Southern Fiction

From his medical files, the author relates the poignant story of Mary Beth, a young mother who suffers a catastrophic brain hemorrhage causing disastrous mental consequences. She endures many years of treatment in a mental asylum during which time she is divorced, loses her children to adoption, and becomes a ward of the state. Discharged by a judge to a halfway house in her hometown, Mary Beth re-enters society with mental incompetence, a personality disorder, lack of social behavioral restraints, no moral guidelines, memory loss, abnormal sexual behavior, and a seizure disorder. This is overwhelming as she is victimized by the street people with whom she associates. After a record number of recidivisms in the local jail, the court places Mary Beth on probation and arranges employment for her as a housekeeper for the mayor. With her lascivious sensuality, Mary Beth becomes the mistress of the mayor, but the situation ends in the mayor’s beach cottage in a disaster. Mary Beth then becomes the maid for the mayor’s son, a young marine, who inherits the beach cottage. Seeking peace, she walks the wrack line of the beach and, by serendipity, reunites with her original family. Mary Beth’s life is validated when her children use an inherited trust fund to endow a Neuropsychiatric Rehabilitation and Research Institute which offers support, treatment, and rehabilitation for patients with brain dysfunction such as Mary Beth’s.

Ned, the newsboy, bastard son of a whiskey-swilling prostitute in the small mountain town of Glen Alpine, NC, is befriended by the town’s only doctor, who becomes his mentor. They adopt an Army dog called Dawg, whose master, a disabled Army sergeant, has mysteriously disappeared. Only Dawg knows the secret of the disappearance of Sgt. Robert Penton. The Veterans Affairs office mistakes Ned for the disabled sergeant and awards him a large pension, but Ned loses the money to a blackmailer who knows he’s an imposter. He continues to live as Sgt. Robert Penton, marries, and has a son. In time, the father becomes ill, and his identity is suspect when his blood type does not match the one listed in the sergeant’s records. In delirium before death, Ned confesses the fraud and reveals the blackmail. His son becomes a physician and joins the medical practice originally established by the physician who had befriended his father in his youth. Dawg took the secret of the sergeant’s disappearance to his grave but forever haunts the town as he marches with the ghost of the sergeant on the parade ground of the old Army base near Glen Alpine.

This novel is based on the real life of a Southern lady, Aldeen the Queen. Raised in a wealthy family with a Civil War/Slaveholding history, she was crushed when her teenage lover was banished by her father. The Queen recovered and became independent and the manager of the family businesses. A series of deaths and the quandary of being jilted as a teenager impacted Aldeen but she matured and was married and widowed by four husbands. Inheriting significant wealth from each husband, Aldeen became a successful business woman.

Her banished lover accumulated a trust fund and bequeathed it to the Queen at his death.

Despite her brusk, terse personality, and outspoken bigotry, Aldeen the Queen was a generous humanitarian.