Crying Angels

Most of us can probably think of a spiritual experience in our life that made a permanent profound impression. God reveals His infinite love through our personal experiences. Too often these stories of spiritual reality are never shared with others. When I began praying for spiritual experiences when my parents were very ill, I was blessed with a visit from crying angels. The first story in my book, "Crying Angels," inspired the title of my book. I felt I should record and share my spiritual stories and the stories I had heard from others. I realized that both the teller and the listener's faith in God increases when stories are shared. Our sharing creates a ripple effect of numerous blessings. My hope is that the stories in this book will bless your soul and will help you not miss any of the miracles God places before you. Sarah V. Tinsley

“An authentic cry of American innocence . . . The author seizes the reader with a Southern gift for storytelling and never lets go.”—Time Magazine It is the mid-1950s in Quarrytown, Georgia. In the slum known as the Ape Yard, hope’s last refuge is a boardinghouse where a handful of residents dream of a better life. Earl Whitaker, who is white, and Tio Grant, who is black, are both teenagers, both orphans, and best friends. In the same house live two of the most important adults in the boys’ lives: Em Jojohn, the gigantic Lumbee Indian handyman, is notorious for his binges, his rat-catching prowess, and his mysterious departures from town. Jayell Crooms, a gifted but rebellious architect, is stuck in a loveless marriage to a conventional woman intent on climbing the social ladder. Crooms’s vision of a new Ape Yard, rebuilt by its own residents, unites the four—and puts them on a collision course with a small-town Machiavelli who rules the community like a feudal lord. Jeff Fields’s exuberantly defined characters and his firmly rooted sense of place have earned A Cry of Angels an intensely loyal following. Its republication, more than three decades since it first appeared, is cause for celebration. “A humdinger . . . even better than To Kill a Mockingbird . . . funny, touching, and gripping.”—Chicago Daily News “Heartwarming . . . We find ourselves wondering why delightful novels like this aren’t written anymore, and grateful that this one has come along to fill the void.”—The New York Times “A flooded-with-life novel with a story to tell and characters to be cherished.”—Boston Sunday Globe

Sacred and profane, public and private, emotive and ritualistic, internal and embodied, medieval weeping served as a culturally charged prism for a host of social, visual, cognitive, and linguistic performances. Crying in the Middle Ages addresses the place of tears in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic cultural discourses, providing a key resource for scholars interested in exploring medieval notions of emotion, gesture, and sensory experience in a variety of cultural contexts. Gertsman brings together essays that establish a series of conversations with one another, foregrounding essential questions about the different ways that crying was seen, heard, perceived, expressed, and transmitted throughout the Middle Ages. In acknowledging the porous nature of visual and verbal evidence, this collection foregrounds the necessity to read language, image, and experience together in order to envision the complex notions of medieval crying.

Ever since their daughter Angel became ill with AIDS, Sam and Mary Stone’s home life completely changed, but it’s been especially hard on Mary. When their friends and family reject them, Angel has to drop out of private school, and Mary leaves her career as a cardiologist. Even her husband Sam, the one person Mary thought she could count on for love and support, begins cheating on her with another woman. Those who not so long ago phoned or visited the Stones most every day, now don’t want anything to do with them. Even Angel’s grandmother rejects them. Without support from her husband and friends, Mary does her best to protect her daughter from what has become a nightmare. Mary’s first instinct is to seek help at a highly touted medical center that cares for AIDS patients, but she learns that the center is not what it’s cracked up to be. Mary takes Angel away for a new start, and comes to realize that there’s nothing more important than offering her love and spending time with her daughter. But then another tragedy strikes. This uplifting novel about illness in the family looks at the situation from the side of the caregiver, as it profiles a mother who faces the pain that any parent would feel when her child is ill.

In Reading and Re-reading Scripture at Qumran, Moshe J. Bernstein gathers more than three decades of his work on diverse aspects of biblical interpretation in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The essays range from broad surveys of the genres of biblical interpretation in these texts to more narrowly focused studies and close readings of specific documents. Volume I focuses on the book of Genesis, with a substantial portion being dedicated to studies of the Genesis Apocryphon and Commentary on Genesis A. Volume II contains several historical and programmatic essays, with specific studies focusing on legal material in the DSS and the pesharim. Under the former rubric, the documents known as 4QReworked Pentateuch, 4QOrdinancesa, 4QMMT, and the Temple Scroll are discussed.