The Far Family picks up after Dykeman’s The Tall Woman and tells the story of Lydia McQueen’s children and grandchildren.  The novel opens in the twentieth century when protagonist Ivy Thurston Cortland, Lydia’s granddaughter, is an old woman.   Ivy and her siblings Clay, Frone, Phoebe, and Kin have left their Nantahala home for other areas of the country, but crisis strikes when Clay returns to the valley town.  An African American man is murdered shortly after his arrival, and Clay is accused of the crime.  The novel’s chapters alternate between “yesterday” and “today” to tell the story of the Martha McQueen Thurston’s children as they reunite to help their brother Clay.  The “today” chapters focus on the family crisis, while the “yesterday” chapters relate the family’s beginning.  Martha and her husband Tom purchased the mountain land where Lydia and Mark McQueen raised their family in The Tall Woman, but Martha’s children have a different relationship with the land than she did when she was a girl.  The family ties are tested and prevail.

Check this title’s availablity in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

Posted: August 15th, 2009 under 1960-1969, 1966, Dykeman, Wilma, Mountains.
Comments: 1

Although Katie and Mayme are only teenagers, they are trying to run the Rosewood Plantation on their own and convince everyone in the nearby town of Greens Crossing that nothing is amiss. Under their watch, Rosewood becomes a sanctuary for several other young women in trouble, including a girl whose mother died when she and her daughter were fleeing her abusive husband, and an ex-slave who is hiding herself and her new baby from a cruel former master. Throughout the novel the four girls struggle to survive, keep one step ahead of those who would harm them, and find a way to pay the bank loans against the property. A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton is the the second book of the historical, faith-based Shenandoah Sisters series.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

Posted: June 19th, 2009 under 2000-, 2003, Historical, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Novels in Series, Phillips, Michael, Piedmont, Religious/Inspirational.
Comments: none

Trapeze artist Frankie is the young, orphaned star of the Doub Circus. When Frankie’s parents died they left her in the care of the circus owner and he and the other performers became her family. That Frankie is African American does not matter to them, but since she can pass as white, it is kept a secret in order to avoid controversy. On the circus’s first trip into the South, Frankie’s background is revealed and she is taken from the circus by members of the Granston, NC community. She is placed in an orphanage but after standing up for herself to a cruel authority figure, she is moved to a reform school. Eventually she is adopted, renamed Thomasena, and allowed to finish growing up outside institutions, but it is more than six years before she is free to leave Granston again.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

Posted: June 17th, 2009 under 2000, 2000-, Bowen, Sandra E., Historical, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Piedmont.
Comments: none

Chief Warrant Officer Sam Blackman lost a leg in the Iraq War and, after testifying in Congress about the treatment of veterans, was sent where they figured he wouldn’t be able to cause any more trouble: Asheville, NC.  He is almost finished with his rehab when a local woman visits him and offers him a job with her security company.  She promises to visit again, but is murdered before she can do so.  After her death, a diary written by 12 year-old Henderson Youngblood in 1919 is found hidden in her apartment … and Sam’s name is on it.  Sam leaves the VA hospital and begins his civilian life by helping the deceased woman’s sister investigate the modern crime and its connections to a death in the diary.  This is the first book in de Castrique’s series of mysteries featuring the Sam Blackman character.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

Posted: June 12th, 2009 under 2000-, 2008, Buncombe, Mountains, Mystery, Novels in Series, deCastrique, Mark.
Comments: none

Child of the South continues the story started in The Road from Chapel Hill. The War has ended, but Eugenia, Tom, and Clyde all face substantial hardships. Eugenia travels to Wilmington, where she lives with family and searches for the truth about her past and her mother. She also meets and becomes friends with Abraham Galloway, the former Union spy who is a charismatic leader and one of the new African American state Senators in Raleigh. Back in Chapel Hill, Clyde–who was crippled fighting for the Union–struggles to keep his farm afloat and his family alive. Ironically, the former fugitive-slave hunter is helped in this endeavor by Tom, the ex-slave who was given his freedom by Eugenia and at one point captured by Clyde.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library Catalog.

Posted: June 1st, 2009 under 2000-, 2009, Coast, Historical, New Hanover, Novels in Series, Orange, Piedmont, Scott, Joanna Catherine.
Comments: none

This novel presents a very negative view of small town life at the beginning of the twentieth century. White men rule the town of Rivers Bend, and they are free to abuse their family members and the Black residents of the area.  When a young African American is accused of assaulting a mentally disabled White girl, he is promptly lynched.  The book follows the murderers over the next twenty years as their lives unravel. To a degree that is rare in real life, in this novel the guilty get their just desserts.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

Posted: May 13th, 2009 under 1960-1969, 1964, Carlyle, Sylvia J., Piedmont.
Comments: none

Time’s Witness is narrated by Cuddy Mangum, formerly a homocide detective and now the Chief of Police for the Piedmont town of Hillston. By his own admission Cuddy doesn’t have the best thing one can have in Hillston (class), or even the second best thing (looks). What he does have are brains and he makes use of them in this, the second of the Justin and Cuddy mysteries. With a young African-American man’s execution on the horizon, racial tensions rise in the town and things only get worse when the convict’s brother is murdered. Then a candidate for governor becomes involved and starts receiving death threats. Complicating matters is the fact that the politician’s wife is Cuddy’s first–and perhaps only real–love.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

Posted: March 24th, 2009 under 1980-1989, 1989, Malone, Michael, Mystery, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Novels in Series, Piedmont.
Comments: none

Katie Clairborne and Mary Ann (Mayme) Jukes were born in the same county less than a year apart, but they did not meet until the Civil War brought tragedy to both their lives. Mayme, a slave on a plantation outside the fictional Greens Crossing, is the lone survivor of an attack by marauding Confederate deserters. She flees and eventually finds herself at Rosewood, the plantation owned by the Clairbornes. Unfortunately, the same gang attacked Rosewood and everyone is dead except Katie. The girls decide to run the plantation and keep the deaths a secret to protect Katie’s claim on the land. They form a strong bond and, through toil and faith, they survive together. This is the first book in the Shenandoah Sisters series of historical, faith-based novels.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

Posted: March 10th, 2009 under 2000-, 2003, Historical, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Novels in Series, Phillips, Michael, Religious/Inspirational.
Comments: none

• A Perilous Proposal. Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 2005.
• The Soldier’s Lady. Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 2006.
• Never Too Late. Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 2007.
• Miss Katie’s Rosewood. Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 2007.

In the Carolina Cousins books, the follow-up series to the Shenandoah Sisters books, cousins and best friends Katie and Mayme are still together, but the early years of Reconstruction are hard for the girls. They face both the normal difficulties of growing up and the many troubles of their time. Throughout the series, the girls face adversity–often related to race–and new characters who arrive at Rosewood become part of the family. The themes of friendship, forgiveness, determination, and faith run throughout the books.

Posted: February 9th, 2009 under Historical, Mystery, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Novels in Series, Phillips, Michael, Religious/Inspirational, Romance/Relationship, Series.
Comments: 2

The Soldier’s Lady is the second book in the Carolina Cousins series and, although it continues the stories of Katie and Mayme, it is focused upon Micah Duff. Micah had a hard childhood in Chicago, but grew up to become an educated, thoughtful, and spiritual man. After the end of the Civil War, the former Buffalo soldier finds his way to Rosewood Plantation where he reconnects with old friends, becomes a new and important part of the Rosewood family, and helps them face a threat from a cruel man from Emma’s past.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

Posted: January 28th, 2009 under 2000-, 2006, Historical, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Novels in Series, Phillips, Michael, Religious/Inspirational, Romance/Relationship.
Comments: none