Monday, July 12, 2010

Mailbox Monday




Hello everyone. :) I hope you had a wonderful weekend. Who watched True Blood last night? What do you think of Alcide? Yep, I agree. LOL

Here are a couple of books that I won from Blodeuedd over at Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell. You can find her blog here:

http://books-forlife.blogspot.com/

Book Blurb:

"The morning I died it rained. Poured down so hard it washed the blood off my face."

Thus begins the story of Lori Jean, whose short life and death are woven into this poignant, heart-wrenching novel set in the rural South of the 1950s. Told from the point of view of ten-year-old Lori Jean, a sensitive dreamer of a child who longs for a "normal" family, Roseflower Creek is raw with the emotions of a child burdened by the harshness of her life. Abandoned by her father when she was five, her world is filled with a self-absorbed mother who can't seem to hold her life together and an abusive, alocoholic stepfather who can't-or won't-keep a steady job. Yet Lori Jean is filled with the curiosity and hope common to all children.

After Lori Jean's stepfather , Ray, begins attending AA meetings, he seems like a changed man, and Lori Jean begins to think that finally she and her mama are going to experience some long-overdue happiness-be a real family. But tragedy strikes anew, and Ray, unable to cope, returns to the bottle and his shiftless ways. Fired from his job at the cotton mill, he resorts to stealing, and when Lori Jean uncovers his secret, things begin to spiral out of control. Unable to keep silent, Lori Jean pays the ultimate price for what she knows.

Poignant and bittersweet, Roseflower Creek is a story of the loss of innocence. Told with an honesty and authenticity that only a child narrator could achieve, it is a remarkable first novel that will move readers with profound emotions and haunt them long after the last paragraph has been read.

"Finally, we was gonna be a family. Have ourselves some happy times to look back on. Git ourselves one of them futures-just like regular folks."

AND

Book Blurb:

In 1963 rural Georgia, with the Vietnam War cranking up, pregnant seventeen-year-old Adie Jenkins discovers the diary of pregnant seventeen-year-old Tempe Jordan, a slave girl, begun as the Civil War was winding down. Adie is haunted by the memory of her dead sister; Tempe is overcome with grief over the sale of her three children sired by her master. Adie--married to Buck, her baby's skirt-chasing father--is unprepared for marriage and motherhood. She spends her days with new baby Grace. Buck spends his with the conniving vamp Imelda Jane.

Adie welcomes the friendship of midwife Willa Mae Satterfield. Having grown close to her after Grace's birth, she confides that her baby sister, Annie, survived choking on a jelly bean only to drown in Cold Rock River a few months later. Willa Mae says, "My two little chillins George and Calvin drowns in that river too." What she won't say is who and why.

Adie takes refuge in Tempe's journal. It tells an amazing tale:

When "the freedom" comes, Tempe sets out to find her children but never finds them, and she settles in Macon, Georgia, where she meets Tom Barber, a former slave from a Savannah plantation. They marry and have a daughter nicknamed Heart, and though she's "a bit slow in the head," they adore her. Tom is good to Tempe, and she remains by his side, ever faithful, until she discovers something she can't live with--a truth so devastating she vows never to speak of it again.

Adie continues to pore over Tempe's diary, which seems to raise more questions than it answers. After Tom is killed in a drunken brawl, Tempe takes Heart to north Georgia, settling on a small patch of land and taking up midwifery to support them both. Eventually she marries an elderly neighbor and gives birth to two more children, Georgia and Calvin. Adie is filled with questions. Could Willa Mae be Heart? Could the children in the diary have been hers? How--and why--did they drown? And is it possible that the man who owns the house in which she lives is Willa Mae's grandson?

As Cold Rock River comes to its surprising, shocking ending, questions of family, race, love, loss, and longing are loosed from the mysterious secrets that have been kept for too long--and the depth of the mysterious connection between two women united by place and separated by race and a hundred years is revealed.

Thanks B! :)

M



5 comments:

Not So anonymous said...

hi my name is danielle and i love your pic. i was just looking to meet some people. so hi (lol) oh and alcide, well i just hope youre thinking what im thinking. but on a different note wasnt it messed up what bill said? lol


Danielle

Lea said...

Congrats on the win Michelle! Those look like two great reads, you enjoy!

L

Blodeuedd said...

Oh you got both of them? How cool :D Here I thought you just got that one

Michelle Greathouse said...

NSA,

Hi. Thank you. :) My daughter found the pic for me - if you are talking about my avatar. If you're talking about the mailbox Monday lady - I found her on deviant art. :)

I was think Alcide is very pretty. LOL And Bill has lost his mind!

Thanks for stopping by.

Michelle Greathouse said...

Lea,

Thank you. :) I thought my daughter would love them. She is all about books set in different time periods and she loves anything that has diary or journal entries. :)

B,

I know. I was so surprised when I opened the envelope and had 2 books. :) Woo-Hoo, a double happy dance. Thanks again for hosting this giveaway.

M