Brilliant, evocative, and written in a clear-sighted adolescent’s voice that verges on stream of consciousness and flows magically with the surrealism of this astounding story. Narrator Reuben Land tells this remarkable story of a motherless family’s journey through the winter flatlands of North Dakota, on the trail of his elder brother, Davy, who’s convicted of a crime done in defense of the family.
Reuben’s engaging, first person voice is a metaphor for the malady he was born with: his damaged lungs are commiserate with the breathless tone that lures the reader into siding whole heartedly with the brother he idolizes, while his precocious younger sister, Swede, pens a western based on an outlaw’s hero’s journey, and incrementally interprets the family’s quest to save Davy, who broke out of jail and is on the run.
Father Jeremiah Land has a humble essence that hints at sainthood. An intelligent and pious widower, he works a job beneath his station and is prone to covert, timely gestures that verge on the miraculous, each convenient, pivotal episode manifesting in such a way as to seem like coincidence. “The fact is, the miracles that sometimes flowed from my father’s fingertips had few witnesses but me,” Davy says, and throughout this multi-layered, faith in motion story, there are plenty. When Jeremiah is asked by a concerned friend how the family plans to track Davy, he answers: “I have the substance of things hoped for. I have the anticipation of things unseen.”
On the road to North Dakota, the family is trailed by Martin Andreeson, a federal employee tasked to find the escaped Davy, who suspects the family knows more than they let on. He birddogs the family like a shadow, yet changes from nemesis to friend as the story leads fatefully into the arms of Roxanna, who lives right outside the town where Davy was last seen. When Davy appears to Reuben, he asks Reuben to keep the secret of where he’s living and with whom, for what turns out to be good reason. Family dynamics tinged with the spiritual and questions of right versus wrong as seen through the eyes of young Reuben are at the heart of this unique story. The writing is so compelling, you’ll be riveted throughout a book you’ll never forget. 5 stars and high praise to author Leif Enger. Peace Like a River has made me Enger’s fan.
Claire Fullerton tackles southern culture & race in LITTLE TEA
September 4, 2020|Authors, Book Reviews, Novelists, Novels, Readers, Women’s contemporary fiction
2020 Gold Medal Winner in Southern Fiction in the International Reader’s Favorite Book Awards. Southern culture, old friendship, family tragedy, and healing the racial divide.
“Claire Fullerton once again delivers an emotional, lyrical tale and proves she’s a writer to watch.”
–Julie Cantrell, New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of Perennials
“Claire Fullerton has an enviably light touch, a lilting style that carries shades of Pat Conroy and tinges of Anne Tyler while managing to be wonderfully of itself. Little Tea is a triumph .”
— Multiple award- winning Irish author, Billy O’Callaghan.
Hayward’s loyal dog, Rufus
Description:
One phone call from Renny to come home and “see about” the capricious Ava and Celia Wakefield decides to overlook her distressful past in the name of friendship.
For three reflective days at Renny’s lake house in Heber Springs, Arkansas, the three childhood friends reunite and examine life, love, marriage, and the ties that bind, even though Celia’s personal story has yet to be healed. When the past arrives at the lake house door in the form of her old boyfriend, Celia must revisit the life she’d tried to outrun.
As her idyllic coming of age alongside her best friend, Little Tea, on her family’s ancestral grounds in bucolic Como, Mississippi unfolds, Celia realizes there is no better place to accept her own story than in this circle of friends who have remained beside her throughout the years. Theirs is a friendship that can talk any life sorrow into a comic tragedy, and now that the racial divide in the Deep South has evolved, Celia wonders if friendship can triumph over history.
Publisher: Firefly Southern Fiction
May 1, 2020
ISBN-13 : 978-1645262596
My thoughts on Claire’s new book:
Stunned, and with emotions charging through me, I looked up from reading the final lines of Claire Fullerton’s fourth novel as my heart and mind absorbed everything that happened in this narrative that alternates between the 1980s and present. In an ending I didn’t see coming, I blinked back tears as I pondered over how the author brought the story full circle.
For this reader, the imagery flowed over me like a healing. All the joys and sorrows of the story melded together into one satisfying grand finale.
At the heart of the novel is narrator Celia Wakefield who spent her childhood and youth navigating back and forth between her family’s Southern Colonial house in an affluent Central Gardens neighborhood in Memphis, TN and the family’s sprawling Wakefield Plantation in Como, MS. Until the age of ten, Celia only knew life in the bucolic surroundings of the large working farm where she lived with her father, a gentleman cotton farmer, her beautiful mother, and two older brothers, John, who carried an air of superiority, and Hayward, gifted and a kindhearted golden boy. Celia’s best friend is a black girl nicknamed Little Tea. Little Tea lives with her father and mother, Thelonious and Elvita Winfrey, in a small cottage on the plantation grounds. Thelonious overseas the crops and Elvita keeps things running smoothly at the big house. In some ways, Little Tea and her parents feel like an extension of the Wakefield family. A white family and a black family working in harmony to keep the farm running.
The story opens with a grownup Celia living in Malibu, CA. One phone call finds her on a flight back to Memphis where she eventually meets up with her best friends from Memphis days, Ava and Renny. While there are several storylines going between past and present, I found myself drawn to those scenes from the past, especially when they involved Celia and her immediate family along with Little Tea and her mom and dad. With a deft hand, the author has created complex characters I was totally invested in.
Multiple award-winning author Claire Fullerton
My favorite characters were Hayward, Little Tea, and Celia. And because I’m a dog lover, I fell in love with Hayward’s loyal pup, Rufus. At times I found Celia’s brother, John, unlikeable, not to mention the heavy-handed patriarch and matriarch, Celia’s wealthy grandparents who occasionally dropped by the family farm to check on things and see about their “investment.”
While much of the story revolves around Celia spending a weekend with Ava and Renny at Renny’s lake house in Heber Springs, AR, these present-day scenes are important as these two friends are key to bringing Celia back to the south to face her past. Two of my favorite lines from the novel occur in these sections. From page fifty-one: “I’d forgotten that after you manage to outrun something, there are those in your life who can call you back at the drop of a hat.” And, “There are some parts of your history your friends won’t let you outrun.”
Pat Conroy’s widow, Cassandra King Conroy, a noted novelist in her own right, says this about the novel: “Claire Fullerton skillfully draws us into a lost world of Southern traditions and norms where past tragedies cast long, dark shadows on present-day lives, and no one ever truly escapes.”
L-R the author’s pups: Sorcha, Ceili, and Ronin
The tragedy that unfolds in the novel got me to thinking. Anytime there’s trouble that breaks out at a gathering, there’s always that one instigator, that one person who sets off a chain of events and gets away with it. In this case, it’s a loss so tragic it emotionally cripples several families as they cope or don’t cope with the aftermath. The story also deals with the struggle of going along with family expectations and social norms or what can happen if you buck the system. The author tackles these tough subjects with courage and aplomb. Claire Fullerton is at her best when writing about family dynamics and southern culture.
The story explores interracial friendships and relationships at a time when society in general didn’t welcome such mingling. Even today there are those who want to separate the races. This is a timely story about race, family, friendship, betrayal, loss, and redemption.
An important book not to be missed!
Pour your favorite beverage and settle in with Little Tea. You won’t be disappointed! I hope you love the ending as much as I did.
Little Tea is a 2020 Pulpwood Queens Book Club read.
Author Claire Fullerton at her oceanfront home with her pups in Malibu, CA.
Claire Fullerton hails from Memphis, TN. and now lives in Malibu, CA. with her husband and 3 German shepherds. She is the author ofLittle Tea, a Somerset Award Finalist and Faulkner Society finalist. Mourning Dove, Claire’s Southern family saga set in 1970’s Memphis, is a a 9 time award winner, including the Ippy silver medal for regional fiction and the Literary Classic’s Words on Wings for Book of the Year. Claire is the author of Dancing to an Irish Reel, a Kindle Book Review and Readers’ Favorite award winner set on the west coast of Ireland, where she once lived. Claire’s first novel is a paranormal mystery set-in two-time periods titled, A Portal in Time, set in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. She is a contributor to the book, A Southern Season with her novella, Through an Autumn Window, set at a Memphis funeral. Little Tea and Mourning Dove are book of the month selections of the Pulpwood Queens Book Club, of which there are 800 chapters. Claire is represented by Julie Gwinn of the Seymour Literary Agency.
If you love Claire’s writing, do yourself a favor and read her third novel, Mourning Dove. It’s garnered at least nine awards to date.
The Madwoman of Preachers Cove made such a splash, pre-release, by winning the Grand Prize in Paranormal Fiction at The Chanticleer Reviews Conference in Bellingham, Washington that I begged author Joy Ross Davis for an advance review copy! I read the book raptly, marveling at it’s unusual setting in a fictitious town named Preacher’s Cove in the mountain foothills of Alabama. This book has everything: a journalist with hidden ties to Preacher’s Cove comes to town on assignment to cover paranormal activity and oddly, incrementally, characters come to the fore and jog his memory! I knew I was in for something big when I met doll-maker, Lucy, who has method to her creative madness. Unsettling atmospheric activity, the lure of attraction, town secrets, quirky characters, and hidden connections comprise this page-turner that will top the list of favorites for paranormal readers!
Here is The Madwoman of Preacher’s Cove book description:
The Madwoman of Preacher’s Cove tells the story of Lucy Addams, a woman who was horribly disfigured in a fire that claimed the lives of her husband and children. After the tragic loss of her beauty, her voice, and her family, Lucy became an artistic genius, sculpting lifelike dolls—replicas of the children of Preacher’s Cove.
Lucy, and her workshop, are hidden in the back of the local resort—a hotel and restaurant complex owned and operated by her sister, Libby.
Following a series of deaths by lightning strike in Preacher’s Cove, a handsome investigative reporter arrives to solve the mystery of the coincidental accidents. Lucy and Libby find themselves facing yet another enemy. As keepers of an ancient treasure—a secret that binds them—they alone know why the deaths have occurred, and more importantly, how to stop them.
With the eventual help of Libby and Lucy, the reporter finds a sacred place in the woods called The Hallows—where Druids once roamed, and where his answers are deeply buried.
After months of investigating, the death toll rising, a bit of romance, and otherwordly harbingers of Lucy’s dolls, the mystery of Preacher’s Cove begins to unravel.
“Joy Ross Davis proves with The Madwoman of Preacher’s Cove that she’s one of the South’s most creative minds. This novel is fantastic—in every sense of that term!”Allen Mendenhall, Editor, Southern Literary Review
Book Reviewer Carla Suto writes this:
THE MADWOMAN OF PREACHER’S COVE by Joy Ross Davis is an atmospheric and intriguing story of deeply held secrets and an ancient mystery set in Preachers’ Cove, Alabama where Druids once worshipped. Lucy Addams lost everything when a tragic fire killed her husband and children and left her terribly disfigured and unable to speak. She lives as a recluse with her sister, Libby who runs a local resort in Preacher’s Cove. Lucy spends her days in a secluded workroom crafting beautiful and haunting dolls called the Firelight Angels that are detailed replicas of the children of Preacher’s Cove. When a seemingly coincidental series of deadly lightning strikes hits Preacher’s Cove, investigative reporter, Hap returns to Preacher’s Cove to look into the mysterious deaths. As Hap delves deeper into the unusual occurrences, long-buried secrets come to light and the mystery of The Hallows is gradually revealed. Filled with history, suspense and even a little romance, this enchanting book held me captive from beginning to end. I always enjoy Joy Ross Davis’ stories and this one was no exception. I highly recommend it.
Congratulations to Joy Ross Davis on the release of The Madwoman of Preacher’s Cove!
I, along with legions of others, have waited for months for In the Valley to release. Everything you’d hope for from Ron Rash is within this collection of short stories– his trademark, laser-sharp realism, poetic prose, and fully realized Appalachian vignettes of life wrapped in tight construction. All short stories are hymns to the art of world-building, rich in visceral setting and written with vernacular that sets the mood and tone. Simply put, Ron Rash is a league of his own, and this highly anticipated, critically acclaimed book is on par with all others in his stellar body of work.
If you’ve never read anything by Ron Rash, his collections of short stories are a great place to start, as is his poetry, which is starkly real yet emotional to the point of being visually panoramic. Two of his novels have been made into movies: The World Made Straight, and Serena. Serena seems to be his most widely read book. It’s title character is one of the more diabolical, female characters ever written! In his new release, Rash continued the story of Serena by including a novella among the short stories.
Here are a few book blurbs for In the Valley. I’ve included more to whet your whistle for a taste of the American writer referred to as the Appalachian Shakespeare.
“Mesmerizing…He’s one of the best living American writers.”–Janet Maslin, New York Times Book Review
From bestselling and award-winning writer Ron Rash (“One of the great American authors at work today.”–The New York Times) comes a collection of ten searing stories and the return of the villainess who propelled Serena to national acclaim, in a long-awaited novella.
Ron Rash has long been a revered presence in the landscape of American letters. A virtuosic novelist, poet, and story writer, he evokes the beauty and brutality of the land, the relentless tension between past and present, and the unquenchable human desire to be a little bit better than circumstances would seem to allow (to paraphrase Faulkner).
In these ten stories, Rash spins a haunting allegory of the times we live in–rampant capitalism, the severing of ties to the natural world in the relentless hunt for profit, the destruction of body and soul with pills meant to mute our pain–and yet within this world he illuminates acts of extraordinary decency and heroism. Two of the stories have already been singled out for accolades: “Baptism” was chosen by Roxane Gay for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories 2018, and “Neighbors” was selected by Jonathan Lethem for The Best American Mystery Stories 2019. And in revisiting Serena Pemberton, Rash updates his bestselling parable of greed run amok as his deliciously vindictive heroine returns to the North Carolina wilderness she left scarred and desecrated to make one final effort to kill the child that threatens all she has accomplished.
I’ve had the pleasure of crossing paths with Ron Rash in person a few times, over the years. You’ll never meet a more humble guy! It was my complete honor to introduce him to the audience at the Pat Conroy Literary Festival in 2017, in Beaufort, South Carolina, when he was the festival’s key note speaker.
More written about this world-renowned writer:
“A gorgeous, brutal writer” (Richard Price) working at the height of his powers, Ron Rash has created another mesmerizing look at the imperfect world around us.
Rash’s poems and stories have appeared in more than 100 magazines and journals. Serena received enthusiastic reviews across and beyond the United States and was a 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist.
In addition to being a bestselling novelist, Rash has achieved international acclaim as a short story author,[3] winning the Frank O’Connor Award in 2010 for Burning Bright.[4] Recent work such as The Outlaws (Oxford American, Summer, 2013) focused on ordinary lives in southern Appalachia. Scholars have praised his ability to find the universal within the particulars of place, citing his writing’s “universal appeal, lyrical grace, and narrative efficiency.” [5] Jim Coby examined Rash’s use of mystery thriller tropes in One Foot in Eden.[6]
Ron Rash holds the John and Dorothy Parris Professorship in Appalachian Cultural Studies at Western Carolina University, where he teaches poetry and fiction-writing in the Department of English.
To familiarize you with his body of work before the release of In the Valley, here is a list that excludes his poetry, which I highly recommend!
I just finished the delightful book, Evening in the Yellow Wood by Laura Kemp (TouchPoint Press.) It’s an action-packed, fast-paced story about an immediately likable, twenty-something year old woman on a quest to find her missing father, who disappeared without explanation, which leaves narrator, Justine Cook, and her mother jumping to worst-case conclusions. But a chance occurrence changes all that!
Here is the book’s description:
Abandoned by an eccentric father on the eve of her twelfth birthday, Justine Cook has lived with her fair share of unanswered questions. Now, ten years later she leaves her life in southern Michigan and heads north to the mysterious town of Lantern Creek after seeing his picture in a local newspaper. Once there, she discovers her father had been leading a double life and meets the autistic brother she never knew—a young man who is mute but able to read her mind.
When a local girl who looks like Justine is mysteriously murdered, she joins forces with sheriff’s deputy Dylan Locke to capture the killer. But the more they dig for clues to the past, the closer they come to discovering a secret someone will kill to protect. Justine begins to show signs of supernatural power and eventually must stop an immortal enemy that has hunted her family for generations.
( My 11 month old, GSD named Sorcha is always in the picture!)
When I finished Evening in the Yellow Wood, I wrote and posted this book review on Amazon, Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, and Book Bub. I love to support my fellow authors!
All I knew going into author Laura Kemp’s highly praised Evening in the Yellow Wood is that I loved the title. It’s phonetically pleasing, lyrical, and balanced. Give me a title that sings on a haunting book cover and you have my attention. Hand me a dilemma that yearns on the second page and I’m thoroughly roped in.
In an au currant voice so accessible you think you know the narrator, Evening in the Yellow Wood exemplifies the term “page turner.” It’s an off-kilter, rollicking ride on a hero’s journey; an edge-of-your-seat through-line chock-full of forward momentum in a cauldron of delectable genres that has something for every discerning reader.
Recent college graduate Justine Cook doesn’t know her genetic history. She’s on course of a promising journalism career when one glance at the local newspaper derails her plans. Through the glass window of a hardware store in another town stares her lost father’s photograph. The mystery begins with Justine’s caution to the wind move, and the game begins.
More than a mystery, Evening in the Yellow Wood is commercial fiction walking the high wire of romance strung up by the paranormal. Its personality shimmers, its pacing is breathtaking. It’s the rare writer who makes the unusual plausible, and Laura Kemp does so by anchoring her charming novel in the small-town Midwest. In the name of covert operation, Narrator Justine Cook takes a bartending job and drives “the heap.” She shares an apartment with a delightfully disreputable local and falls in love with a cop– who, it unfolds, is uncannily part and parcel to the whirlwind story, as Justine adheres to the task of finding her father.
Immortality, mind reading, totems, and visions fuel the fire of this spellbinding book. Evening in the Yellow Wood by Laura Kemp is absolutely unforgettable.
Here is Laura Kemp’s bio as it appears online:
About the Author
Laura is a teacher who loves to write about her home state of Michigan. She has a B.A. in Creative Writing from Western Michigan University where she studied under Stuart Dybek, and has had her short fiction and poetry published in Chicken Soup for the Soul, Word Riot, Tonopalah Review, SaLit and SLAB: Sound and Literary Art Book. “The Pursuit of Happiness,” – a short story she wrote while at WMU, was chosen as a finalist in the Trial Balloon Fiction Contest. When not writing, Laura enjoys musical theatre, hiking, swimming, reading and performing with her Celtic band- Si Bhaeg Si Mohr. She also enjoys spending time with her husband and children as well as her dog, two hamsters, two gerbils, ten chickens, two horses and eight (and counting) cats. Laura loves to connect with readers on her blog: laurakempbooks.com/blog (Sea Legs on Land), as well as on Facebook, Twitter (@LKempWrites) and Instagram. (lkempwrites)
I just finished Wendell Berry’s 6th novel, Hannah Coulter, as recommended by Sara Steger, whom I met on the Goodreads group, On the Southern Literary Trail, which is a dedicated, enthusiastic reading group in tune with those great Southern writers worth knowing about.
If you’re unfamiliar with American author, Wendell Berry, here’s an introduction:
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Hannah Coulter and am sharing my book review:
Hannah Coulter is a lyrical study in nostalgia, meandering, at times, just as life itself meanders in seeming slipshod episodes that seem incohesive until viewed in hindsight. But the telling of a life can bring it into focus, and the voice of Hannah Coulter, as she explains her life is the voice of gratitude as she builds linear connections with the full awareness that it is the seeming inconsequential, day to day gestures that make up a life.
I loved this book for its intimate introspection. The story is judicious in dialogue, preferring, instead, to gift the reader with the hidden heartbeat of Hannah Coulter, whom we meet as a callow girl and accompany as she grows wise and world-weary, deepens in self-possession, and all this without traveling far afield from the small rural farming community of Port William, Kentucky, whose sphere of activity is an agrarian culture with a network of neighbors who work together in perpetuating a salt-of-the earth livelihood.
The characters in Hannah Coulter are simply dignified. They are subtle souls, reverent of life’s small purposes. They are commonplace characters with depth and an eye to future generations. They are accepting people, tolerant of changing times even as they hold true to maintaining a less convenient way of life in the name of what they know and treat with the sanctity of tradition.
Hannah Coulter lives beneath the layers of plot and resides in the realm of character study. It is a slow growth story of the life of one woman the reader will come to know and cherish, for all her hard-won wisdom.
I want to share my latest news with you about my third traditionally published novel, Mourning Dove, whose release date was June 29, 2018. I am happy to share the news that just yesterday, Mourning Dove won its 7th book award. Above is a Mourning Dove video to show you sliding images of those 7 awards.
I went into the writing of Mourning Dove wanting to write about two subjects: the social mores of the Deep South as exemplified in the setting of the old guard, as its known, and the dynamic between siblings. What fascinates me the most about siblings is the idea that they come from the same history, are cut from the same cloth, yet often turn out differently. The question of why this is led me through the writing of Mourning Dove, and although I have never said this publically ( and probably never will) I wrote down three themes to guide me through the book, otherwise written without an outline. The themes were this: the search for home, the search for identity, and, very loosely, the search for God, as in finding some semblance of understanding as to who’s really in charge, along with the question of what it is that shapes a person; whether it’s nature or nurture?
And with regard to the South with all its traditions, history, and rife population of characters peacock proud to call themselves “Southern,” I thought it best to show the South through the eyes of two siblings named Millie and Finley Crossan, who were born in the North, and come to the South as outsiders during the formative stage of adolescence so they could view their environment without a filter while trying to fit into the culture.
The sibling dynamic is a significant one to those of us lucky enough to be born to it. We learn who we are in relation to those closest to us, and when it comes to siblings, I believe there is a certain type of mirror imaging at play that helps to define us. I’ll say this about siblings: they never let you forget where you came from.
Mourning Dove’s book description says this:
“An accurate and heart-wrenching picture of the sensibilities of the American South.” Kirkus Book Reviews
The heart has a home when it has an ally.
If Millie Crossan doesn’t know anything else, she knows this one truth simply because her brother Finley grew up beside her. Charismatic Finley, eighteen months her senior, becomes Millie’s guide when their mother Posey leaves their father and moves her children from Minnesota to Memphis shortly after Millie’s tenth birthday.
Memphis is a world foreign to Millie and Finley. This is the 1970s Memphis, the genteel world of their mother’s upbringing and vastly different from anything they’ve ever known. Here they are the outsiders. Here, they only have each other. And here, as the years fold over themselves, they mature in a manicured Southern culture where they learn firsthand that much of what glitters isn’t gold. Nuance, tradition, and Southern eccentrics flavor Millie and Finley’s world as they find their way to belonging.
But what hidden variables take their shared history to leave both brother and sister at such disparate ends?
Here is one poignant reader review of Mourning Dove:
“Style and substance are the two necessary ingredients any book must have. This book exemplifies both. I was charmed and delighted by the author’s descriptive abilities. Her use of language, metaphors, turns of phrase kept me turning each page. She can make a table sound interesting.
I now know what it was like to be a Southern Belle. There’s a lot going on more than meets the eye, which is why this is so engrossing. The reader is dropped into the life of the upper crust, replete with a big back story and complicated family life. What characters they are. Posey, the mother, is all about refinement and a survivor. Finley, the bother of narrator and protagonist Millie, is a compelling, complicated, charismatic, enigma, bearing a resemblance to Holden Caufield. Then there is the Colonel; let’s just say he doesn’t come across as a nice guy. There are other supporting characters and they all move the story along.
I enjoyed reading every sentence, and some of them are downright extraordinary and wise.
Claire Fullerton is a bright new star. I’ve read her last two books, and they are great, but this one is a masterpiece.”
I made this book trailer to give the reader an idea of the setting of Mourning Dove.
I hope you enjoy watching the Deep South as I know it!
When two estranged sisters reunite for their parents’ 50th anniversary, a family tragedy brings unexpected lessons of hope and healing amid the flowers of their mother’s perennial garden.
“If you liked Big Little Lies, you’ll want to crack open [Little Broken Things].” —Southern Living
An unforgettable and moving novel about an affluent suburban family whose carefully constructed façade crumb
Rachel Linden’s newest contemporary women’s fiction story speaks to the universal struggle of what it means to live a meaningful life where the passions we have meet the needs of the world.
A new novel inspired by historical events: a story of three young women on a journey in search of family amidst the destruction of the post-Civil War South, and of a modern-day teacher who rediscovers their story and its connection to her own students’ lives.
It’s summertime on the North Carolina coast and the livin’ is easy. Unless, that is, you’ve just lost your mother to cancer, your sister to her extremist husband, and your husband to his executive assistant.
In 1976, memories from a night near the railroad tracks sixteen years earlier haunt Barbara Parker. She wrestles with past demons every night, then wakes to the train’s five-thirty whistle. Exhausted and dreading the day, she keeps her hands busy working in Bryson City’s textile plant, known as the “blue jean plant,” all the while worrying about her teenage daughter, Carole Anne.
Inspired by a true story, Trouble the Water is about risking everything for freedom. Born a slave, Robert Smalls commandeered a Confederate arms ship from the Charleston harbor, and with the woman he loved and a small crew of other slaves, delivered it to the Union Navy. After the war ended Smalls was able to purchase the house in which he and his mother had been enslaved, and he became one of America’s first black legislators.
Sometimes it takes losing everything to find yourself again.
Lily Bishop wakes up one morning to find a good-bye note and divorce papers from her husband on the kitchen counter. Having moved to Alabama for his job only weeks before, Lily is devastated, but a flyer at the grocery store for a hair stylist position in a local retirement community provides a refuge while she contemplates her next steps.
Southern Culture…Women Friendships… Family Tragedy… Healing the Past
As her idyllic coming of age alongside her best friend, Little Tea, on her family’s ancestral grounds in bucolic Como, Mississippi unfolds, Celia Wakefield realizes there is no better place to accept her own story than in this circle of friends who have remained beside her throughout the years. Theirs is a friendship that can talk any life sorrow into a comic tragedy, and now that the racial divide in the Deep South has evolved, Celia wonders if her friendship with Little Tea can triumph over history.
Cora Anne Halloway has a history degree and a plan: avoid her own past despite being wait-listed for graduate school. Then her beloved grandmother requests — and her dispassionate mother insists — that she spend the summer at Still Waters, the family cottage on Edisto Beach, South Carolina.
A woman unlocks the mystery of her father’s wartime past in a moving novel about secrets, sacrifice, and the power of love by the bestselling author of Daughters of the Night Sky.
Bea and Awilda have been best friends from the moment Awilda threw her fourteen year-old self across Bea’s twin-sized bed as if they had known each other forever. Bubbly, adventurous Awilda taught sheltered, shy Bea how to dress, wear her hair and what to do with boys. She even introduced Bea to her husband, Lonnie, in college, who pledged to take good care of her for the rest of their lives. But philanderer Lonnie breaks that promise over and over again, leaving Bea to wrestle with her self-esteem and long time secret addiction.
Now that I have your attention, ENTER TO WIN!
In the midst of these unusual times, reading a great novel is a life-line. NYT best-selling author, Julie Cantrell, got the inspired idea to host a beach bag book giveaway and has asked her author friends to participate! I am thrilled to add Little Tea to the giveaway and am sharing Julie’s instructions on how to enter here:
“Ready for an escape? ONE lucky duck will receive a beach bag PLUS all these stellar books. Sign up for my newsletter at www.juliecantrell.com to learn more. Watch your inbox JULY 1″
Good Luck to all who enter the Beach Bag Giveaway!
An author’s intention is telling, when they reach out to readers with questions to consider after reading their book. Because my 4th novel, Little Tea’s, themes are universal– the strong ties of long lasting female friendship, the search for home, and the power of resiliency after weathering family tragedy, my hope is the reader will view these topics through their own lens. And because Little Tea explores the racial divide in the 1980’s Deep South and packs a surprise ending, there is is much for readers and book clubs to discuss!
Here are 12 topics for readers and book clubs to discuss, as they appear on the last page of Little Tea:
1. Celia, Renny, and Ava have a friendship that spans decades. What is it that keeps their friendship thriving? Do you have similar ties with your childhood friends?
2. Ava’s marriage hangs in the balance at the center of this story. Do you find Ava’s reasoning understandable?
3. Can you discuss how it might be that Celia and Renny have different views of Ava’s marital predicament? What is it about their personalities and life experiences that shape their opinion?
4. What do you think about the appearance of Ava’s ex-boyfriend, Mark Clayton in the story? Is Ava trying to avoid her marriage by revisiting her lost youth? Can you relate?
5. What are Celia’s feelings for Tate Foley during this story? Does she experience resolution at the end?
6. Discuss Celia and Little Tea’s relationship. What are their differences? What is their common ground?
7. Celia has left the South to start anew in California. Do you find this reasonable? Can anyone ever outrun their past?
8. Celia’s backstory is set in the 1980’s South. What were the racial attitudes in the 1980’s? How have they changed now?
9. Discuss the nuances of the relationship between Hayward and Little Tea? What draws them together? Why, do you suppose, did they keep their relationship under wraps from Celia and others?
10. How do the members of Celia’s family shape the dynamic to this story?
11. Were you surprised by the ending?
12. What do you consider to be the point of the ending?
Kathleen Rodgers’ The Flying Cutterbucks is a wonderfully unusual, romp of a realistic ride through the tension of a presidential election. Author Kathleen Rodgers takes a firm stance and keeps it real with well-drawn women characters you won’t soon forget. Memories unfold, the past haunts and ghosts are laid to rest in this intricately woven story set on the outskirts of Pardon, New Mexico to such a nuanced degree that you’ll feel as if you’re there. A celebration of strong, resilient female characters, The Flying Cutterbucks roared onto my Kindle device and kept me riveted.
Book Description: Decades ago, Trudy, Georgia, and Aunt Star formed a code of silence to protect each other from an abusive man who terrorized their family. One act of solidarity long ago lives with them still. With the election of a president who brags about groping women without their consent, old wounds and deep secrets come alive again, forcing hard truths to be told and even harder truths to be left to the dead.
On the outskirts of Pardon, New Mexico, Trudy returns to her mother, Jewel, to navigate an old house filled with haunting mementos of her father who went missing in action over North Vietnam. As she helps her mother sift through the memories and finally lay her father to rest, Trudy will do her own soul searching to say goodbye to the dead, and find her way along with the other women in her family, and through the next election.
About the Author: Born and raised in Clovis, New Mexico, Kathleen M. Rodgers is a novelist whose stories and essays have appeared in Family Circle Magazine, Military Times, and in anthologies published by McGraw-Hill, University of Nebraska Press/Potomac Books, Health Communications, Inc., AMG Publishers, and Press 53.
Seven Wings to Glory, Rodgers’ third novel, deals with racism and war and won an Honorable Mention for War & Military in the 2017 Foreword Indies Book of the Year Awards and was shortlisted for the 2017 Somerset Awards. Her second novel, Johnnie Come Lately, has garnered multiple awards, including the 2015 Gold Medal for literary fiction from Military Writers Society of America.
Rodgers is also the author of the award-winning novel, The Final Salute, featured in USA Today, The Associated Press, and Military Times.
She and her husband, Tom, a retired USAF fighter pilot/commercial airline pilot, reside in a suburb of North Texas with two rescue dogs. After raising two sons, she became a grandmother and is at work on her fifth novel.
Claire Fullerton Author 