An excerpt from
Rarity from the Hollow
by
Robert Eggleton
Inside her first clubhouse, Lacy Dawn glanced over fifth grade spelling words for tomorrow’s quiz at school. She already knew all the words in the textbook and most others in any human language……….……. Faith lay beside her with a hand over the words and split fingers to cheat as they were called off……..….."Test?" Lacy Dawn announced with the better light, and called off, "Poverty.""P is for poor. O is for oranges from the Salvation Army Christmas basket. V is for varicose veins that Mommy has from getting pregnant every year. E is for everybody messes up sometimes -- sorry. R is for I'm always right about everything except when you tell me I'm wrong -- like now. T is for it’s too late for me to pass no matter what we do and Y is for you know it too."…………."Faith, it's almost dark! Go home before your mommy worries," Lacy Dawn's mother yelled from the front porch…….A minute later, hand in hand, they walked the road toward Faith's house…..“……..Besides, he don't like me that way. He's like a friend who's a teacher – not a boyfriend. I just wanted you to know that I get extra help learning stuff.""Where's he live?"Lacy Dawn pointed to the sky with her free hand."Jesus is everybody's friend," Faith said."It ain't Jesus, you moron," Lacy Dawn turned around to walk home. “His name’s DotCom and….”Her mother watched from the middle of the road until both children were safe……
Rarity from the Hollow is a children’s story for adults.
Lacy Dawn's father relives the Gulf War, her mother has lost her teeth, and her best friend is killed by her own father.
Lacy Dawn's father relives the Gulf War, her mother has lost her teeth, and her best friend is killed by her own father.
Life in The Hollow in
West Virginia isn't great. But Lacy Dawn has one advantage-she's been
befrended by a semi-organic semi-robot (DotCom, alias Buddy) who works
with her to 'cure' her parents.
Buddy wants something in exchange,
though. It's up to Lacy Dawn to save the universe, but Lacy Dawn isn't an ordinary eleven year old, in fact she isn't eleven years old at all.
She has evolved under the supervision of Universal Management for
hundreds of thousand of years.
But can she save the universe?
Robert Eggleton has served as a children's
advocate in an impoverished state for over forty years. He is best known for
his investigative reports about children’s programs, most of which were
published by the West Virginia Supreme Court where he worked from 1982 through
1997, and which also included publication of models of serving disadvantaged
and homeless children in the community instead of in large institutions,
research into foster care drift involving children bouncing from one home to
the next -- never finding a permanent loving family, and statistical reports on
the occurrence and correlates of child abuse and delinquency.
Today, he is a
recently retired children's psychotherapist from the mental health center in Charleston, West
Virginia, where he specialized in helping victims
cope with and overcome physical and sexual abuse, and other mental health
concerns. Rarity from the Hollow is his debut novel and its release followed
publication of three short Lacy Dawn Adventures in magazines: Wingspan
Quarterly, Beyond Centauri, and Atomjack Science Fiction.
Author proceeds have
been donated to a child abuse prevention program operated by Children’s HomeSociety of West Virginia. Robert continues to write fiction with new adventures based on a protagonist
that is a composite character of children that he met when delivering group
therapy services. The overall theme of his stories remains victimization to
empowerment.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/roberteggleton2
