Introduction

In the fragile balance of life, you have one birth, one death, one time to tell those you love a final farewell. But what if, somehow, you were given one more chance?

Victor Gant's life is abundant with blessings. Although his mother was an Osage Indian slave, he is a valuable member of the French and German community of charming of Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. As the town blacksmith he is respected, well-liked, and makes a proper living for himself and beloved sister. All Victor's dreams come true when he marries the only woman that had ever caught his eye.

But blessings can be fleeting. When the civil war erupts in 1861 Victor will have to make choices. Torn between what's best for his family or following his conscience, between keeping promises or following his heart... to finally bestowing an agonizing blessing of his own.

Barbara Sontheimer's sweeping novel Victor's Blessing is a journey from the patent office of Washington DC, to the infamous Andersonville prison, to the Battle of Wilderness, where in order for Victor to keep one promise.... another must be broken.

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Excerpt

Prologue

Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, April 1839

AnnaMargarite Gant knew she was dying and wondered if everyone felt the same odd certainty before they died. Impending death was so obvious, she wondered why her little girl Margaret or son Victor did not realize it. She wondered why her daughter uselessly sponged her fevered brow and forced water against her dried lips, begging her to drink.

This knowledge of approaching death did not alarm AnnaMargarite.

“It won’t hurt anymore,” she thought with exhaustion and relief. She felt death so clearly; she glanced toward the corner of the darkened room, expecting to see a somber specter waiting for her. Some shadowy figure reaching out with a bony white hand, coaxing her to leave the world of the living. She wondered what Father Tonnellier would think of her decidedly unchristian visions at the time of her death. “AnnaMargarite,” he had said countless times over the years, “You must embrace Christianity and the Catholic church. After all, it was God that saved you, and we who cared for you when no one else would.”

Yes, they took me in. She had been sick with a strange disease the Osage did not understand, and left behind. She remembered her life after she had come to live with the family of Pierre Toulouse. Although she had been a slave for them, her life had not been harsh. She had been well fed, clothed, and shared in the family’s many celebrations, almost as if she was a blood relative. She had been taught both French and English and been baptized into Catholicism. Later, her adopted family had allowed her to be purchased by Robert Gant. To further demonstrate their desire for her happiness, the Toulouse’s had generously given the newly married couple forty arpents of land to start their lives with. She had tried to acclimate to her new life but there were times when she felt the earlier Osage teachings of the great Wah’Kon-Tah crowding out visions of the crucifix and holy virgin. She was haunted by the memories of her former life floating in and out of her consciousness like a mist. At times she could not remember where it was she belonged, or who she should be.

It wasn’t a very long life. Thinking that at twenty-five years old she had nothing in her life but to marry at fourteen, bear six children, and bury three. Her marriage had started out well enough, but her husband’s half-hearted effort to till the soil made him reach to the whiskey bottle for solace. But what shocked her was the way his demeanor changed. He began to slap her at first, then punched and kicked. For the most part, she could protect her nine-year-old daughter, Margaret, but because eleven-year-old Victor worked alongside his father in the fields, Victor often came home bruised and bloodied. On those nights after tending her son’s wounds, AnnaMargarite would sob and pray to whatever God would listen to her to let it end.

And now it was ending. Although she was prepared to die, she worried about leaving her children. Her Osage grandmother had told her once that her ancestors came from a line of long livers. AnnaMargarite feverishly tossed her head on the sweat-stained pillow and remembered the shrewd black eyes of her grandmother, the woman with long black hair streaked with silver. The leathery face creased from a lifetime in the sun. That old, lined face was velvety-soft to the kiss. She had kissed her grandmother’s cheek so many times in her life before she had come to live with the French, and she was sure her grandmother would be disappointed in her weakness.

AnnaMargarite saw Margaret standing beside her bed. Her large brown eyes were somber in her thin, serious face. Her long brown braids were messy, and AnnaMargarite tried to reach out to touch the braids that she had braided only three days ago, but found her strength seeping out like the blood onto the bed.

“Mama,” Margaret choked out in a sob, putting her small arms around her mother’s shoulders.

“It’s all…it’s all right…” AnnaMargarite tried to speak, but her feverish brain would not let her.

“Victor’s back, Mama,” Margaret exclaimed with hope, hearing the wagon.

AnnaMargarite heard the wagon too and closed her eyes, swallowing hard, wanting in her last hours on earth to commit to memory the faces of her beloved children and hoping their lives would be better than hers.

Yvonne Riefler hurried out of the wagon. It was already beautifully warm that spring night. The sound of a wild wind rustling the new buds would have normally filled Yvonne’s soul with happiness and wonder about the spring planting and wonderful summer harvests to follow. But a wail of pain from the house mocked the calm of the twilight.

“Come on, child! Dépêche!” Yvonne whispered, exasperated, lapsing into her native French.

Yvonne wished she hadn’t had to bring her frightened daughter Celena, along. But When Victor had run the two miles to the farm begging for her help, frantic because his father refused to call a doctor, Yvonne had no choice but to drop what she was doing.

“Robert…how ez she?” Yvonne asked nervously.

“Not well.” He mumbled and hung his head as he stood on the threshold of the small, dilapidated farmhouse. His homespun shirt was not clean, not buttoned up properly, and showed more chest covered in gray hairs than a disapproving Yvonne wanted to see. His sandy-colored hair was graying and lay in unruly greasy clumps against his head. The gray whiskers on his chin and hard lines around his gray eyes made him look older than twenty-nine years.

“This way Miss Yvonne,” Victor said, walking backward, leading them into the house. But when Celena realized where they were headed, Yvonne had to drag her in.

Once inside Yvonne shivered. The house was filthy. The dishes had been left on the table for days, the sticky wooden floor pulled at her shoes, an empty whiskey bottle on the floor was surrounded by mice droppings. A foul smell permeated the air and Yvonne tried not to gag as she entered the only small room off the kitchen.

Never in Yvonne’s life had she seen such a hideous sight as where her neighbor lay in a mess of rank bodily fluids. And although she was not totally coherent Yvonne knew AnnaMargarite was embarrassed by her condition when seeing Yvonne, she began to cry.

“Oh, Anna!” Yvonne choked back the bile that rose in her throat. An uncharacteristic anger shook her, horrified that AnnaMargarite’s husband would let her lay on the mattress already soaked with sweat, blood, and urine. The vile smirk Robert had given her as he sat on the porch drinking made the spark of anger in Yvonne burst into flames.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!” Anna began to sob. Her long black hair in a hideous matt against the stained pillow. “The baby just won’t come, I don’t understand, I keep pushing…”

Yvonne knelt near her friend and noticed that her eyes were glassy and unfocused and that her normally tanned complexion looked sickly, tinged with yellow.

“Do you remember when your water broke?” She frantically glanced around for something to clean up her friend and realized because of the whiskey Robert would be no help. “Where’s the water?” she shouted in frustration, and then wished she hadn’t when she spied Margaret huddled in the corner laying on yet another filthy quilt. Her face was dirty but there were clean marks on her cheeks from her tears, and her trusting eyes were almost more than Yvonne could bear.

“I—I need light.”

“I’ll get it,” Victor said and disappeared.

“Oh, mon Dieu! Anna!” Yvonne exclaimed, letting her blue woolen shawl drop to the dirty floor. Again, Yvonne had to stifle the urge to gag as the rank smells of stale urine, feces and blood permeated the room.

AnnaMargarite’s first child Adam had come easily enough, and barely nine months later another son, was born. She remembered nursing them at the same time. But no matter how much the Adam ate, he seemed to shrivel before her eyes as her second son Victor grew strong. Adam died before his sixth birthday, and she could still see Victor solemnly at the graveside, holding onto his little sister Margaret who was too little to understand what was wrong. AnnaMargarite had twin boys that followed Adam into the earth, two years later. She remembered the morning she had found them cold and lifeless in their crib, wondering how they managed to leave the world without so much as a sound. And now here she was again trying to give birth to this baby, that refused to be born.

Victor came in with a lit lantern, which had a cracked glass flute. The light further illuminating the hideous mess, and for a moment Yvonne was so horrified by the sight, she could not remember the words in English. “I’m. I’m going to need d’eau…water!”

Victor darted out of the room, not bothering with the steps, jumping off the porch instead. Yvonne heard the splash of the bucket as it hit the well.

Yvonne paused, her heart afraid about the task in front of her. After all, she was no doctor nor midwife. And although she knew something of childbirth, having birthed seven children of her own, still felt woefully unprepared for what had been suddenly asked of her.

AnnaMargarite and Yvonne were more than acquaintances, but not quite friends. Because the Riefler farm was larger, and Yvonne’s husband John, a better businessman and farmer than Robert, the Rieflers always had much more than the Gants. And Yvonne feeling bad for her neighbor had a habit of making sure the “extra” canning or, or leftover children’s clothing quietly made its way to the Gant farm. The husbands were not friendly, John Riefler disapproving of the way his neighbor managed his land and family. Even though the Riefler farm butted up to the Gant’s small farm at the edge of town. The Gant farm had not always been small, but Robert Gant’s long illicit affair with whiskey garnered him few friends, and he lost arpents of land during his drunken binges, and idiotic renegotiations with the bank.

The alcohol was not the only thing that bothered Yvonne, it was the way Robert Gant treated his young Osage wife. He professed to love her, or at least Yvonne realized with a flush of embarrassment he managed to get her pregnant every year. Yvonne did not have proof he beat her, but it was rumored he did, and it made every cell in Yvonne’s body recoil with disgust.

“Anna, how long has sis been going on?” Yvonne leaned near her gently, trying to assess what on earth to do. She watched as AnnaMargarite tried to answer but could not.

To Yvonne’s relief she heard Victor running up the steps with a bucket full of water. Although he was fast, she realized he did not spill a drop as he carefully put it down. She noticed he was already tall for a boy of eleven. His eyes like Margaret’s were full of hope and trust.

“When did she take to her bed?”

“Three days ago. I asked Pa if I could come get you—”

“Three days!” Yvonne shrieked “Why did you wait so long?” She wished she hadn’t then when she saw the guilt and pain on Victor’s face. Yvonne closed her eyes briefly and shook her head. Wishing she had gone to the fields and gotten her husband John, or gone into town and gotten Dr. Casey, anyone to help her. Yvonne gasped unable to hold back, as uncharacteristic anger shook her.

She put her hands in the cool well water and traced her hands across AnnaMargarite’s hot, feverish face. Yvonne’s hands shook at the sensation. Never in her life had she felt someone that hot to touch and knew right then it was too late. The nauseating sensation that they had waited too long engulfed her.

“Are you cold Anna, m’m?” Yvonne asked rearranging the disheveled bedclothes and gasped when she pulled them back seeing that from the waist down, AnnaMargarite was soaked in blood. “Just let me…. clean you up a bit,” Yvonne bit her lip as tears pricked her eyes. She felt sweat run down the middle of her back and under her arms, as she mopped up the blood with a discarded shift. It was horrifyingly obvious to Yvonne that in effort to have her child alone, AnnaMargarite had urinated, defecated, and nearly bled to death.

“Why doesn’t it come?” AnnaMargarite asked weakly.

Trying not to gag as she smeared blood along AnnaMargarite’s thighs, Yvonne gulped. “The afterbirth, Anna…it came first.” She wiped a tear off her face with the back of her hand, unknowingly smearing blood on her cheek.

“I knew…I was dying, but I…thought the baby would…live.” AnnaMargarite looked down at her swollen belly. “One of us should have.”

At the frank words Yvonne felt the strength drain out of her. She noticed that AnnaMargarite was still in pain because her breathing would be labored, and Yvonne wished she could do more to help her.

“Is there any whiskey or tafia left in this house?” Yvonne wailed, but in the wake of Anna’s pain and the children’s fear, ashamed she had done so. When no one answered, she turned toward Margaret and Celena. Looking down Yvonne realized her arms were painted in blood up to her elbows, the two little girls stared at the ghastly sight, dumb struck.

“I—I can’t find a cup,” Victor stammered a moment later producing a dusty bottle of whiskey. She managed a weak smile as she took it from him and had odd sensation of security when he was near. Yvonne remembered how Anna used to brag about him, how capable he was, how helpful. At the time Yvonne had merely regarded it as a doting mother’s praise. But Yvonne had to admit there was something comforting about his strong demeanor. His gray eyes silently watching his mother die, his broad back resigned to take on the burden her death with yoke him with.

“Here Anna, zis may help a bit,” Yvonne poured a bit of the amber liquid into Anna’s mouth. Although she had difficulty swallowing, she quieted, and Yvonne hung her head forcing back her tears.

Celena stood in the doorway watching the grim happenings paralyzed with fear. She didn’t understand about birthing babies or dying, but she knew her mother who could handle everything, was afraid, and that terrified her. She looked over at the tall boy that was her neighbor and felt sorrier for him than she had ever felt to anyone in her young life.

Unfortunately for another twelve hours AnnaMargarite stayed in a place that was neither life nor death, and Yvonne and the three children stayed with her. At times Yvonne sponged her fevered forehead, other times praying at her bedside. In the middle of a beautiful spring night, she painfully gave birth to a stillborn daughter. When the pale light of morning came AnnaMargarite asked for her son.

“Victor…” she breathed, opening her eyes, wanting to smile at him. “You’ve been such a great…help to me…” She felt the tug at her mortal soul and tried to fight it long enough just to tell him that she loved him, depended on him, and that he had never not done what she asked. She wanted him to promise to look after Margaret, wanted to tell him to learn to read and write, something she had not. She felt her eyes closing and fought desperately to re-open them, as her body began to drift away from the weight of life. She could barely feel Victor place her hand against his heart, and although she heard him call her back, felt the pull intensify. For one last moment she was torn between staying with her children or going to that place where there was no more pain.

The fingers of his mother’s hand arched up, and Victor leaned closer to his mother’s face. Straining to hear comforting words from her lips. As he studied her still face, he liked to tell himself that she had managed to smile at him right before she died.

Celena too remembered the moment. She had been sleeping but was awakened by the muffled sobs of Margaret who stood with her face buried in the bloodstained skirts of Yvonne. Celena realized their mother had died, and she too began to cry.

She watched Victor straighten up from his mothers’ bedside, still staring at his ghastly sight of his lifeless mother.

Celena walked silently next to him, and reached up and put her small arms around his waist trying to comfort him.

Victor’s tortured eyes blazed down at her, and for a moment she was afraid. Then he leaned down and dissolved into tears in the arms of Celena who was only six. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

From the author:

1.) Does the fact that Victor never tells Celena he loves her make you feel differently about him? And why doesn’t he?
2.) Celena’s character is shy, were you able to connect with the character even though she is not the typical self-important heroine?
3.) Ethan’s character has flaws. Did you feel that he was able to redeem himself enough during the novel to justify Celena agreeing to marry him? And why?
4.) Penelope is unhappy for most of the story. Do you think it had more to do with her own upbringing, and all the things she finds out Ethan has done, or the fact that her husband is in love with Celena? Do you think in time she would have found happiness?
5.) Slavery was rightly abolished. Do you feel the novel adequately represented different opinions of the country ?
6.) Although the novel touches on the well-known battles and happenings of the Civil War, the author tried to bring to life more obscure stories. Before reading the novel were you aware of Elmer Ellsworth, or the battle of Wilderness? Was it engaging to learn of some of the more unknown facets of the civil war?
7.) Forgiveness was a theme throughout the novel. If you were Victor would you have been able to forgive Ethan? If you were Penelope could you also have forgiven Ethan? What about Victor sacrificing his own life to save his nephew? Or was Victor past forgiveness?
8.) The ghost of Victor’s mother visits him on the battlefield. How did you feel about him going with her, as opposed to the other two times she asked him to?
9.) There was some humor in the novel, was it appropriate and appreciated or did it detract from the story?

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