Belle Prater's Boy Quotes

Around 5:00 a.m. on a warm Sunday morning in October 1953, my Aunt Belle left her bed and vanished from the face of the earth. (1.1)

"In the last month I have relived those days over and over again," Mama said. "And I have promised my sister in my heart that if I ever see her again, I will tell her how truly sorry I am that I ca...

"I'll tell you if you promise to be my best friend," he said. "I would be honored, Woodrow!" I said, genuinely pleased. He grinned all over, showing great white teeth and a tongue stained with the...

"The idea was that she would be the belle of the ball," Granny said, and gazed out the window with a long-ago look in her eyes. "We always hoped she would be." "And was she?" I said. "No, dear. You...

My mama, Love Ball Dotson, speech and drama teacher at Coal Station High School and sister to the missing person, was plenty upset. In a Mountain Echo interview she said it wasn't bad enough having...

What a wonder and a joy to behold in the spring when they all bloomed! There were also azaleas, pink and fuchsia. Not to mention the lilac bushes down by the creek, and the wild dogwood. People wal...

"Yeah he was. Here he came riding over Cold Mountain on a black horse one Saturday in January. Big as life. I'll never forget it. Dark and rugged as the hills. Straight he was in the saddle. Nobody...

"Then Love went away to college, you know, over to Radford to learn to be a teacher like her daddy. And for the first time Belle had boyfriends of her own. She went to dances and parties and took o...

"Yeah," he said sadly. "That's all I know. She got up at dawn and went outside because she expected something to happen, and nobody ever saw her again. He closed the book and clutched it to his hea...

Even though Aunt Belle was Mama's sister, I had seen very little of her and Woodrow in my whole life. I had the idea from somewhere that there had been some kind of rift between the two sisters yea...