Appalachian Story Giveaway

I’ve been sharing some bits and pieces of scenes from some of my backlist books. Since my new story, A Chance for Kallie Mae, due out in May, is set in the Eastern Kentucky Appalachian area, I decided to share a little about some of my Appalachian stories. Last week, while my website was having some hiccups, I shared about how I tried to get the rhythm of my first Appalachian story right in These Healing Hills. (If you subscribe to my posts here and got that post or any of the others that initially were lost during the website hiccups more than once, I apologize.)

Tonight, I’m sharing a little about a secondary character in An Appalachian Summer, a book also with history of the Frontier Nursing Service, but coming from a different point of view. These Healing Hills is from the perspective of one of the midwives. An Appalachian Summer is from the perspective of a courier. Couriers for the FNS were young women, usually from well-to-do families, who volunteered to go to the mountains for a few weeks or months to run errands, take care of the horses, muck out stalls, and help the nurse midwives any way that was needed. They didn’t get paid. They lived rough without the modern conveniences they were accustomed to, and most of them considered it the highlight of their young lives. They felt so strongly about their time in the mountains that they would sign up their daughters on the courier waiting list as soon they were born. Piper was one of those couriers in An Appalachian Summer. She learned how to milk a cow and kill and pluck a chicken along with plenty of other eye-opening experiences.

But this post is about her aunt, Truda. While Granny Em that I wrote about in the post about the rhythm of the mountains was one of those surprise characters who sometimes just appear in a scene and find a place in my stories, Truda was part of the family from the beginning. But as the story progressed and I got to know Truda better, she didn’t just slide out of view after those first scenes I had expected her to be in. She showed up in the mountains to not only see Piper but a man she had once been attracted to when she was a young woman. So, coming to get re-acquainted with him is the idiotic dream she’s talking about here in this graphic. As it turned out, Truda even got her own viewpoint scenes as her character became more important to the story. In the following scene where she thinks about being midstream in her life, she is actually on a horse midstream in the river.

When Truda thought about it in the clear light of day, she realized she was being an absolute idiot, but every person should be allowed one idiotic dream in her lifetime. She wasn’t going with the expectation that she and Jackson would do more than exchange a few pleasantries and perhaps wonder how the other one had gotten so old. She blushed when she remembered how long she’d spent in front of a mirror that morning, trying to decide how old she did look. When she twisted to the side and peered at her rear in the mirror, she had smiled. At least she hadn’t put on weight. She looked the same as she had years ago, except, of course, for the aging.

Right. Except for those wrinkles beginning around her eyes and gray hairs sneaking in among the dark brown tresses. As water splashed up around her, she could almost feel the waves she’d worked so hard to crimp in her hair wilting in midstream.

Midstream. That’s where she was in her life.

~~

Hope you enjoyed this peek into An Appalachian Summer. The cover with the purple flowers is one that catches a lot of readers’ eyes when I’m at a book event.

What age do you think a person is when they get midstream in life?

Another Book Giveaway

For fun, let’s do another book giveaway. This time with my books with Appalachian settings as I share some from them. I might even share a little snippet from A Chance for Kallie Mae. Maybe. Let’s see. To enter, just leave a comment on the post. I’ll keep the giveaway going for a couple of weeks. The deadline for entries is midnight EST on March 7, 2026. I’ll announce the winner, after sending an email to her/him, on my March 8th post here on One Writer’s Journal. As usual, each comment on a new post from now until then will get a new entry. One winner will get her/his choice of one of my Appalachian books.  You have to be at least 18 years old to enter.

Also, right now  you can get a great preorder deal on A Chance for Kallie Mae from Baker Book House. There will be some added goodies, a bookmark and a signed bookplate while supplies last.