The May ninth final meeting of the Hickory Reading Club 2023-2024 year was hosted by Marcia Everett and Jackie Stamm, in the Everett home in Hickory. Centerpieces of whimsical birdhouses and of dogwood were the setting for a menu of "pulled pork with sides" and desserts.
Janice Morgan's meditation, based on the advice of Proverbs 3:6 to "Trust in the Lord," was illustrated by the personal example of a nontraditional student in nursing school. After regularly spending time studying and praying under a campus tree, the student realized that for her to "get through it," the Lord was in control and had to be trusted.
As program, Billie Ruth Brand discussed Kathryn Hughes's 2013 historical romance The Letter. Evolving from the finding of an unmailed letter in the pocket of a thrift shop jacket in Manchester, England, are the parallel stories of Christina "Chrissie" Skinner in the 1930s and Christina "Tina" Craig in the 1970s. Hughes uses circumstances, consequences, and coincidences to show that salvation can come from the devastation of a love interrupted thirty-five years earlier.
