Random Winds: A Novel - Softcover

Plain, Belva

 
9780440175629: Random Winds: A Novel
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0440175623 ISBN 13: 9780440175629
Verlag: Dell, 1987

Inhaltsangabe

A tragedy on a cold Adirondack day robbed country doctor Enoch Farrell of his three oldest children. Then all his hopes rested with his son, Martin, who dreamed of becoming a doctor too. Intelligent, gifted Martin could have a brilliant future. All that stood in his way was his family's poverty—until he met wealthy, beautiful Mary Fern Meig and her sister, Jessie, and everything changed forever. Moving from a teeming New York hospital to the elite operating theaters of London, Martin Farrell is about to learn the price of success—a secret bargain with the Meigs that could resonate into the next generation . . . and test the strength of a man and a woman's passion across the coming years . . . 

Praise for Random Winds

“Wonderful . . . A convincing, sweeping novel . . . A real page-turner.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Impossible to put down.”—South Bend Tribune

“Engrossing.”—Publishers Weekly

“Richly woven. . . . A twisting and complex story that touches the lives of everyone.”—UPI

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Belva Plain is the New York Times bestselling author of Evergreen, Random Winds, Eden Burning, Crescent City, The Golden Cup, Tapestry, Blessings, Harvest, Treasures, Whispers, Daybreak, The Carousel, Promises, Secrecy, Homecoming, Legacy of Silence, Fortune’s Hand, After the Fire, Looking Back, Her Father’s House, The Sight of the Stars, Crossroads, and Heartwood. A Barnard College graduate who majored in history, Belva Plain lived in Millburn, New Jersey, where she and her husband raised three children. She died in 2010.

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turn-of-the-century village in  upstate New York to war-torn London, from the bedsides  of the rural poor to the life-and-death urgency of  a great New York City hospital, this is a powerful  epic of three generations of doctors in one  magnificent family. The Farrells-dedicated, brilliant..  and driven to the edge of destruction by a love no  human force could suppress.

Aus dem Klappentext

turn-of-the-century village in upstate New York to war-torn London, from the bedsides of the rural poor to the life-and-death urgency of a great New York City hospital, this is a powerful epic of three generations of doctors in one magnificent family. The Farrells-dedicated, brilliant.. and driven to the edge of destruction by a love no human force could suppress.

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Chapter 1
 
At the top of the long rise, Pa guided the horse toward the shade and drew in the reins. He pulled off his woolen jacket and laid it on the seat next to Martin.
 
“Professional dignity be darned!” he said. “The next patient will have to look at me in my shirt-sleeves whether he likes it or not.”
 
The sun was ahead of the season, Ma had remarked that morning. Shadbush was still in bloom, and barn swallows were barely back from the south in time for Decoration Day.
 
“We’ll just wait a minute here,” Pa said, “and give the mare a rest.”
 
The sweating animal stamped, slapping her tail. She had been making a strange sound for the last half hour, more like a plaint than a whinny.
 
“Something’s bothering her, Martin.”
 
“Black flies, do you think?”
 
“Don’t see any, do you?” Pa climbed down to examine the mare. He pulled the harness aside and swore. “Damn! Damn, look at this!”
 
The flesh along the horse’s back was rubbed bloody raw in a line as long as three fingers put end to end.
 
“Laid open with a whip,” Martin said.
 
“No doubt, and left to suppurate.”
 
Martin nodded, feeling a twinge deep inside at sight of the wound, feeling also a certain pride at being the only boy in the fourth grade who knew the meaning of words like “suppurate” or who, for that matter, had a father like his.
 
“Poor little livery stable hack!” Pa cried. “At the mercy of every drunken lout who has the money for its hire. Reach in my bag for the salve, will you?”
 
The little mare quivered, her muscular back rippling and twitching.
 
“Now a wad of gauze, a thick one.”
 
When he was finished, Pa got the water bucket. The mare drank gratefully. Martin gave her an apple. Then the two stood watching, pleased with themselves, while the mare chewed, salivating in a long, thick rope.
 
“She’s a nice little thing,” Pa said. “Wish I had the money to buy her and give her a decent home.”
 
“But we’ve got Star, and she’ll be ready to take out again as soon as her foal’s a month old, won’t she?”
 
“You’re right. I daresay the man would want thirty dollars for her.” Pa sighed. “Well, might as well start. One more call at Bechtold’s and then home in time for the parade.”
 
They moved on again. “Just look up there, Martin, at the side of that far mountain! You can gauge the height by the kind of trees you see. At the bottom there’s oak, but oak won’t grow more than twelve or thirteen hundred feet up. After that, you get balsam. Way up top there’s spruce, all that bluish-green stuff.” He leaned over Martin, pointing with outthrust finger. “Those are the oldest mountains in the United States, you know that? See how the tops are rounded? Worn away, that’s why. And I’ll tell you something else.” He pointed to the left. “Down there, all that level land was once buried underwater. Can you believe that?”
 
“You mean the ocean was here once?”
 
“Yes sir, that’s just what I do mean.”
 
“When the ocean came, what happened to the people? Did they all drown?”
 
“No, no. That was millions of years before there were any people here.”
 
At the foot of the hill, making a wide S-curve, lay the river.
 
“Pa, is that the river that overflowed and drowned Enoch Junior and Susan and May?” Martin knew quite well that it was, yet he always asked.
 
His father answered patiently, “That’s it.”
 
“Then I was born, and you had me instead of Enoch Junior as your boy. Do I look like him?” To that too, he knew the answer.
 
“No, he was small and sandy, like me. You’re going to be tall, I think, and of course you’re darker, like your mother’s family.”
 
“Do you like me more than you liked him?”
 
“The same. A man’s children are the same to him, like his own ten fingers.”
 
They drew into the Bechtolds’ yard.
 
“Wait out here, Martin,” Pa said.
 
“Can’t I come in and watch?”
 
“I have to change a dressing. It might make you feel bad to see the cut.”
 
“No it won’t, Pa. Honestly, it won’t.”
 
What his father didn’t know was that Martin had already seen much blood, having peered many a time through the shutters of a first floor window when he was supposed to be amusing himself outdoors. He had watched Pa set a compound fracture. (The little gray tip of bone pierces the flesh; the ether cone silences the screams.) He had seen the mangled stomach of a man gored by a bull. He had also seen his father wrestle down another man who had been beating his wife, and this last had impressed him most of all, although he had known it would be wise not to mention having seen it.
 
“All right then, come in.”
 
A scythe propped carelessly in a dark corner of the barn had sliced Jake Bechtold’s leg to the bone. Pa pulled the nightshirt up. Carefully he unwound the bandage, revealing a long, blood-encrusted gash, black and crisscrossed with stitches. He studied it for a moment.
 
“It’s doing well. Better than I expected, to tell the truth. No infection, thanks be.”
 
“We’re grateful to you, Doc.” Mrs. Bechtold wrung her clasped hands. “You always seen us through.”
 
“Not every time, Mrs. Bechtold,” Pa said seriously.
 
“Oh, that! That was in God’s hands. There wasn’t nothing you could’ve done more than you did do, Doc.”
 
“When they go back in the buggy, Pa sat in silence for a while. And then he broke out. “Oh, it’s hard, it can be so hard! Sometimes such awful things happen, you can’t put them out of your mind as long as you live!”
 
“What awful things, Pa?”
 
His father paused, as if the telling would be too difficult Then he said, “It was in my second year here, almost into the third. I never go to Bechtold’s without living it all over again the way I did just now.”
 
“Was it anything you did?”
 
“No, it was something I didn’t do. I wasn’t able. Jake had the flu. While I was in the bedroom examining him, their little girl, just three years old she was, pulled a wash-tub full of boiling water off the stove while her mother’s back was turned. We laid her on the kitchen table. I can still hear how she screamed. Once in my life I’d ordered a lobster. It was when I first came to this country and stayed those three days in New York City. A lobster is bright red when it’s boiled, you know, and I remember I couldn’t bring myself to eat it The child looked like that. I thought, ‘I don’t know what to do. I’m supposed to know and I don’t.’ A lot of people came running in, wailing and crying. They poured cold water on the child. I didn’t think to tell them not to, although really it wouldn’t have made any difference what they did. The child was sure to die. Finally I found...

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Verlag
Dell
Erscheinungsdatum
1987
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0440175623
ISBN 13 
9780440175629
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
528
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Dell GmbH
6997927350
DE.CustomerSupport@dell.com

Unterschweinstiege 10
Frankfurt am Main
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Deutschland

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