Growing Up Country: Memories of an Iowa Farm Girl by Carol Bodensteiner

Author:Carol Bodensteiner [Bodensteiner, Carol]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Nonfiction, Personal Memoir, Retail
ISBN: 9780979799709
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Rising Sun Press
Published: 2008-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Options

The long shelf of Nancy Drew mysteries constituted more than half of our home library. While sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the bookshelf, I had considered all the titles. So many options. Which one to choose? Since I had read some volumes at least three times, the question was really whether to pick one I couldn’t remember at all or a more familiar one. I forgot most story details within weeks of reading them and as a result could return again and again, reading our books with alternating feelings of stomach-clenching suspense and not-to-worry familiarity. Today I chose a comfortable world. “The Whispering Statue” was a favorite.

When I pulled the volume off the shelf that morning, I’d been intent on finding a quiet place to curl up, but I opened the book and began reading at once. I’d moved barely five feet when I was drawn so deeply into the action on the pages that I stopped moving and stood lost in another world, a world of mysteries and clues and discovery where Nancy Drew grabbed me by the hand to race along in her life of adventure.

Now I stood, leaning against the wall, book in one hand, my other arm crooked behind my back, my fingers clutching the door frame. It is another fluke of my brain that when I read, I am aware of little else around me. So I didn’t hear Jane and Sue until they were tearing up the stairs in front of me.

“It’s mine!” Jane yelled over her shoulder as she hit the stairs, bounding up two at a time.

“It’s not either. It’s mine. Give it to me or I’ll tell Mom,” Sue skidded around the corner from the living room, snapping at Jane’s heels. Sue had almost no chance of getting whatever it was they were fighting over, but she was as persistent as the bull thistles that defied our hoes when Dad sent us down the lane to chop the prickly giants growing wild in the pasture.

“You’ll never get it,” Jane gasped as she made it to the top of the stairs, tore past me into the upstairs bedroom and turned, slamming the door.

“Will too. You just wait,” Sue screeched. She dove toward Jane just as Jane threw all her weight against the door and it crashed closed. On my fingers.

The sound of my fingers crunching was drowned out as Sue hammered on the door, throwing threats at the top of her lungs.

The sound of my screams was covered by Jane’s near-hysterical laughing as she leaned against the door, shoving back against Sue’s equal and opposite force.

Sue shoved; the door opened a quarter-inch; my fingers pulsed and I pulled.

Jane shoved back; the door firmly closed; my fingers ground into the space by a hinge.

Every nerve in my body fired like a lightening strike, and I shrieked, “My hand. My hand. My hand!” I knew there was no blood in my face any more, certain as I was it was all draining out my fingers.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.