Bette Hurst is thrilled to announce the release of her new novel, “Sherwood,” which follows the hopes and dreams of 15-year-old Colleen Reilly as she becomes a new patient on one of the outdoor porches of Sherwood TB Sanitarium in December, 1945.  Colleen’s life quickly settles into a routine of fluoroscopic exams of an olive-sized cavity in her lung and biweekly injections of compressed air into her chest.  She is told that the procedure will be repeated until the cavity closes and heals and that she will most likely be able to go home in two and a half months.  No-one realizes that as Sherwood’s youngest patient, her young and elastic lung will resist compression, or that her stay in Sherwood will last two and a half years.

“Sherwood” is the riveting coming-of-age story of a band of friends seeking hope and normalcy amidst the endless wait for discharge from Sherwood.  Colleen’s life at Sherwood changes when she sees a man known only as The Handyman studying her from the lamplight of the parking lot.  In a series of sinister events, The Handyman steals Colleen’s only book during a fluoroscopy session and begins a cat and mouse game of racial harassment against a Haitian groundskeeper and Colleen’s tempestuous, white porch mate.

[Colleen’s]… “encounters with a menacing handyman on staff open her eyes to racism and hate, while beautiful conversations with patients are rich in insights about religion, war, music, and philosophy.  A vivid story…keenly observed…at times uplifting and heartbreaking…rendered with grace and precision…the specter of death hovers over every page, even as the world of the sanitarium brims with hope and recovery.”  US Review of Books

About the Book

Bette Hurst skillfully depicts America’s unresolved racial problem as the Handyman’s racial hatred explodes into violence.  She weaves his escalating hostility with the unfolding love stories of Colleen and Pete and Laura and Will.  The comic relief provided by Pete’s rival, Bret, soon changes as he foresees and warns Colleen about a developing tragedy that happens during Sherwood’s annual Halloween party.

Bette Hurst devotes the remainder of Sherwood’s plot to the aftermath of the Halloween party and to Colleen’s long wait to be discharged.  Hurst sensitively depicts Colleen’s struggle to untangle her true feelings about Bret and Pete as she traces Colleen’s increasing isolation. As Laura and Will, and then Abby, and even Bret, either flee or are discharged, Colleen is left alone to face treatments that do not work on her young lung.  Colleen enters a desperate phase in her stay at Sherwood as she tries to come to terms with how events that began so beautifully could go so sadly and unexpectedly wrong.

Just when Colleen has nearly given up hope, she receives a surprise discharge and is sent home.   Her life begins again with an unexpected turn which leads her to Baltimore and a new understanding of truth and beauty in Sherwood’s satisfyingly poetic last scene.

About the Author

Bette Hurst earned a B.A. degree in Philosophy from Penn State University and a teaching certificate in French and Spanish from Towson State University and the University of Maryland at Baltimore County.  Bette’s husband is a physicist, and her daughter has had a successful career in television journalism.  Ms. Hurst loves to read and to play the piano and is a member of a book club still going strong after 30 years.  She and her husband live in Maryland with their two dachshunds. The author enjoys working in her garden and supporting the work of Audubon to help preserve the beauty of birds and their songs and habitats.  “Sherwood” is the first book in a planned trilogy of novels about the meaning and importance of all aspects of the arts in the lives of human beings.

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