Monday, September 16, 2013

Mother of Rain by Karen Spears Zacharias - a Shout Out!

The Dew Review for Mother Of Rain doesn't come out until November as we are so swamped right now..  (I say that with a happy dance.) But I recently finished this book and found it to be fantabulous.    Below is a short excerpt from the book to give you a tasty flavor burst!   Meanwhile Karen is touring all over the place - tour dates below.
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ZEBULON 

  Horseshoe Falls was mine and Maizee’s special place. 

 I’d first played up there as kids with the Mosely boys, pretending we were Indians fighting over the giant chestnut that sat atop the ridge. At well over 100 feet tall, the tree was a sure-fire route to the lap of the Great Spirit, or so we boasted. We boys told ourselves that chewing the bark of the chestnut could make us stronger than the town kids, who didn’t know anything about trees and their powers. Town kids couldn’t tell a chestnut from a redbud. 

 Maizee was standing under the grandfather chestnut the first time I kissed her.

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Mother of Rain
Author: Karen Spears Zacharias
Publisher: Mercer University Press
Publication Date: September 4, 2013

 Book Description:
"Maizee Hurd was an easy target for hard times," according to Burdy Luttrell, the town healer. Burdy is a Melungeon woman with striking features and mysterious ways who owns the land the Hurds leased following their marriage on June 3, 1940.

Maizee moved upriver at the age of ten after tragedy struck, and she was sent off to be raised by a childless aunt and her doctor husband. Shortly after Maizee's arrival in the rural mountain community of Christian Bend--carrying only a small suitcase, her mama's Bible, and her doll Hitty--the young girl began hearing voices.

It was the tender love of her husband Zeb and their shared passion for the Appalachian hills and rivers of East Tennessee that helped quiet the voices. But, as Zeb prepares for deployment, Maizee's life is rocked by the ripples of World War II. Despite the love that carried her through the birth of their son, Rain, and the boy's subsequent illness that rendered him deaf, Maizee can't silence the demons in her own head.