McFadden - This Bitter Earth

Table of Contents

More Praise for This Bitter Earth ...

Resonates with the mythic patterns of an epic poem, complete with lyrical language and an omniscient narrator. The threads of the story dovetail into an engrossing finale. McFadden uses dialogueand words left unspokento sharpen focus of every emotion and to paint her characters as distinctly as if on canvas.

Houston Chronicle

Fans of novelist Bernice L. McFadden will delight in her third novel. Essence magazine

Beautifully written ... McFadden has created an ambitious and dramatic story ... The authors engaging, rich, and wickedly damaged characters breathe life into this complex tale.

Black Issues Book Review

McFadden has a real talent for storytelling ... This Bitter Earth is a real page-turner and sure to earn scores of new fans.

The Baltimore Times

McFadden isnt afraid to use her writing to paint vivid but disturbing pictures and capture raw situations. This Bitter Earth is a masterfully written and unsettling song. The Dallas Morning News

Bernice L. McFadden is the author of the national bestsellers Sugar and The Warmest December (both available from Plume). Her fourth novel, Loving Donovan, will be available from Dutton in February 2003. Bernice was recently awarded the Zora Neale Hurston Society Award. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she was born and raised.

Visit www.bernicemcfadden.com

The Warmest December...

Searing and expertly imagined.Toni Morrison

McFadden knows how to tell a story with insight and clarity ... I couldnt put it down.Tamara Henry, USA Today

Riveting. Essence magazine

Written with such great eloquence, The Warmest December is clearly one of the best books I have ever read.

Kimberla Lawson Roby, author of Casting the First Stone

Sugar ...

One of the most compelling and thought-provoking novels Ive read in years.Terry McMillan

Sugar sings with unforgettable images, unique characters, and a moving story line. A haunting story that keeps the pages turning until the end. Ebony

Strong and folksy storytelling ... Think Zora Neale Hurston ... Sugar speaks of what is real. The Dallas Morning News

Vivid. The New York Times

A stunning tale of love and loss ... Bernice L. McFadden erupts on the scene with a literary explosion [and] reveals amazing talent and promise. The Chicago Defender

PLUME
Published by Penguin Group
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Published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Previously published in a Dutton edition.
First Plume Printing, January 2003

Copyright Bernice L. McFadden, 2002

All rights reserved

REGISTERED TRADEMARKMARCA REGISTRADA

The Library of Congress has catalogued the Dutton edition as follows:

McFadden, Bernice L.
This bitter earth : a novel / Bernice L. McFadden.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-15390-1

PS3563.C3622 T48 2002
813.54dc21
2001051141

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

PUBLISHERS NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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For
Ryane Azsa Waterton
Shania Simon
Myles & Jaron McFadden

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank my higher power, my guides and spirits, my parents, family, friends and readers.

Much respect and appreciation to all of the wonderful authors who have acknowledged my work and supported my efforts.

To my editor, Laurie Chittenden; my agent, James Vines; and my publicist, Kathleen Matthews-Schmidt, my sincere gratitude.

To Gloria Hardy, who found the house that Sugar bought. Desmond Waterton, for his hard work and emotional support, and Crystal and Walston Bobb-Semple of Brownstone Books and The Parlor Floor in Brooklyn, whose words and brownstone wisdom helped me through the early stages of turning my house into a home.

A special acknowledgment to childhood friends Annette Mckinnon-Barno and June Princeheres to thirty years of friendship!

Blessings.

... for she does not know
the path to life. She staggers
down a crooked trail and doesnt
even realize where it leads.

Proverbs 5:3-14

Prologue

Bigelow, Arkansas
June 1, 1965

THERE was the sound of a shotgun being cocked and then the snapping of twigs echoed through the field and rose above the screaming whistle of the northbound #2276.

The sun had dropped from the sky hours earlier, leaving the moon dressed in a red ring.

There should have been dogs out that night. White people would have used dogs to trap something that offensive, no matter that the smell of blood was strong enough for any humanblack or whiteto follow.

Even without the smell of blood, the tiny beads that sparkled like scarlet raindrops on the green leaves of the chrysanthemums that grew under the living room window of #9 Grove Street would have given it all away, that and the streaks of crimson on the corn husks that were a week from harvesting.

The blood left a clear trail for any human to follow and so the dogs would not be needed, but the sight of the gun and the heavy black boots had agitated them, sending them in circles inside their pen, their noses close to the ground, snorting and sneezing and nipping at one anothers hind legs until they raised their heads and began trumpeting the moon.