An Old Familiar Place

Christmas Eve, 2015 To be nearing the end of another Novel of the Old South is a great feeling. I’m sharing a small piece with you in hopes that you will become as excited about this book as I am. It is the sequel to Rachel, After the Darkness, and part of the series , The Mississippi Boys, Isaac's House,  and JOAB. Many of you expressed your feelings about Rachel . You didn’t want it to end. I knew when I wrote the last chapter that it would have to be continued, which suited me fine. I should be finished with the manuscript in less than two weeks. Then for the hard edit, which will take some more time. And the publishing process—well, I cannot put a timeline to that. As soon as it goes to the publisher, I will begin preparing for a month of signings from Memphis to the Mississippi Delta to the Hills of Northeast Mississippi, where I will be at home! Portions of Chapter Nine Light in the Darkness The clock in the hall ticked away at the Jamison farm; Jessie, a nervous wre...

Decoration Day   An amazing sequence of events began to unfold the first year after the end of the War Between the States. As far back as April 25, 1866, some southern women from the little North Central Mississippi town of Columbus were decorating the graves of Confederate soldiers who had fallen at Shiloh, one of the bloodiest battles of the War. They placed fresh spring flowers on the graves of their fallen heroes, soon realizing the graves of the Union soldiers were bare because there were no family members to care for their burial sites and to memorialize them. The women began to lay flowers on the Union soldiers’ graves as well as the graves of their own Confederate dead. It was a day of remembrance of the young soldiers who had been reluctant to fight a cruel war that meant they would have to kill or wound their fellow countrymen. Three years after the end of the War, in May of 1868, modeling the tribute paid by the women of Columbus, Mississippi, Un...

I would have to revisit RACHEL.  That was a foregone conclusion. The Payne saga is far from over, and I've opened the sequel, loving every minute of it. Where will it lead? I have no idea. That's what makes fiction so wonderful. You don't have to explain it. You just have to "step into the water and wade out a little bit deeper." Here's a portion to slake your thirst. Stay with me! I promise to give it a title soon, and you can count on the historical portion being as near accurate as research will allow. Step Into The Water— From the Prologue of The Book With No Name She dared to trifle with the past searching for answers to reasons why—answers that would suffice to comfort and cajole her into concluding that the war years and those that followed had not all been in vain. One thing had led to another. The train rumbled out of the depot of the Bluff City, Memphis. For three days of insufferable jerking and jolting, three evenings of watchi...