I need a reviewer for a nonfiction book.

History of my great grandparents, revealed through their diaries and approximately 1,500 letters.

ABSTRACT:

Bertha and Henry included the valediction “yours always” on virtually every letter that they wrote to each other from their engagement in 1892 until Henry’s death in 1911, nearly 1500 letters in all. In her last letter to Henry before their marriage, Bertha wrote: “… there is another greater reason why I do not fear the future, my dearest. I believe that you and I truly belong to those “whom God hath joined together” and I am not afraid, my dearest, to promise “in the sight of God and of this company” to be Yours always.” As one reads their letters and comes to know them, “yours always” embodies the faith and love that Bertha and Henry shared for each other.

CHAPTER 1 – AN UNTIMELY END (abridged)

“Nothing, I fear, can be done which will give me rest.”

Henry Clarkson Scott died on January 14, 1911 at age 52. His death was sudden and untimely. Henry left behind his fortune, his various business interests, board memberships, his four children and his wife, Bertha Warburton Drake Scott. Bertha would live another 34 years and would have a great deal of time for reflection.

A. NEWSPAPER ACCOUNTS

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One newspaper quoted Henry’s last words to Bertha, “’I have an unaccountable feeling this morning’, he told Mrs. Scott, ‘a foreboding of something dreadful going to happen, as if my mind were going to fail me. Nothing, I fear, can be done which will give me rest.’”

The article in the St. Louis Star on January 15, 1911 included the following about Henry: “He returned home from his office Friday evening, more melancholy than usual, the disagreeable weather apparently having aggravated his indisposition. He ate little at supper and retired early to spend a night of sleepless tossing. Wherein, as he had been heard to remark, he would have given all his fortune to regain the ability to sleep as he once had done and as thousands of those who so much envied him his wealth, did daily without stopping to consider the value of it.”

B. MELANCHOLY

That morning started like any other, perhaps better given the prospects of Henry and Bertha’s planned trip to New York City which would combine recreation and business. They had planned to start east the next day. Henry had always lamented that his business trips often took him away from Bertha and often left him in a state of loneliness. This trip would be different.

But Henry had passed a sleepless and “miserable” night, perhaps arising from his ill health and depression with which he had struggled for years. Henry dressed, ate breakfast, and summoned his automobile which was waiting in front of the house to take Bertha and Henry downtown together. But Henry then returned to his room. When Bertha entered his room, he told her he had not slept all night. “‘I can’t stand it any longer’, he said.” Bertha sought to soothe him and left the room, advising him to lie down for a few minutes to rest while she finished making ready for their trip.

Bertha called to their 8-year-old daughter, Alice, to read to Henry. “Alice started to her father’s room and when she reached the door, which was locked, she heard the pistol shot within.”

Hearing the gun shot, Bertha ran to his room and found the door locked. Her screams summoned Emory Burbach, the chauffeur, who tried in vain to burst the door open with his shoulder. He was compelled to break a panel in the door with an ax from the garage to gain entrance. Henry had fallen from his chair and was lying partly on the bed, on his left side, the revolver in his hand, a bullet wound in the right side of the head, in back of the ear.

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