Although there were a couple dozen authors in attendance during the Pulpwood Queens Girlfriends Weekend book fair last week, in some ways the "star" of the festival was Heather Hornback Bland (far left), author of the memoir God Said Yes. I was not able to attend her Friday night presentation, but I did sit in on a talk she gave earlier in the day, when festival organizer Kathy Patrick pre-empted the scheduled series of author panels because Bland had said she was feeling well enough that she wanted to speak. And that's how I got to hear the remarkable story of how she was crushed under the wheels of her mother's car when she was four years old and has had somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 operations since, which she told the audience has resulted in more than $1 million in debt, with one near-death experience during a 27-hour operation, two near-miraculous pregnancies, and many other personal travails along the way.

Patrick first encountered Bland at the Southern Independent Bookseller's Convention last fall; convinced, as she emailed other authors, that "this woman has been sent to us by God," Patrick organized one fundraising drive for Bland in Jefferson, Texas, two months ago and encouraged all authors whose books had been chosen for the Pulpwood Queens book clubs to send autographed editions which she would collate, along with signed books from her personal library (including a 35th anniversary edition of To Kill a Mockingbird signed by Harper Lee), to create a large lot to be auctioned off for additional funds.

Bland told the small audience at her talk Friday morning that she is currently fighting a staph infection* and can't always raise the $8400 a month she needs for the special prescriptions, so some months she has to do with less (or without). She told us that her liver is in such bad shape she could die at any moment; despite the severity of her infection, though, Bland shows no trace of blemish or jaundice, and displays amazing resilience for someone in her condition—she passed by my dinner table early Saturday evening, before the party (which is where I took the picture of her with her best friend/traveling companion/nurse), and informed my group that she'd passed three kidney stones earlier that day. Obviously, her outspoken religious convictions are a major component of that self-presentation; her website lists several previous speaking engagements at churches throughout Kentucky, and she mentioned in passing Friday morning that she'd learned that the 20/20 producer who did a story on her (which aired before Christmas, and appears to be scheduled for a repeat in late February) had told her that their interview sessions had inspired him to begun praying again. It is a conviction that is shared among her supporters. "I have never felt more driven to helping someone who is living testimony that God is with us," Patrick wrote in her initial appeal on Bland's behalf. "She is here for a reason, of that I have no doubt, and I do believe that God is calling us to help her."

*According to another festival attendee, medical researchers describe the strand of MRSA infection Bland carries as more contagious than normal.