The Seventh Man

Reproduction of the original. The publishing house Megali specialises in reproducing historical works in large print to make reading easier for people with impaired vision.

The setting is a Soviet prison, 1952. Joseph Stalin's secret police have rounded up twenty-six writers, the giants of Yiddish literature in Russia. As judgment looms, a twenty-seventh suddenly appears: Pinchas Pelovits, unpublished and unknown. Baffled by his arrest, he and his cellmates wrestle with the mysteries of party loyalty and politics, culture and identity, and with what it means to write in troubled times. When they discover why the twenty-seventh man is among them, the writers come to realize that even in the face of tyranny, stories still have the power to transcend. In his last act of storytelling, Pelovits asks us: Who writes the eulogy when all the writers are gone?

This “luminescent” (Kirkus Reviews) story of anger and art, loss and redemption will appeal to fans of Lisa Graff’s Lost in the Sun and Vince Vawter’s Paperboy. NOMINATED FOR 16 STATE AWARDS! AN ALA NOTABLE BOOK AN ILA TEACHERS CHOICE A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Arthur T. Owens grabbed a brick and hurled it at the trash picker. Arthur had his reasons, and the brick hit the Junk Man in the arm, not the head. But none of that matters to the judge—he is ready to send Arthur to juvie forever. Amazingly, it’s the Junk Man himself who offers an alternative: 120 hours of community service . . . working for him. Arthur is given a rickety shopping cart and a list of the Seven Most Important Things: glass bottles, foil, cardboard, pieces of wood, lightbulbs, coffee cans, and mirrors. He can’t believe it—is he really supposed to rummage through people’s trash? But it isn’t long before Arthur realizes there’s more to the Junk Man than meets the eye, and the “trash” he’s collecting is being transformed into something more precious than anyone could imagine. . . . Inspired by the work of folk artist James Hampton, Shelley Pearsall has crafted an affecting and redemptive novel about discovering what shines within us all, even when life seems full of darkness. “A moving exploration of how there is often so much more than meets the eye.” —Booklist, starred review “There are so many things to love about this book. Remarkable.” —The Christian Science Monitor

"The Seventh Man" by Max Brand On one lovely Spring day Vic, the story's hero, decides he has been in his self-imposed solitary confinement long enough and heads to town after months and months away. To his complete surprise, Betty, the woman who has his heart, is planning to go to a dance that night. With someone else! While he goes to drown his sorrows, lawlessness is unleashed in their small western town and Vic must spring into action to save the day.

THE SEVENTH MAN is a beautifully written work of prose, which narrates the experience of Lulu, a vivacious teenager, whose life is transformed by an experience in a faraway country. The story of the protagonist captures the impulsive and tumultuous emotions of youth from the pedestal of artistic suspense and a lucid language. The writer takes the reader on a memorable journey not just into the life of a down-to-earth and wilful character, but importantly into various cultures, faiths and attitudes. Lulu soon personifies the challenges inherent in missionary work, the terrors of being captured and tortured, the sweetness of escape, and the humbling realisation of the awesome power of a benevolent Creator. In spite of her religious upbringing and leading a life she believed was consistent with the tenets of her faith, she eventually encounters the seventh man in an unexpected way that confounds the reader’s imagination.

In his Dan Barry novels, Max Brand tells the stirring story of the West, with a bigger-than-life character Whistling Dan Barry and his two rather strange companions, a wild and beautiful black stallion named Satan, and a ferocious wolf-dog called Black Bart. One of the most interesting characters in Western fiction, Whistling Dan is a hero of the west. He can fight several man and still win, he is the best gun fighter there is and he can shoot silver dollars in the air. With somewhat supernatural abilities he can control a mighty wild stallion and a vicious wolf-dog. Frederick Schiller Faust (1892-1944) was an American author known primarily for his thoughtful and literary Westerns under the pen name Max Brand. Brand also created the popular fictional character of young medical intern Dr. James Kildare in a series of pulp fiction stories. Prolific in many genres he wrote historical novels, detective mysteries, pulp fiction stories and many more. His love for mythology was a constant source of inspiration for his fiction, and it has been speculated that these classical influences accounted in some part for his success as a popular writer. Many of his stories would later inspire films.

YOU enter the village of Gantick between two round-houses set one on each side of the high road where it dips steeply towards the valley bottom. On the west of the opposite hill the road passes out between another pair of round-houses. And down in the heart of the village among the elms facing the churchyard lych-gate stands a fifth, alone. The five, therefore, form an elongated St. Andrew’s cross; but nobody can tell for certain who built them, or why. They are all alike; each built of cob, circular, whitewashed, having pointed windows and a conical roof of thatch with a wooden cross on the apex. When I was a boy these thatched roofs used to be pointed out to me as masterpieces; and they still endure. But the race of skilled thatchers, once the peculiar pride of Gantick, has come to an end. What time has eaten modern and clumsy hands have tried to repair; yet a glance will tell you that the old sound work means to outwear the patches. The last of these famous thatchers lived in the round-house on your right as you leave Gantick by the seaward road. His name was old Nat Ellery, or Thatcher Ellery, and his age (as I remember him) between seventy or eighty. Yet he clung to his work, being one of those lean men upon whom age, exposure, and even drink take a long while to tell. For he drank; not socially at the Ring of Bells, but at home in solitude with a black bottle at his elbow. He lived there alone; his neighbours, even of the round-house across the road, shunned him and were shunned by him: children would run rather than meet him on the road as he came along, striding swiftly for his age (the drink never affected his legs), ready greaved and sometimes gauntleted as if in haste for his job, always muttering to himself; and when he passed us with just a side-glance from his red eyes, we observed that his pale face did not cease to twitch nor his lips to work. We felt something like awe for the courage of Archie Passmore, who followed twenty paces behind with his tools and a bundle of spars or straw-rope, or perhaps at the end of a ladder which the two carried between them. Archie (aged sixteen) used to boast to us that he did not fear the old man a ha’penny; and the old man treated Archie as a Gibeonite, a hewer of wood, a drawer of water, never as an apprentice. Of his craft, except what he picked up by watching, the lad learned nothing.