Saunders

Have you ever wondered where some very old object has been, and how it got to this place at this time? Well Marie McKinley-Blackburn does just that when she buys an antique rag doll in 1995. Marie thinks, "If only this thing could talk what a tale it could tell." Well it, Saunders, does talk, but only to those with a listening heart. The saga of the little doll starts in 1899 on a Minnesota prairie with three-year-old Rebekah Strimdberg and ends over one hundred years later in a Chicago suburb. This is not only the story of Saunders and the lives he touches, but the story of two souls bound together by emotional ties that span multiple lifetimes, the story of how actions taken in previous lives can affect relationships we have in this. Saunders starts this life as a rag doll in the arms of his beloved Rebekah but she grows up and away from him and he is left forgotten in a cedar chest in the attic. When Rebekah returns to her Minnesota farm in 1949, she discovers that her old doll is waiting for her, right where she left him. The trouble she brews for herself causes an unmendable rift between herself and her neighbors, which Rebekah only widens by becoming the eccentric cantankerous ‘Old Swede’. One day Rebekah tells Saunders about the day she fled the farm and the secret she has been carrying all these years. Their life together comes crashing down when Rebekah is forced from her home and Saunders ends up in the creek that flows behind the house. That following summer Saunders is pulled out of the Mississippi mud by a ten year old boy named Teddy Wilson who becomes his keeper and only friend for the next three years. Teddy, who has a troubled home life, hides Saunders in a small cave where the doll stays waiting for the visits of his only friend and a big yellow dog named Sam. Teddy tells Saunders everything, filling him in about his best friend Bobby McKinley and his big Catholic family. When the McKinleys suffer a terrible loss in 1965 Teddy shares his grief with Saunders. Then one day Saunders is alone, no more visits from Teddy and no more yellow dog. Where are they? The story comes full circle with the McKinley family Christmas in 1999 where Saunders learns that he is in the home of Marie McKinley, Bobby’s sister, and that his beloved Rebekah is alive in a nursing home. Saunders lives for over 100 years as the rag doll before returning to spirit form. In a nursing home on New Years day 2000, Saunders finds his beloved Rebekah who has been waiting for his return. Her long journey in this life ends when she leaves her body to join her beloved, but not without a fight. Her final hours are spent struggling with the pain of her life and the suppressed rage she held toward her Papa. The ending is explosive and touches on the themes of reconciliation and forgiveness, reincarnation, and karma.

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