people instead of just shoes and boots and bare feet. Hundred folks if there was twenty.

  “You’re grinnin’ like some fool,” she whispered. “What is it, boy?”

  “There’s some like us in there, Momma.” He kept grinning, eyes large. “Blacks and whites in the same place, carryin’ on together. One man hambonin’ next to a white lady dancin’.”

  His momma waved that notion away. “Always said you had a good imagination.”

  The boy rubbed his eyes, but when he looked again, nothing changed. “There’s even a black man with a star badge and a fancy topper.”

  “Like a sheriff?”

  “In uniform to the nines.”

  “Black sheriff in a white town? Hush now, boy.”

  “Strike me down if I’m lyin’.”

  She waited. Nothing happened. “Mayhap she told us the truth after all. Mayhap this place is different.”

  He didn’t tell his momma what he saw in the open window behind the dancing lady—the cardinal bird on the windowsill. Looked like the same one that used to visit the tree outside their cabin back home.

  “What is it?” she asked. “What else you see?”

  “Nothin’. That’s the crop, Momma. Just like I said.”

  Momma didn’t need to know everything. Like what he’d seen in the woods last night when the lady hurried them out from under the tarp—hundreds of cardinal birds circling. And then in the woods before she hurried them underground—Cardinal birds clustered in the form of a man? Pinch me. Just a bunch of redbirds in a low bundle, like a leaf tornado. But tornados didn’t have arms and legs and a head. And the lady had said these woods were magical, with all those sprawling live oaks and that clinging moss.

  Then again, he did have a good imagination.

  He closed his eyes, remembered how the gust of wind dispersed those birds right before he and Momma had gone underground. The cardinal man gone in a snap.

  The boy’s smile abandoned him. He looked down from his box perch. “Momma, what is this place?”

  “Far as I recall, she jus’ say we in Bellhaven.”

  “Why she say they paint some of the trees yellow?”

  She shrugged. “I’m long past dwellin’ on the whys of the white mind, boy.”

  But I’m not. He could smell the ocean from here. Saltwater marshes and tidal swamps. Lady said something about the Charleston peninsula and two rivers. “I’ve never heard of Bellhaven in all my months of book learnin’.”

  Thunder rumbled outside, distant and then close.

  Too fast for thunder.

  The boy’s momma stepped away from the crates. “Horse hooves.”

  The ground vibrated. The music quieted upstairs and the folks stopped dancing.

  The boy climbed down from the crates and approached the lone window half-sunk in the ground. The glass was mud smeared and concealed by azalea bushes fixing to bloom. He pulled an old stool under the window and balanced himself on top, his eyes just high enough to see horse hooves, white cloaks, and torches outside.

  “They found us, Momma.”

  CHAPTER 1

  1920

  BELLHAVEN, SOUTH CAROLINA

  It was as good a day to die as any.

  But first, Ellsworth Newberry would have his morning cup of joe.

  He poured it from a dented pot, inhaled the earthy roast, and swirled in a finger’s worth of medicinal whiskey. He’d begun stashing liquor the day the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified—a good year before Prohibition actually began—but as long as Dr. Philpot continued writing scrips for his bum leg, there was no reason to start using his stash of Old Sam. Whoever found his body could have what he’d hoarded.

  He braced himself against the stove and took a step on his new wooden leg—a so-called Hanger limb, named after the man who’d designed it. If ol’ Hanger had any sense, he’d have made it so the knee would bend. Leather attachments connected the leg to the stump above where his left knee used to be, and the leather pads on the heel and ball of the foot were prone to make him trip. “You’ll need those pads for traction,” the military doc had said.

  Soon won’t be needing the leg for anything.

  Ellsworth used his cane into the living room, where his chair waited by the bay window. He dropped down on the wooden seat and unholstered the Smith & Wesson on the window ledge next to last night’s dinner plate. Remnants of beef stew had hardened around the edges. He nudged the plate aside to make room for his coffee mug and then watched out the window.

  Across the road, the façade of the town hall lay in rubble. Built by his late father, the building had once been the focal point of the town square, with sash windows and tall brick walls painted blue, eaves trimmed white to match the wraparound veranda that enclosed it all like a warm hug. Now the interior walls were visible, flame-scorched from the fire that had killed Bellhaven’s soul and Ellsworth’s wife.

  The avenue of oaks was still there, though. Eliza once thought them magical—the way the Spanish moss draped their sprawling limbs, swaying in the coastal breeze and shimmering silver in sunlight. The live oaks overhung the road into town like a vault, evenly spaced on both sides for more than a hundred yards.

  “It’s like a perfect tunnel,” Eliza had said on their wedding day, nestling the top of her head into the pocket of Ellsworth’s shoulder as he steered their new Model T over the bumpy gravel. “Like driving under a dream.”

  What was it he’d said in response? “I reckon so . . .”

  She’d glanced at him before repositioning her head against his shoulder; a flicker of disappointment in those blue eyes. Breeze from the open windows moved strands of auburn hair against his cheek. Sometimes he could still feel the tickle.

  Ellsworth moved hair that wasn’t there, wishing now he’d said something different back then, something less dismissive than “I reckon so.” But the truth was he’d been distracted by the rose-blossom scent of her hair, the puttering of the car engine, and the mockingbird trying to keep pace next to his window. That brief look she’d given him had been the first sign of her melancholy—what many in town referred to as her madness.

  Instead of her smile he now saw chiggers and rat snakes. Boll weevils munching through cotton scabs. A long-abandoned town hall where ’coons lived in the attic, bats hung from rafters, and egret droppings covered the floorboards. Sea breezes passed through the broken windows like nothing of import had ever transpired in there—no festivals or potlucks, holiday gatherings or birthday parties, talent shows or theatrical plays. The music and singing had been something of wonder. Without it the town’s heart thumped slowly and without much purpose.

  Stacks of dirty plates rested beside his chair. No point cleaning them up now. No point grooming himself either. At twenty-two, his chestnut hair already had flecks of gray around the ears. The war had brought deep creases to an already rugged face, a bleakness to his blue eyes, and he swore now that Anna Belle Roper was trying to make him fat on top of it all.

  Ellsworth’s coffee was scalding, but he sipped it no matter. He didn’t have time to let it cool. He had to get his business done before Anna Belle arrived with breakfast.

  The coffee burned a trail down his throat. Steam opened his eyes and cleared his muddled head. He hadn’t had a full night sleep since his return ten months ago, not with how the carnage flashed back every time he closed his eyes. Better off not sleeping, he’d tell himself nightly. Better off not living at all.

  They’d been in such a hurry to fight the war President Wilson declared that they’d never stopped to think of why. Ellsworth thought maybe killing Krauts would help him grieve Eliza. Calvin and Alfred signed up because Ellsworth did. A mortar shell blew Ellsworth’s left leg to bits during the battle of Château-Thierry. Calvin never made it through the first American offensive. Alfred returned blind from mustard gas, and his insomnia had left him jingle-brai
ned.

  Alfred sat now on a bench in the shadows of the town hall, in full army gear minus the dented helmet, feeding bread chunks to squirrels he couldn’t see. Probably already thinking of wandering over to share a cup. He visited daily, as did half the town, it seemed. Like it was their mission to get Ellsworth out of the house and back into Bellhaven’s trickling bloodstream.

  Why can’t they leave me be?

  Ellsworth finished his coffee, hurried through a cigarette, and squashed the butt into the window ledge next to his revolver. He braced his hands on the chair arms and stood, wincing at the sharp pain that resonated where nub touched prosthesis.

  He grabbed his Smith & Wesson from the window ledge. It was fully loaded with .45-caliber bullets. He slid the barrel into his mouth, and it clicked against his teeth. He wondered if Alfred across the road would hear the gunshot and run blindly to help. Hopefully somebody would hear and come find him before Anna Belle came with breakfast. Maybe that crotchety Old Man Tanner across the road. He was just mean enough to deserve cleaning up the mess. And that way Anna Belle wouldn’t have to do it.

  Ellsworth pushed the barrel in too far and gagged, tasted metal against his tongue. He pinched his eyes closed, but thoughts of Eliza flashed. In the days before the fire, she’d seemed more at peace than he’d seen her in years, certainly since their first baby came out stillborn.

  “I talked with him, Ellsworth. Our son. Erik. I knelt upon the healing floor.”

  Ellsworth had felt uncomfortable naming a baby that never once breathed on his own. But they’d done it anyway, for Eliza’s sake.

  Till death do us part, Eliza. And brings us back together again.

  Ellsworth reapplied pressure on the trigger. Would one bullet even do the trick?

  Something thumped against the window. He opened his eyes.

  A cardinal bird fluttered outside the glass. An olive-gray female with a prominently raised red-tinged crest and a stark orange beak. It settled on the windowsill, stared at him.

  He watched the cardinal right back, watched it until his finger eased and he’d moved the barrel out enough to take a deep swallow. No other sign could have coaxed that gun from his mouth. He lowered the revolver to his side, and his heart rate slowed.