Excerpt from The House of Gentle Men by Kathy Hepinstall, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

This boy of three fathers.

She turned the pages. Twine was needed. The scissors or knife should be clean and sharp. When the time came she would feel a sudden cramp or the rush of warm fluid. The pain would be intense, an unmanageable pain that women had been given throughout history and then told to forget.

In early June of 1942, the season of dandelions, she went out into the woods by herself, walking very deliberately, her face red and her legs shaky. The baby moving inside her. She wore a waistcoat dress and carried a cotton feed sack. Inside the sack was a spool of twine, a sugar cane knife to sever the umbilical cord, and a garden spade to bury the creature once all was said and done.

The House of Gentlemen by Kathy Hepinstall. Copyright (c) 2000 by Kathy Hepinstall. All rights reserved.