If you feel like being an angel, you might want to buy a copy of “Angel Second Class” by Kathy Summer.
She is a nurse and the assistant director of Hospice at Rowan Regional Medical Center. Sixty percent of proceeds from the book will go to the new Hospice House that Rowan Regional hopes to have completed in late 2009.
Summer wrote the book over 2000-2001, when she was a hospice nurse. It’s a fictional account of a nurse who works with hospice, touching people during the most difficult time in their lives. She calls it “a montage of love stories, where love may not conquer all, but love will sustain those who must live on.”
The book’s publisher went out of business, and Summer was able to buy all the remaining copies for $1.87 each, the cost of printing. The cover price is $12.95 and the book is available at Literary Bookpost in downtown Salisbury and at St. James Catholic Church in Concord.
Each outlet gets 40 percent of the price, with the remaining 60 percent going toward the Hospice House.
“I found out when you don’t have a publisher, you can’t get a distributor” to sell the books. “I wanted to do something good for someone” with it, she says.
Summer says being a hospice nurse is hard work, “but the most rewarding work you’ll ever do.”She had never written anything before, but now has ideas for other projects.
She’s read about Nehemiah in the Bible and was impressed by his leadership. She thinks a book about his skills would be a good guide for everyone. She also wants to do a Christian Bible study for nurses.
Summer is available to speak to church or civic groups and can be contacted through Arlene Bare at 704-933-3324; you may also request a book by calling the same number.
More words for nurses
TAMPA, Fla. ó In her new compilation of short stories by professional nurses around the country, “Inspiring the Inspirational: Words of Hope from Nurses to Nurses,” published by AuthorHouse, Sue Heacock shares the hopes and joys of nursing, including the humorous adventures from school nurses to the poignant tales from the emergency room and intensive care.
Heacock was a military police officer in the U.S. Army and worked in human resources and equal employment opportunity before becoming a nurse.
She has more than 12 years of nursing experience, including research, pediatrics and occupational health. A certified occupational health nurse specialist, she lives in Florida and is a mother to a 15-year-old daughter and a 19-year-old son in the Marines.
Great children’s book
Scripps Howard News Service
Is your child or teen looking for a good novel to read? Check out this one: An unlikely friendship between a lonely boy and a beetle is the focus of “Masterpiece” (Henry Holt, $16.95), a delightful new novel by Elise Broach. With echoes of such classics as “Charlotte’s Web” and “The Borrowers,” the story relates how the boy, James, and his beetle friend, Marvin, join forces to determine who stole a priceless Durer drawing from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. While Broach carefully draws out the suspense, her main interest obviously is on the growing friendship between James and Marvin, who manage to communicate without words. Readers will delight in the details of Marvin’s miniature existence, and they’ll cheer the way Marvin bolsters James’ self-confidence. Pen-and-ink drawings by Kelly Murphy add a bit of whimsy. With its carefully blended themes of art, mystery and friendship, “Masterpiece” is truly a masterpiece of entertaining fiction for the middle grade crowd. (Ages 8-12.)