I noticed last week that CHARITY GIRL arrived at my library. I also noticed that there is a list of patrons wanting to borrow it.
Expect big things!

Howdy, Scott! First lemme just say that your website is superb--perfect writing and shrewd music suggestions...and! "Mysterious Skin," I was truly impressed by. Now on to Michael, since it's his moment for the spotlight--and for so long I merely thought of him as this drab, anonymous teacher-I-think, who stoically tolerates your zealous obsessions with T.V. shows like "Survivor" and "The Amazing Race." Now, all changed. I've read the reviews, the excerpt, as well as Michael's short essay telling of the serendipitous circumstances leading him right up to the barbed-wire doorsteps of the charity girls and the extensive 1-year commitment to research. I was, and continue to be, utterly magnetized, enthralled, and as soon as I rake the lint-infested coins from mee pokes, they're gonna be dumped briskly in the metal gullet of the local Coinstar machine for the immediate purchase of this incredible novel, "Charity Girl." The impact of these brief readings incited me to rip off an email to none other than her royal highness, Dame O--OPRAH! Can ya believe it?! Well, you don't know me, so that question dives barrenly right off the promontory. Just believe me when I say it to be quite inconsonant with my character. But, Dame O’s voice is resonant, and this story deserves--NEEDS--to be told! I hope you don't mind my route through you, Scott, to fling a couple quoits' worth of laurel wreaths around Michael's neck. I know, with ample press and word of mouth, this book is going to explode! I've appended here my short email to Oprah urgently imploring her to read this book. (There's a maximum of 2,000 characters, draconionally enforced, so my elaborations had to be condensed.)

Howdy, Oprah, from chilly Wyoming. I’m writing with the impassioned suggestion for a newly published novel entitled Charity Girl, by Michael Lowenthal. It is historically based on the actual occurrence during World War I of the systematic rounding-up of nearly 20,000 young American girls, mostly just flush, young, adventurous gals who frequented, along with GIs from nearby Army bases, the popular dance halls of the era. The outrageous fear of Christian groups was that these “verminous” women would pass venereal diseases to our brave fighting men. One-million federal dollars was allotted to the establishment of barbed-wire-fenced quarantine camps where infected women were confined, stripped, spread, prodded, and stuffed like Thanksgiving-Day turkeys with innumerable medicines. This superb story centers around a young Jewish girl named Frieda who works at a downtown Boston department store. She has a brief encounter with an Army private and contracts syphilis. Immediately she’s fired from her job and whisked away to one of these ghastly "prison camps," utterly destitute of any legal recourse. The parallels to the Nazi’s Dr. Mengele’s ghoulish proceedings and America’s internment of Japanese-Americans, both during World War II, are horribly clear, as well as is the correlation to the creeping dissolution of our present-day freedoms, some transgressions of which are occurring in shadowy corners under the approving eye of our government. I hope, Oprah, that you will take the time to read this valuable and richly distinctive book, as much for its historical content as for its masterly writing. These women, dead and gone charity girls, have been relegated to the cellar of American history far too long, and it is my wish that your resonant voice be the key to their skeletons', their souls' vindicated exhalations. Thanks, Oprah! --Scott Hammond

Adios, Scott--and Michael!--Congratulations on a distinguished novel!

--Scott

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