Saints - Softcover

Card, Orson Scott

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312876068 ISBN 13: 9780312876067

Publisher: Forge Books, 2001

Synopsis

From the bestselling author of the Ender Universe series comes Orson Scott Card's epic historical novel Saints

When ten-year-old Dinah Kirkham saw her father leave their Manchester home in the middle of the night, she basked when he would be back. "Soon," he replied. But he never came back. On that night in 1829, John Kirkham laid the foundation of his daughter's certainty that the only person Dinah could ever really trust was herself.

From that day forward, Dinah worked to support her family, remaining devoted to their welfare even in the face of despair and grinding poverty. Then one day she heard a new message, a new purpose ignited in her heart, and new life opened up before her.

About this title

About the Author:

Orson Scott Card is the author of the novels Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow, and Speaker for the Dead. Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead both won Hugo and Nebula Awards, making Card the only author to win these two top prizes in consecutive years. There are seven other novels to date in The Ender Universe series. Card has also written fantasy: The Tales of Alvin Maker is a series of fantasy novels set in frontier America; The Lost Gate, is a contemporary magical fantasy. Card has written many other stand-alone sf and fantasy novels, as well as movie tie-ins and games, and publishes an internet-based science fiction and fantasy magazine, Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show. Card was born in Washington and grew up in California, Arizona, and Utah. He served a mission for the LDS Church in Brazil in the early 1970s. Besides his writing, Card directs plays and teaches writing and literature at Southern Virginia University. He lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife, Kristine Allen Card, and youngest daughter, Zina Margaret.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Chapter 1

John Kirkham
Manchester 1829
The day John Kirkham abandoned his family, he came home early from work. It was midafternoon, and Manchester bustled with business. He dodged carts and wagons and carriages all the way home. He remembered that when he was a young man he walked for pleasure, sending the carriage home early from the store. And then, when they had lost the house and moved into the rooms over the store, he had walked not at all, if he could help it. He was irritated by business, ashamed of the sweat of his brow. Sweat was for less sensitive men, the near-animals who made their nails and wove their endless cloth and tended their machinery in the factories that pumped the air out of the sky and replaced it with foul coal smoke.
This was not the first day John had left early. Many times, pushing another man’s broom in another man’s store, he had become impatient and taken his box of paints and pens and coals, and a sheaf of papers, and headed out of the city, beyond Broughton to the north or Ardwick to the east, to where the scenes were rustic and unspoiled, to where the carriages did not come.
There was no grace in carriages, or in any of the works of men, John was sure. To him all buildings were blocky protuberances from the surface of the earth; Manchester was a vast blemish. He could not paint with a carriage in the scene; the thought of drawing a shop or factory would never have occurred to him. Instead he had always painted the gentle, wild scenes by the River Medlock, upstream of Manchester where the water was drinkable and fish had strength to leap.
But now he had painted everything within a day’s going and coming of Manchester. Even if he had not, he had no will to paint anything near this city, even if he saw something new. Tied to the shop by his need for money, where the work dulled him and slowed his mind and heart, he could not paint his best. True, the painters in London were forced to paint portraits, dull visions of dull people, in order to finance themselves in style. But at least they painted for their bread and were received as artists in society, not forced to bear the crude manners of factory men, not forced to smile and deferently give them what they wanted for their coins, their precious and grudgingly given pennies and shillings. A real painter never had fingers so stiff from gripping a broom that he could not hold a brush.
So today John left work early, but did not go to the countryside. Instead he headed home.
Home was surely not where he had intended to go. He had meant to go east, keep walking until he reached London, where a discriminating audience would soon recognize his talent. But, as always, his feet would not let him leave Anna, not without seeing her one last time. He tried to remember--hadn’t he felt this way before? Hadn’t he meant to leave, and then changed his mind because of Anna’s comfortable ways?
Busy people passed him, hurrying, shoving sometimes, jostling and scrambling for place in the dirty streets. John refused to let his heart beat as quickly as theirs. His footsteps were slower. More relaxed. He could hear the silent criticisms as the busy men went by. Idler. Slacker. If you have no hurry, don’t take place on the road. But I am not on the road, John answered. I am walking in the meadow God meant this place to be. You have hidden it in stone, but still my feet can feel the grass, my ears can hear the bees dozing on the dandelions.
Home was one apartment in a long building that stretched the length of a block of Bedford Street. It was a nice enough place, their cottage, but definitely middle class. Definitely middle-bordering-on-lower class. Not the home of a gentleman. I was meant to be a gentleman, John Kirkham thought bitterly. If the universe were properly run I would manage a great estate and paint in the garden in the afternoon. God is perfect when it comes to nature, but he’s far too whimsical with the lives of men. Bees don’t dig badger holes, yet I take small money and wait on barbarians. I have been mislaid in a world of brick. If my father had had the good sense to be as impotent as he was stupid, I might have had my soul placed in a different family, with the right advantages. The stone walls of the great houses in the countryside. Some men should not have had children.
“Father.”
“Dinah. Your cheek is dirty. Your mother ought to wash you more.”
His ten-year-old daughter looked up at him with her inscrutable face. She neither smiled nor frowned nor anything at all. Like a cat, her eyes just stared into his face, as if she knew what lay behind his eyes. He felt a rush of guilt, knowing that he had decided to leave. Damn this girl for her silence, for her seeing eyes.
“Enough of that,“ he said to her. “What’s for supper?”
“Isn’t ready yet.”
“Of course it isn’t, girl; I’m home early, do you think I don’t know that?” He was ashamed to be annoyed, yet could not curb either the annoyance or the shame. “Why aren’t you in school?”
She said nothing, only looked at him. Of course he remembered why. The girls were sent home earlier than the boys. But she could make a civil answer, couldn’t she? He wanted to shake her. Answer me, damn you. What are you thinking? Speak, child, or I’ll know the devil’s in you. But he knew from experience that nothing would get words from this child unless she felt the need to speak. Her school uniform was frayed, faded, and too small. Not my fault. It was my father who gambled it all away. It’s not my fault for my father’s sins.
He brushed past his lithe daughter and entered the cottage. Onions were strong in the air. That meant no meat tonight, so there were onions to give some flavor to the potatoes. The endless potatoes, poor man’s food. Filthy Papist Irishman’s food. John resented the potatoes without letting himself draw a connection between the low wages he brought home and the hours he spent away from the shop to play with a paintbrush that earned no money.
“Anna,“ he said. Anna was surprised to see him home. Well, be surprised if you like, Anna. Life is rude shocks, Anna, and the rudest of all is the shock of learning where you must live your life, and that you may never leave that place. But I will leave.
“Are you ill, to be home early?”
He shook his head. “Only tired.”
He ignored the frown on Anna’s forehead. Only tired. His own words were an accusation: she was also tired, but where could shego to escape from her work?
Charlie came down the stairs, a book under his arm. He was small for seven years old, but bright and eager. Was I bright and eager at seven? John did not think so. He had been a moody child, had grown to be a melancholy man. Brightness was Anna’s manner, and Charlie was Anna’s boy. “Papa, are you ill?”
Again no. “I just couldn’t bear the shop any longer, and old Martin couldn’t bear me, and so we agreed to part company.” He saw Anna’s eyes go wide with fear. “Only for the afternoon, Anna. I haven’t lost my place.” He spoke snidely, angrily; how dare she care about his placewhen she didn’t give a damn about his soul. Fine with youif your husband never achieves what he was born to do, just so he brings home money. Never mind how the earning of it ruins him.
She clattered the spoons on the table; she was angry that he had spoken so sharply to her. It was unfair, and he was sorry. “You should have been the man, Anna,“ he said mildly. “You’d be rich by now.”
“And you’d look fine in a fancy gown, John,“ she said, smiling at him. Again he felt contempt for her, for being so changeable of mood. When hewas sad, he stayed quite glum all day; another sign of the weakness of women, that they could not hold a humour.
Charlie came to his mother and began reciting. The sound of it throbbed in John’s head; he would have left, but his languor sank him deep into the chair and he could not move.
* * *
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.
* * *
Wretched boy. Miserable boy. Your mother’s son to the core. Read read read. Recite it once, recite it twice until all the family can say the words along with you. And the boy’s worst habit was to get well into a piece he had done a hundred times and then stop, leaving the last few lines to hammer endlessly through his father’s head.
“Born but to die, and reasoning but to err.”
What sort of miserable stuff is Anna teaching to the boy? Born but to die. Sounds downright Papist. Anna willhave the children read, willhave them go to school, whatever it costs, however it means that he must do his endless, meaningless toil and be content eating potatoes and onions, so the children can have their books. It’s not as if the boy understoodany of what he spouted. Ta-DUM ta-DUM ta-DUM ta DUM ta-DUM.
* * *
Created half to rise and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.
* * *
Just as John was about to cry aloud, about to run from the house begging for silence, for respite from the boy’s rote wisdom, just then came Dinah’s gentle hand on his forehead, stroking, calming. He did not open his eyes and look at her; did not speak to her, because she would not answer. He just slumped in his chair and let her gentle hands minister to his inward pain. His younger son might be unbearable, but his daughter had a good heart and a knack for kindness. Of course I won’t go.
H...

About this edition

• Publisher: Forge Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0312876068
• ISBN 13: 9780312876067
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 608