RELUCTANT MEDIUM

Have you ever wondered what happens to your consciousness after your body dies? Probably most people wonder about that at some time. Most religions try to answer that question with various heavenly scenarios or hellish punishments and wars have been fought and people painfully put to death because of disagreements about religious beliefs and dogmas. Pearl Curran believed that she had made contact with the consciousness of a young woman, "Patience Worth" who had lived and died in the 17th century. Together, Pearl Curran and Patience Worth produced hundreds of poems and several novels and plays that were regarded to be high-quality writing, acknowledged by Stanley Braithwaite in his Anthology of Magazine Poetry as some of the best poetry of 1917-1918.

While this book may seem to be about communication with spirits, which it is in the overview, it really is about exceptional literature produced by a young woman with barely a grade school education, no interest in writing and whose formative years were spent in Missouri, Texas and Illinois. But she wrote about Medieval England, Victorian England and the time of Jesus Christ, topics she knew little or nothing about and sprinkled some of the writing with archaic words from rural England of more than 300 years ago.

As a young girl, Pearl Curran trained to be a singer and pianist and as a grown woman she enjoyed singing, playing piano , seeing silent movies, reading magazines and cooking for her family. She had no interest in language, history, or religion yet the writings of Pearl Curran and Patience Worth are a language and history cornucopia of information about times fast fading from memory. This book is an effort to bring the writing of Pearl Curran and Patience Worth before the public once again so that it will not be forgotten.