What do horses, autistic children, standardized tests and mystery have to
do with a neighborhood girl named Beth? Holistically speaking, they are all
elements of local educator and budding authoress Elizabeth Terrell-Hicks.
The child of a former paratrooper stationed in
Greensboro, North Carolina, and a mother described by her daughter as a
"vibrant, beautiful woman," Beth began what can only be described as a "life
less ordinary" in May of 1960. According to family tradition, she arrived
several weeks ahead of her anticipated birth date. "I was jaundiced and
since the medical approach to this was to pump out all my blood and replace
it with new blood, my grandmother reached the conclusion that this very
procedure most certainly caused my intense and long-lasting distaste for the
color red," Beth revealed.
Marital discord between her parents resulted in Beth
being raised by a single working mother, with the bonus of her doting
grandmother and two great-aunts, Augusta (better known as "Aunt Dossie") and
Frances. "Aunt Frances had been a teacher once, and it was she who taught me
how to read," Beth recalled. "When I was two years old, she cut out words
from magazines and glued them onto strips of cardboard. We kept them in a
recipe box and made sentences from them. When we created one we especially
liked, Aunt Frances would paste the sentence onto a larger strip and add it
to the box. My favorite was 'When will we kill the bug?'"
Aunt Dossie also had a hand in Beth's early education. "I
learned about numbers in her kitchen as we counted the twists of a manual
can opener," Beth reminisced. "On shopping days, she took me to the store to
help her read the cans. 'I forgot my glasses,' she would say. 'Can you tell
me what this says?' We also cut pictures of people out of catalogs and
played paper dolls for hours, creating families and inventing stories about
their lives. Years later, when I was in my twenties and Aunt Dossie was in
her 90s and suffering from dementia, I stood beside her bed and tried to
tell her who I was. Nothing helped until I reminded her, 'We used to play
paper dolls together.' Her face lit up and she clapped her hands with
delight, saying, 'Why, you're little Bethie!'"
Throughout her childhood, Beth was constantly in the
presence of reading material and encouraged by everyone to pursue this skill
-- even an older, male playmate who over the years introduced Beth to
Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Mary Stewart's King Arthur trilogy.
"It may be largely due to his influence that my first literary genre was
fantasy," she mused.
When Beth was seven, her mother remarried and despite a
couple of nomadic years when the young family stayed on the move, the
Terrells eventually settled down in Mt. Juliet. "By that time, in the middle
of the fourth grade, I was entering my seventh school as the new kid on the
block," she mentioned. Life in a small tenant house on what was then
Langford's Farm gave the young girl a close up and personal friendship with
horses. Although taken aback by the sheer enormity of such animals -- and a
mishap when Beth was nine that left her with a broken arm -- she collected
statuettes of unicorns, practiced drawing images of Pegasus and befriended a
recalcitrant bay named Tex. "Tex was a beauty," she said, "but he had a
moral aversion to being ridden. There wasn't a 'buck' in him; instead, after
standing quietly to be saddled and mounted, he'd flop over onto his side and
roll. A prospective rider had to be quick out of the saddle. I never even
tried, because it was just as satisfying and much, much safer to feed him
carrots and stroke his velvety nose."
The Terrell family expanded and Beth became big sister
to David, some eight years younger than she, and then her little sister,
Janet, was born. It was also during this time when Beth developed her
resolution to become a teacher. "I spent summers in West Virginia with my
grandmother," Beth explained. "Her friend, Annette, was a teacher, and,
since their schools were still in session when I got there, I was permitted
to go to work with her and tutor the younger children. From the time I was
eight, I knew I wanted to teach. Then, when I was 12, I read a book called
The Small Outsider, by Joan Martin Hundley. It was about the author's
autistic son; as soon as I read it, I knew that was the kind of child I
wanted to teach. I had met an autistic boy once, although I didn't know the
name for his condition at the time."
Beth recalls the incident vividly: " I was at a public swimming pool with
my grandmother when a pale boy with unruly dark hair and dark blue eyes
waded over to me and leaned in close to my face. He looked to be about five.
It was more than 30 years ago, but I can see him clearly, pale-skinned,
solemn, a sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of his nose. He patted the
water in front of me so that it made a small splash. He didn't say a word,
but I knew what he wanted. I patted the water. He smiled and flicked his
fingers in the water, a bigger splash. I flicked back. He flapped his hands
and I flapped mine. He laughed and twirled in a circle; I twirled with him.
For the rest of the afternoon, he led and I followed. He never spoke, but
when it was time to go, his father thanked me for spending the day with him.
He said, 'You have no idea how much it means to his mother and me for him to
have a friend.' The blue-eyed boy's name was Max. We were the same age."
Meeting Max planted the seed in Beth's mind, but it was
the aforementioned The Small Outsider that persuaded her
to become a special education teacher "I told myself I could teach and still
be a writer and an artist," she stated. "Of course, I was wrong. Teaching
consumed me. Some people can teach and still have something at the end of
the day. Some people can leave it behind at 3:15 and pick it up again at
7:30 the next morning. I was never one of them."
After working a summer at Easter Seal Camp, Beth sought
a degree in special education from Tennessee Technological University A
month shy of her 19th birthday, Beth was told that her father had
died...reportedly by his own hand. "Later we learned that, perhaps, things
were not as simple as they seemed," she said. "What had appeared to be
suicide began to look more like murder. Stories conflicted and crumbled. The
gun had been washed before the police arrived. Blanket immunities were
offered to involved parties in return for turning state's evidence in a drug
trial. A private investigator hired by my father's parents was warned away
by the local police. 'He's already dead,' the detective was reportedly told,
'and we need this evidence.' There are still questions. Legally, the truth
is buried. In my heart, I know my father did not kill himself. Sometimes I
consider delving into the matter; it's what my fictitious character, Jared
McKean, would do, but I am not as brave as he."
Beth had a plethora of things to do before she committed
herself to writing a book. She met and eventually married fellow Tennessee
Tech grad and chemical engineer Mike Hicks (a 1979 graduate of McGavock High
School), spent eight summers as a counselor at Easter Seal Camp and worked
as a teacher for 12 years, eleven of which were in a comprehensive
development or "self-contained" classroom and one in a junior high resource
setting. "I'd always said I never wanted resource and I never wanted junior
high students. My last year in teaching, I had both and loved it," she
assessed. "Someday, I'd like to start a program for older kids with learning
disabilities. It would be intense, I think, with a focus on developing a
love of reading and writing."
Through the years, Beth continued to read and write
voraciously. She expanded her love of the theater and art by designing and
air brushing costumes, as well as performed in a variety of productions
while in college. Today she teaches tap and jazz dance, as well as the drama
portion of a musical theater class at Artistry in Motion in Hermitage, plays
the guitar, makes dolls, does bead work and still found time to be trained
as a certified horse masseuse. "I never got over my down deep fear of
horses," she acknowledged, "but I simply love them." A week of intensive
training, including learning the exact skeleto-muscular anatomy of equines
taught Beth how to quietly, but eloquently use the warmth and strength of
her hands to calm and soothe horses. While this talent is used infrequently,
as is her skill with challenged children, Beth uses the same basic
techniques with the individuals she leads in hand scoring standardized tests
for an Antioch company which specializes in educational assessments.
"Sometimes people simply need a hug," she observed. "I give pretty good
ones." Her coworkers concur.
A member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in
Crime, Beth originally wrote stories of fantasy. "Then I read about a
mystery contest being conducted by St. Martin's Press," she related. "The
deadline was only six weeks away, but I thought, 'well, why not/' The result
was my first draft of Too Close to Evil. It was unbelievably
liberating, and I fell in love with my Jared, my protagonist. In fact, I
fell in love with all the major characters and decided to turn the book into
a series. Writing the second book, (The Garden of Murdered Children,
soon to followed by A Cup Full of Midnight, and the tentatively
titled Prayers the Devil Answers) taught me more about how to write
a mystery, and I realized how much work the first book needed. I still loved
the idea, though, then went back and 're-dreamed the dream.' It was better,
but something was still missing. Then I heard a presentation given by Daniel
Keys [author of Flowers for Algernon]; he said something that
should have been obvious, but that I had somehow missed: 'You must always be
true to your character.'" With this epiphany, Beth figured out how to
entwine the population of her story. "This time, I think I got it right."
No, she didn't win the contest, but the literary road before her widened
immeasurably.
Too Close to Evil, was summarized by published
mystery writer Chester Campbell: "No good deed goes unpunished' begins the
back cover blurb for this maiden effort of Elizabeth (Beth) Terrell. And the
punishment keeps piling on for Nashville P.I. and ex-cop Jared McKean. An
apparently battered woman he tries to help out at a local bar gets him
targeted by his former police colleagues as the prime suspect for the murder
of another woman. With his DNA and fingerprints at the murder scene, and his
voice on the woman's answering machine, he needs to find who set him up
before the cell doors close for good.
"The body count rises, further complicating matters, as
Jared is tugged in other directions by problems of family and friends.
Divorced, he has a son with Down syndrome. Though straight, he lives with a
gay friend who has AIDS. And he's asked to track down a teenage nephew who's
into the Goth lifestyle and vampire games. If you're like me, you'll learn a
lot of stuff you didn't know about before.
"As he looks into all the suspects, Jared becomes aware
the killer knows things about him that only someone close should know. Maybe
someone he trusts.
"Too Close to Evil is a well-written mystery
full of vivid imagery. The descriptions of Nashville locations give you the
feel of being there. And despite his many faults, Jared McKean strikes you
as a basically decent guy you'll want to hear more of in future books."
Beth assesses her protagonist in these terms: "I think
Jared is emblematic of a certain generation of men, men who aren't sure
whether they are supposed to be John Wayne or Alan Alda; men who want to be
sensitive, yet tough, who feel things deeply, yet keep them inside. He's a
man who tries to do the right thing, even when he isn't sure what that is.
He grew up in a time when homosexuality was condemned; yet his best friend
is gay. He is trying to deal graciously with his ex-wife's new husband, when
what he really wants to do is punch the guy and take her back. Jared is
torn between his love for his son, and his desire for the perfect child he
may never have. He isn't always noble, but he tries to be."
Beth's novel is available at local book stores or
may be ordered through Amazon.com. And now, with the steamy days and sultry
nights Tennessee offers, it might be a good idea to spend your summer Too
Close to Evil.
