Well, where to start? At the middle?

I have a lot to post about the book. A lot of new developments/scenes. I have 35 scenes so far and am aiming for 60. As soon as I have 60 scenes in order, I'll start the writing. With approximately one scene per weekday, I could finish the first draft in about three months. Can't wait.

1. Isi's mother may have started the drinking in the family. She actually died from it...was out drinking with fellow miscreants in the rain and caught pneumonia. Isi doesn't start/fights drinking until being abandoned by the General (though her friend Jim, who is in love with her, does drink all the time.) Nina was friends with Isi's mother when they were children and that is part of the reason she agrees to try to turn around Isi upon the request of Isi's grandmother.

2. General Beech loves Isi and hates himself for it. He dreams that she has become the woman that his ailing mother wants him to marry. That they are all happy and then he wakes at first happy and then when fully awake and back in reality, is angry that he is even fantasizing about what cannot be, never will be.

3. Isi goes to a church meeting in a futile effort to try to assimilate and become someone the General would marry.

4. There is an scare- a scene of hysteria in town when people hear about alleged slave revolts similar to the recent Nat Turner's Rebellion (everyone has been on edge since then) They heard that slaves are headed to town to kill everyone and everyone is hysterical including the woman General's Mama was trying to marry him off to. She and his mother look to the General for protection. They arrest some innocent people (some of the "buffalo soldiers"?) This elaborates on the atmosphere of hysteria and might also give Truman and friends a reason for helping free Nina.

5. Palmer dreams of his own separation from his family as a boy. Then, in the dream, the boy becomes his and Nina's child.