Fixin’ Things by Peggy Bell
Peggy Bell’s acute eye for detail takes us on a historical journey into the life of a family devastated by the Battle of Gettysburg. In this, Bell’s second book, we find a novel embellished with characters to love and those we love to hate. From the opening pages we suffer along as Bell’s heroine, Megan, is forced to grow up before her time. With both parents gone and a lustful brother-in-law seeking her out at every meeting, her coming of age, enjoyable for most girls, becomes a heart-wrenching obstacle. Fixin’ Things carries its fair share of characters, but we’re never to the point where we begin to wish for a map. Sam, the black man taken in by Megan’s mother when they were young, the eccentric aunts who live in the rented house…all wonderfully engaging and delightful to meet. As in many novels written about this period, the battle begins to surround the family lands, but few have the colorful cast of characters given in this compelling community. Although this is a novel, Bell’s layers of harsh life, hate, bigotry, and newfound love come incredibly close to a work of non-fiction. Fixin’ Things gives readers a shocking yet enjoyable glimpse into a Gettysburg life. Read the novel here.
Born in the heart of the Great Depression, Peggy Ullman Bell grew up in books, dozens of books, as many as 12 a week during her fifteenth summer. She attended Meade Elementary School, just a short walk from General Lee’s Gettysburg headquarters, from 1937 till early in 1942 when the family moved to New York, the once capitol of the infant United States. The victim—or beneficiary—of insatiable curiosity, Ms. Bell yearned to know what women were doing while men were fighting battles and making revolutions. The history books did not tell her, and thus her search began. Fixin’ Things, a coming-of-age novel set during and after the Battle of Gettysburg, was Ms. Bell’s gift to her mother, Eva May Lightner, recently deceased.
