The Silence of Sorrowful Hours, soon to be published, takes place before and during the Civil War. Angelise is a Swedish/French Creole Catholic girl from Martinique. After her mother dies, she and her father move to Pennsylvania where her father remarries a Quaker, and Angelise gets a big brother named Osborne. After Angelise and Osborne move to his Uncle Jonathan's farm, they establish it as a stop on the Underground Railroad. When the war breaks out, Angelise and Osborne - along with an actress and two fugitive slaves - carry out their own war against the South.
Pennsylvania farmhouse circa 1850
This book required considerable research, as you can imagine. Lots of books. Lots of online searches. Lots of Civil War movies and mini-series (some pretty awful). In April 2009 I went to Gettysburg to do hands-on research. I stayed in a B&B that had been a stop on the Underground Railroad. I spent time in the reference section of the Gettysburg Library and at the York County Historical Society. There are too many Civil War experts to allow for any mistakes in my novel!
Read the first six chapters of The Silence of Sorrowful Hours.
Prologue from The Silence of Sorrowful Hours
Since he stepped off the train from Harrisburg, very little, besides the mustard yellow depot building itself, looked familiar to Ethan. The town, once known for its central business district and educational institutions, had become a bustling tourist attraction. Hotels and souvenir shops surrounded the square. Entire families in their Sunday best strolled along the street, some dragging whining four- and five-year-olds behind them. Several establishments offered park guides and buggies for hire. Men in black suits and bowlers stood by their horses, ready to hand up ladies and lift their children. Young boys scooped up the horse droppings and shoveled it into covered buckets. When Ethan tried to hire a buggy to take him five miles east on the Hanover Pike, he was directed to a black smith shop down a side street.
An hour later, in his rental, Ethan took note of new buildings and new roads, more fences and fewer trees. They passed several carriages and wagons going in the opposite direction, a singular event in years past. Less than a mile after the churches and shops of Bonaughtown, they made their way onto a narrow road framed by two sturdy oaks just beginning to shed their acorns. Ethan knew he had arrived.
The smaller Engle place off to the right and the farmhouse and barns fifty yards beyond were situated as before. But what had been fields of oats and soybeans were grassy pastures for mares and tawny foals almost as big as their mothers. The dirt path – dust in the summer, mud in the spring – was now a wide, graveled lane lined with elms. Judging by their size, Ethan figured they must have been planted soon after he left.
Angelise was distracted. The wilting September heat was oppressive and the sound of sluggish flies bzzzz-ing in ever-widening circles was like listening to dripping water from the bathroom tap in the middle of the night. The smells of ripe apples, horse droppings, and lime from the garbage dump were dragged on the limping breeze. She was trying to keep her wits about her, when she caught the scent of wheat chaff in the air – an exquisite aspect of autumn. September. Years of Septembers. Osborne had gone to war in September. As she pushed up the loose strands of damp hair that had fallen out of their combs, the sound of an unruly horse and the grating wheels of a buggy took her attention.
The Grass Beyond the Door is the story of a girl who grows up with an alcoholic mother and a remote and distant father. She learns how to navigate her difficult teen years by finding her own sense of the possibility of a life "beyond the door" and with the help of a young man with whom she falls in love.
Excerpt from The Grass Beyond the Door
She dreamed the smell of violets; the smell of freshly mown grass was in the air. A soft breeze sneaked across Johanna’s sleeping face. She made a mewing sound. Was it a night in April? Warm first, then rainy, crickets loud in the yard; the apple trees in the orchard were billows of white blossoms. The most beautiful day, the loveliest day, revealed just before it leaves you.
