The Story

Excerpt from the novel:

The three little boys were dead. Luke and Sallie Hill couldn’t bear to have them leave the farm so they buried their sons on the upper knoll of the orchard instead of in the town cemetery.

1830 was a terrible year when an epidemic of whooping cough swept through Hilltown taking so many lives that almost every home was left in despair and mourning. It was the custom to toll the meeting-house bell when someone died, nine for a man, plus his age, six for a woman and three for a child. The village folk came to hate the sound of the bell tolling night and day so they voted to have it stopped and tolled only for Sunday service and emergencies.

Luke Jr. was a strong lad, seven years old and just beginning to become an excellent rider. Nathan was a serious six year old who preferred books to horses. Little Charlie was a chubby, laughing, curly-headed two-year-old. Terrible racking, coughing sounds echoed through the farmhouse that had been so recently filled with childish laughing and busyness. Neighbors whose families were not sick themselves came to watch the nights with Luke and Sallie, to give them some hours of rest, rest that would not come. Instead the nights were filled with fear and dread. Surely those strong little bodies could withstand this sickness! They must! They must!

Nathan was the first to die. When Rev. Brooks came to comfort them, Sallie grabbed his hand and pleaded, “Surely the Lord will not take all my sons?” The preacher, who had still another mourning family to call upon, resorted to old familiar words. His voice was tired and low, betraying the challenge to his faith so severely shaken these last awful weeks, but he found his pulpit voice and intoned, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Little comfort to Luke and Sallie—indeed—little comfort to the preacher himself.

Luke Jr. died five days later. Little Charlie died just as the lilac bush by the kitchen door came into full bloom, that bush Sallie had brought from her home in Plainfield when she married Luke. She had planted the roots where she could water it every day with the tub of wash water and it soon became higher than her head. Every year she looked forward to the scent of lilacs filling her kitchen, just as Mama had done at home. Every spring Mama would say, “I declare, I do like the scent of apple blossoms, but my favorite is lilacs!” Now, these many years later, the perfume was still an offense and she would close the door firmly trying to keep it out. Luke knew nothing of this. “Why add this to his misery,” she thought to herself and kept that particular memory to herself, “He probably has his own set of miseries.” But how was she to know? The Hill family was not given to much speaking.