Scout’s Honor is her first novel. Copyright is held by the author. Used with permission.
Scout’s Honor – a novel
My debut novel, Scout’s
Honor, is an epic tale about a young girl named Scout Webb, who suffers a profound
emotional trauma at the hands of an older man in a position of trust and then
how that experience affected her life as she went away to university as a young
woman and then later in her life as she faced middle age.
Scout’s Honor is written in first person by
multiple narrators, who fill each chapter individually. While the story is
Scout’s story and she is the protagonist, it is told with several perspectives,
including her best and closest lifetime friend, Charlie Porter, showing that
life isn’t necessarily always how we perceive it. People come into our lives,
some stay and some go, and each one affects it for better or for worse. While
we might think that we know what others were thinking or feeling, the truth is,
we most often do not.
Scout’s Honor is both a coming-of-age and self
discovery tale, dealing with many human relational issues such as self
acceptance, self identity, faith, forgiveness, trust, family, secrets,
betrayal, and love. But it is mostly about love. Scout’s Honor fits best in the contemporary fiction and southern
fiction genres; however, it is for everyone and anyone who enjoys a good story.
Lastly, and most importantly, Scout’s Honor’s book launch occurred as I sat in the chemotherapy
infusion center at the University of North Carolina Lineberger Cancer Hospital
in Chapel Hill, where my husband is being treated for Stage 4 Colon Cancer. I
wrote a blog post on my Launch Day experience, located at Finding
Dori. He was diagnosed with this most devastating disease in February, the
day before his 47th birthday. To say in words just how much this
tragic diagnosis has destroyed our lives would take many books. Anyone who has
been a similar experience knows what I mean.
There are not enough descriptions to convey the pain,
suffering, fear and horror that is a terminal cancer diagnosis at any age, but
certainly when you are still in the prime of your life. Because of what has happened
to my husband and my family, and because I refuse to accept that he is just
going to die, part of the profits I receive from the sales of my book and any
royalties I earn from my publisher, will go toward my Scout’s
Honor 2016 fundraiser which directly funds Colon Cancer Research at UNC
Lineberger.
People can donate to the fund directly and do not have to
buy my book at all. There has been so much progress in cancer research lately,
and the only hope that I have left is that there just might be a breakthrough
in time to save him. If there is not, I know that the funds raised through my
book’s launch will be used to save someone else.
In addition, I use my book events to educate people on
the need for a younger screening age for colon cancer. My husband is under 50
so he was never screened. Ten percent of new colon cancer cases are in people
under 50, and because there are no symptoms, the cancer is usually found in a
more advanced stage. Stage 3 colon cancer is a seventy percent survival rate
after five years. Stage 4 is a death sentence. Ten percent of good,
hardworking, younger people diagnosed with this cancer are apparently
acceptable collateral damage in our broken healthcare system. And that is
wrong.
Enjoy this excerpt from Part 3 of Scout’s Honor:
SCOUT
It’s always weird when I go back home
to Haddleboro. Every time I go to my parents’ house, I feel like I’m fourteen
years old again, just a little girl with a daughter of her own. A child with a
child. I sat on the bed in my old bedroom with my white dresser still in the
corner. Jemma’s duffle bag sat on the floor with a black dress lying over my
old desk chair. The room was still the same pale pink color that it had been
when Jemma and I moved out for good back in 1994 and into our first little
above-the-garage apartment just a few miles away.
Jemma was outside with my brother Jonny who brought over
his new dog, Leo. She hadn’t seen her uncle since Christmas and, since he was
moving to Atlanta next month, she was trying to make up for the time ahead that
would no longer be.
Tomorrow was Ms. Porter’s funeral. She
would be buried at the First Baptist Church’s cemetery, and Pastor Dan, the new
young pastor who took over for Pastor Rhodes when he retired last year, would
officiate. Charlie’s been staying at his mom’s house this week, trying to deal
with some of her paperwork and the many details of an untimely death, when
someone you love dies from an errant blood clot.
The day after I had been blindsided
with the discovery of what exactly my “friendship” actually meant to Thom
Robinson, I was at Paw’s trying to get a fecal sample from Mr. Moody’s German
shepherd named Venus. My cell phone rang and, seeing that it was my daddy’s
number, I let it go to voicemail because I was holding a Popsicle stick smeared
with dog poop at that particular moment.
Several minutes later, when I listened to Charlie’s very
deliberate voice tell me about what was going on with Ms. Porter, I finished
Venus’ exam as fast as I could and told Paw that I had a family emergency and
needed to get to Harper Hospital down in Fayetteville as soon as possible.
When I got there almost an hour later,
my parents were both with Charlie and I had never in my life seen him in such a
state. His face was ghostly white, like life itself had disappeared from his
body, and when he saw me, he grabbed onto me like he was a little boy again.
Sandy-haired little Charlie with the big toy dump truck that we’d push around
in the sun yellow kiddie pool.
“Will you call Stephanie?” my mom
asked me. “We don’t have her number and Charlie forgot his cell phone in
Raleigh.”
“Yes, of course,” I said, my hands
tight on Charlie’s shoulders as he sat in the chair, frozen, paralyzed, by the
horrible shock of his loss.
Charlie has dealt with a ceaseless
amount of crime scenes and victims over the past several years — all kinds of
deaths, murders, rapes, shootings, suicides, stabbings, and some of the ugliest
things that human beings do to each other or do to themselves. His mother died
of natural causes on an average sunny spring day while working at the hardware
store and, instead of the thoughtful and stoic SBI agent, he just turned into
that sad little boy again, the one with no father, the one who had come up to
me at the church Easter egg hunt when we were five years old and asked me if he
could have one of my eggs.
Eyeballing this scrawny boy who I had
never seen before, and who had ketchup smeared on the sides of his mouth, I
asked him who he was.
“Charlie Porter,” he answered.
“Where’s your mom and dad?” I asked
him, with the authority of an adult.
He turned and pointed at a young blond
woman in a peach colored sundress, sitting at one of the picnic tables by
herself. “That’s my mom.” Then he said, turning back at me, “I don’t have a
dad.”
I considered that for a second,
realizing that I had never heard of someone not having a dad before. So I
handed this Charlie Porter boy one of my eggs. It was purple. He opened it and
out dropped three jellybeans and a slip of paper.
“That’s the special egg,” I said to
him, excited that I was the one who found it.
“What’s a special egg?” he asked me.
“It’s the egg with the paper in it. It
means you get an extra prize,” I said, recalling Pastor Rhodes’ instructions
before the egg hunt began. “Take it over to Pastor Rhodes and he will give you
the prize.”
Charlie held the jellybeans in one
hand and the purple egg and piece of paper in the other. Then he handed the
piece of paper back to me. “Here, you should have the prize. You found the
special egg, not me.”
He was right. I did find it. But there
was something interesting about this strange little boy who was shorter than me
and who made me feel like we had been friends before, once upon a time and in a
land far, far away.
Not long ago, when I was in a drug
store, I read something on a greeting card that said, “Souls recognize each
other by vibes, not by appearances.” That was the best description I ever came
across about what transpired between me and Charlie Porter on that warm spring
day so long ago.
Taking the piece of paper from him, I
grabbed his hand and put it between our hands and held them together. I picked
up my basket and walked with him hand-in-hand, leading him over to Pastor
Rhodes who was standing next to the grill with the sizzling hotdogs.
“Pastor?” I said, getting his
attention. Pastor Rhodes looked down at me.
“Yes, Miss Scout,” he said smiling,
holding a pair of tongs in his hand.
“Charlie and I have found the special
egg,” I said, unclasping our hands and giving him the piece of paper.
Three minutes later, we were sitting
under a large dogwood tree, sharing the biggest chocolate bunny I’ve ever seen.
And now, twenty-nine years later, almost to the day that we shared that
chocolate bunny and became the best of friends, I held him in Harper Hospital
as he wept the kind of weeping that has no tears or noise, the kind of weeping
that a grown man does when he loses his mom forever.
“Charlie, we should go. There’s
nothing we can do here. The folks here have everything under control. I’ll take
you to your mom’s house and stay with you ‘til Stephanie can get there,” I
said, facing him on my knees, holding his hands as he held his head down in
sorrow. “If you’re not okay to drive, I’ll drive you. We can just leave your
car here and get it another time.”
Charlie looked at me, his eyes glassy
and full of despair. Then he looked down again and said, “It’s alright. I can
drive.”
“Okay,” I said, standing up. “I’ll
follow you to Haddleboro
.”
Please visit Dori Ann's website to discover more about this talented author.
www.dorianndupre.com
