Pages of Promise
Pages of
Promise
Also by Gilbert Morris
T
HE
A
MERICAN
C
ENTURY
S
ERIES
1. A Bright Tomorrow
2. Hope Takes Flight
3. One Shining Moment
4. A Season of Dreams
5. Winds of Change
T
HE
H
OUSE OF
W
INSLOW
S
ERIES
1. The Honorable Imposter
2. The Captive Bride
3. The Indentured Heart
4. The Gentle Rebel
5. The Saintly Buccaneer
6. The Holy Warrior
7. The Reluctant Bridegroom
8. The Last Confederate
9. The Dixie Widow
10. The Wounded Yankee
11. The Union Belle
12. The Final Adversary
13. The Crossed Sabres
14. The Valiant Gunman
15. The Gallant Outlaw
16. The Jeweled Spur
17. The Yukon Queen
18. The Rough Rider
19. The Iron Lady
20. The Silver Star
21. The Shadow Portrait
22. The White Hunter
23. The Flying Cavalier
24. The Glorious Prodigal
25. The Amazon Quest
26. The Golden Angel
27. The Heavenly Fugitive
28. The Fiery Ring
29. The Pilgrim Song
30. The Beloved Enemy
31. The Shining Badge
32. The Royal Handmaid
33. The Silent Harp
34. The Virtuous Woman
35. The Gypsy Moon
N
UMBER
S
IX IN THE
A
MERICAN
C
ENTURY
S
ERIES
Pages of
Promise
GILBERT
MORRIS
© 1998 by Gilbert Morris
Published by Fleming H. Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
New paperback edition published 2007
Previously published in 1998 under the title
A Time To Build
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Morris, Gilbert.
[Time to build]
Pages of promise / Gilbert Morris.
p. cm. —(American century series : bk. 6)
Originally published: A time to build, c1998.
ISBN 10: 0-8007-3220-0 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-8007-3220-2 (pbk.)
I. United States—History—1945–1953—Fiction. 2. United States—History—1953–1961—Fiction. 3. Family—United States—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3563.O8742T55 2007
813'.54—dc22 2007027719
Scripture is taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
To Jimmy Jordan, my favorite cousin
I think often of the days when we were young
and am very grateful for them, Jimmy.
May the Lord bless you richly in these latter days.
C
ONTENTS
4 Stephanie Goes to a Ball Game
10 “Find a Cause Worth Living For!”
11 No Man Is a Match for a Woman!
T
HE
S
TUART
F
AMILY
E
lvis Presley and Pat Boone and bobby-soxers and hula hoops are standard symbols of the 1950s in America. It was a postwar era, “peacetime,” generally. But turbulence on a smaller scale characterized the postwar world. The Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin strengthened its control over vast areas of Eastern Europe—Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania. Stalin had promised civil liberties, free elections, and representative governments, but Soviet-trained political leaders, supported by military force, gained power. Anti-Communists were soon in jail, in exile—or dead.
This aggressive demeanor in Europe prompted the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ) in 1949, a mutual-defense pact between Canada, the U.S., and most countries of Western Europe. Throughout the fifties, NATO increased in military strength and emphasized maintaining the “balance of power” in Europe between East and West. A “cold” war was under way that often seemed near the flashpoint, it was feared, of World War III—of all-out nuclear war. It was an era of competition, tension, and conflict between East and West, Communism and capitalism, national self-determination and totalitarianism.
In many places in the world the Cold War did indeed flash into hot wars, not directly between the “superpowers” but between factions aligned with one side or the other—war by proxy, it was called.
The stage had been set for Asia in 1945 at the Yalta conference between Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill. Stalin agreed to enter the war against Japan after the defeat of Germany. The Soviets fought no battles, but by the time Japan surrendered, the Soviet army had moved into northern Korea and much of Manchuria to accept the surrender of Japanese forces there. The Soviets sealed off the Korean border at the thirty-eighth parallel and set up a government run by Soviet-trained Communists. They refused to participate in free elections under UN supervision for one government for the nation, so South Korea elected a separate government. Soviet forces withdrew from North Korea in 1948, leaving behind an entrenched Communist regime and a well-trained and equipped army. Reunification of Korea by force was the goal of the war begun in 1950 by the North Koreans.
In the United States the postwar years were boom years, an era of full employment and peak production, although occasional brief periods of recession and high unemployment occurred. Those who had lived through the privations of a depression and a war were immersed in a sea of newfound economic comfort. People were happily buying new cars, new homes, and television sets.
But prosperity was marred by racial unrest and by fear of Communism at home and abroad. In 1949, eleven leaders of the Communist party were convicted of conspiring to advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government by force.
Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s sweeping accusations against “Communist sympathizers” in the government were opposed as early as June 1950 by Senator Margaret Chase Smith and other members of McCarthy’s party, but it was 1954 before he was censured by the full senate.
