Safe In The Arms Of Jesus

In 1897 the "White Plague" killed Isabel Woods Edwards, just weeks after she had nursed and buried her mother-in-law and her mother. Safe In The Arms of Jesus portrays the last week of Isabel's life, isolated in her Saint Louis, Missouri bedroom. Only two people entered this bedroom: Dr. William Barker and Isabel's servant Lizzie, a contraband refugee from Helena, Arkansas, indentured to the Woods family in 1865 at age fifteen. From just outside the bedroom's door, Isabel receives daily visits from her husband Ben Edwards - the first son in A.G. Edwards & Sons, the long lived Saint Louis based brokerage firm - her sister Flora, and her brother Matt. Isabel frets for the future of her son, three-year-old Albert, whom she feels, should she die, might grow up in a world without stories.This fully fictional novella grows out of the real lives of the characters it creatively portrays. The author uses actual newspaper accounts along with Ben Edwards' original letters, written during his 1886 railroad journey from Saint Louis to San Francisco and back. Today these letters, which Isabel cherished and preserved by tying them together with a thin brown ribbon, exist in the author's possession.The author invented only Lizzie's character, due to the lack of specific historic details about the African American lady who served Isabel so well, even at the risk of contracting the dreaded "White Plague."

• | Author: Lesley Pendleton Barker
• | Publisher: Independently Published
• | Publication Date: Dec 10, 2018
• | Number of Pages: 94 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 1791380131
• | ISBN-13: 9781791380137