ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, May 27, 1996 TAG: 9605290005
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: ALESSANDRA SOLER STAFF WRITER
Carl Bean stood before his small congregation to talk about the treatment of children, and his normally soft voice grew loud.
"Disgusting," the 42-year-old minister proclaimed during a recent Sunday morning sermon as he described what he reads in today's newspapers. The father of two explained how he has become increasingly disturbed by stories that tell of fathers beating their little girls to death or of grown men sexually assaulting young boys.
"We read these headlines, but we don't think too much about them," said Bean, as his own daughters, Sarah, 9, and Jessica, 12, sat and listened. "We see an ugliness that we don't want to recognize or acknowledge."
Bean wanted to get people talking and thinking about child abuse. So he used the subject matter behind those provocative headlines as the basis for his new mystery novel - his first book of fiction - in hopes of relating a social message while getting people to react and take action at the same time.
"I wrote this for the same reason that Jesus spoke in parables," said Bean, pastor at Edgemont Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Christiansburg. "I'm telling a story that I find distressing, because it tells the story of our world today."
The thriller, "A Soul To Take," hit stores a week ago and is the first of Bean's three suspense novels scheduled for release within the year.
The 357-page novel, published by Penguin USA, follows homicide investigator Rita Trible as she tracks a serial killer who preys on young boys. The book is fast-paced and explicit at times, especially in the descriptions of the murders that horrify Trible and her partner, Charlie.
This weekend, Bean will sign copies of his book at bookstores that have agreed to donate a percentage of sales to child abuse prevention organizations in Roanoke, Blacksburg and Christiansburg.
"I wanted the immediate proceeds to go to something worthwhile," said Bean, who organized the fund-raiser himself. "These are people who see this daily and who work to try to protect these children. They work with practically nothing; no budget and only volunteers, and very rarely get the recognition they deserve. I wanted to help."
Shannon Brabham, executive director of the Child Abuse Prevention Council of Roanoke Valley, said word of the donation came unexpectedly.
"It takes a lot of time for us to send staff members out to seek funding, and this is helping us a great deal," she said. She will be at both signings in Roanoke to answer questions about child abuse prevention.
"People are, for whatever reasons, upset or angered by child abuse, but not everyone will choose to do something about it. Some people think it's too awful to even think about, and this certainly makes it easier for them to participate in the cause and help out.''
"We have the means of doing it, he asked, and it's a good cause, so there was no reason for us not to participate," said Ed Jumper, manager of Waldenbooks in the New River Valley Mall in Christiansburg.
Bean, who lives in Christiansburg with M.J., his wife of 14 years, and his daughters, also teaches creative writing, linguistics and literature at Virginia Tech. He started writing "A Soul to Take" in 1993, while working on his doctorate in English at Marquette University in Milwaukee, where the plot unfolds.
"My drive to write the book was so powerful that I finished it in three months," explained Bean, who decided to postpone getting his degree and continue writing and teaching. "The idea came as a culmination of a lot of headlines that were very distressing to me."
The book is graphic with a purpose, he said: to jar people into actually doing something about child abuse. Bean includes meticulous descriptions of crime scenes, autopsies and murders. It's a technique he claims to have learned and perfected while working as a criminal investigator in the Army.
"You can also just go to the library and find books about police procedures," he said. "That's how I got most of my information. I was teaching a class at a community college in Milwaukee that offered a degree in criminal justice, and their library was full of books on police procedure and criminal investigation, so I spent most of my time doing research there."
Born in Albuquerque, N.M., Bean spent much of his childhood moving to various cities - his father was in the Air Force and later became a minister and a Treasury agent.
Bean, too, joined the military -- shortly after graduating from a Rockford, Ill., high school in 1972.
Later, he went back to school to receive formal training in writing and literature at Drury College in Springfield, Mo. He received a bachelor's degree in English in 1982, then graduated with a master's in English from the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma and later received another master's in literature from Columbia University in New York. While at Columbia, he specialized in religious literature and attended the Union Theological Seminary, where he received extensive biblical training. Again, he traced his father's footsteps and eventually became a minister.
"I've been strongly involved with the church from the time I was a child," Bean said. "We live in a world where these kinds of horrible things happen, and I don't think people should be disillusioned into believing that everything is a paradise just because they're part of a certain religion."
Bean has been giving sermons and teaching Sunday School at Edgemont Christian Church, a 60-member congregation at Edgemont and Mud Pike Roads, for almost two years. He took the summer off to work on his current novel about a life-threatening illness that afflicts children. Bean said his second novel, which tells the story of a 13-year-old girl's kidnapping, should be released in December.
"I think that something terrible has happened to our children that has prevented them from being children anymore," he said. "They are having to make decisions about drugs, alcohol and cigarettes - things we never even thought about while growing up. Children are precious and innocent, yet it seems like we treat them like property. And I especially want to change that."
LENGTH: Long : 111 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: LORA GORDON. 1. Carl Bean's thriller, "A Soul To Take,"by CNBhit stores a week ago. The first of three suspense novels scheduled
for release within the year, it follows homicide investigator Rita
Trible as she tracks a serial killer who preys on young boys. 2. (no
caption). color. Graphic: Chart: Book signings. color.