Penny Pickle

A hero of the AIDS crisis in Dallas writes her first book

DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
taffet@dallasvoice.com

A Shortage of Angels is set in 1986 in Onward, Texas, a fictional small town based on author Penny Pickle’s own hometown of Greenville, Texas. It tells the story of Cal, who lives with her mortician granddaddy in their combination home/mortuary. Her best friend is socially challenged Moody.

And from birth, Cal was blessed with a special purpose: She can see angels who, she’s been warned, she should never call on for help.

One day, Cal and Moody are playing down at the Sabine river bottom, and, while hiding in the cypress roots, they overhear members of a motorcycle gang confess to murder. And when, as the killers come after the children to silence them as witnesses, Cal must choose between keeping her oath not to call on angels to intervene in earthly affairs and putting the lives of those she loves at risk.

Cal chooses the lives of those she loves, but it turns out only one angel can be summoned on such short notice: Lucifer. Cal chooses to gamble with the devil to save those she loves and, in doing so, comes close to dying hersef as well as bringing the town of Onward to a reckoning with its prejudice.

In the process, Cal learns the circumstances of her mother’s death, the origin of her power and who her father is.

The author
This is a first novel for Penny Pickle. A nurse by training, Pickle became an angel of the AIDS crisis in Dallas. Her first job was at Methodist Hospital, and — because of her hair, she jokes — when gay men with AIDS ended up in that hospital, she was assigned their cases.

At the time, infusions to prevent a growing list of opportunistic infections is what was keeping so many persons living with AIDS alive. Pickle happened to live next door to Graeme Maclean, a gay doctor who also worked at Methodist, and it was Maclean who suggested she start her own home infusion company.

Pickle followed his advice, and her company was thriving when Maclean told her about the success medical professionals in San Francisco were having in using pentamidine mist to prevent pneumocystis pneumonia.
So Pickle ordered a misting inhaler, a device about the size of an old TV, and pentamidine, which was, at the time, approved for protozoan infections.

Community leader and HIV/AIDS activist Terry Tebedo was one of Pickle’s clients, and he suggested that, rather than carry the cumbersome inhaler from house-to-house, Pickle set it up at the AIDS Resource Center and give the treatments there.

At the time AIDS Resource Center was located on Cedar Springs Road approximately where Out of the Closet now stands. Every Wednesday evening Pickle administered the 15-minute treatment to 10 to 20 men — including Ron Woodruff, the man whose story Dallas Buyer’s Club is based on — and prevented hundreds of cases of PCP from developing.

That arrangement continued for about a year, until research showed Bactrim was more effective in treating the disease.

Pickle continued her home nursing career until 1997, when protease inhibitors became readily available. She described herself as being burned out and still mourning the loss of her brother who died from AIDS in 1992.

After taking a 10-year-plus hiatus from nursing, a time period that included the birth of her twin sons who are both in college now, Pickle returned to Baylor to get her degree as a nurse practitioner. And when her father passed away a few years ago, she moved back to her hometown of Greenville to look after her mother. She also opened a pediatric clinic there in the heart of the poorest school district in Texas.

As her nursing career continues, Pickle said she is also working on her second novel. It will tell her story of growing up gay in a prejudiced community and then caring for and then losing her own brother. Pickle said she has been working on this book for 20 years, and now — as her first published book is raking in five-star ratings on Amazon — her second is about to go off to the editor.