All God's children

by Tom Eidson

The time is the 1890s. The place is small-town Kansas, where Pearl Eddy, a young widow, is struggling to raise her four sons on a failing farm. Pearl may be the soul of goodness, but the odds against her are bad indeed. Her beloved late husband has left behind crushing debts. An illness has stripped her of sight, and her Quaker faith makes her an alien in a community where the narrow-minded rule. Prophet is a thirty-five-year-old black man - an ex-prize fighter turned hobo and thief - who becomes a target of hate in the lily-white town, and whose latest robbery sends him on the run for his life. A man who willingly lies, cheats, and steals to survive, he is the last person in the world whom Pearl should trust, much less protect from the posse tracking him down, yet she does both. And when a forlorn family of Japanese immigrants gone astray seeks shelter and work with her, she cannot find it in her heart and faith to turn them away. Now that Pearl Eddy incites the wrath of a mob for pro