The Scourges of Heaven : A Novel

by Dick, David

• ISBN13: 9780813120744
• ISBN10: 0813120748
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-09-01
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Kentucky

Summary

A historical novel of prejudice and plague, The Scourges of Heaven sweeps gracefully, joyfully, painfully across centuries and generations. Through Cynthia Anne Ferguson, orphaned aboard a vessel carrying immigrants, hopes, dreams, and cholera from the Old World to the New, David Dick paints a world where the causes of disease are little understood, where faith is not always a comfort, where human questioning often goes unanswered, and where unexpected death is frequently attributed to the wrath of an angry God. Cynthia's story unfolds in the midst of the first of four great cholera epidemics to sweep America in the mid-nineteenth century, and her journey through life, from New Orleans up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers and across the Bluegrass to Lexington, parallels the track followed by the deadly scourge. More powerfully told than any factual, statistical, or scientific account could ever manage, yet based upon historical events, this tale of disease, ignorance, and narrow-mindedness is supported by a central theme of hope that ultimately brings redemption.

Table of Contents

Owl Hollow, Kentucky, October 1998	1	(11)
London, England, April 1833	12	(16)
London, Dockside, April 1833	28	(13)
Bishop Rock, April 1833	41	(25)
The Sargasso Sea, May 1833	66	(29)
New Orleans, May 1833	95	(31)
The Mississippi and the Ohio, May 1833	126	(21)
Washington, Kentucky, June 1833	147	(10)
Paris and Lexington, Kentucky, June 1833	157	(35)
Lexington, June 1833	192	(23)
Owl Hollow, Kentucky, 1833-1840	215	(20)
Owl Hollow, 1844	235	(21)
Owl Hollow, 1852	256	(18)
New Orleans, 1855	274	(20)
Mt. Sterling, Kentucky, October 1998	294	(13)
Afterword	307	(9)
Acknowledgments	316