The Watcher: Like Sweet Bells Jangled: a Novel in Three Acts

Fiction. Historical Fiction. Literary History. Young Adult. Based on scenes and scenerios from Shakespeare’sRomeo & Juliet and the real history of the Shaker community in Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, The Watcher focuses on the paradoxical world of the Shakers in the fictional enclave of Pleasant Grove in the mid-1800s during the antebellum Protestant Revival—up to and including the Civil War years—during what is historically referred to as the Era of Manifestation (referring to the manifestation of spirits). Asher, a young poet and the son of an evangelical Baptist preacher from Herodsville, falls in love with Kitt, a rare beauty and revered member of the celibate Shaker community of Pleasant Grove. Through the eyes of Wilford Ranks, (the novel’s "Big Brother" figure), who watches the couple through a small window in the Meeting House wall, we witness this budding romance and the spectacle(s) of Shaker life and its inevitable demise.