I have written three novels. Each one begins with a single woman, my storyteller.
I follow her like a newspaper reporter. As we go along others join with stories of their own. Like a family tree the branches begin to fill the page. One character leads to another and another and another.
My first novel Under the Circumstances is Millie’s story. It begins in 1927 with Millie, a seventeen-year-old with a carboard suitcase by her side with her thumb in the air, waiting for a ride to a bigger town. Poorly educated with no prospects, she leaves behind her sick mother and infant daughter. Buck Wilson gives her a ride; Miss Sarah the white woman who owns the boarding house gives her a job; Cora Butterfield, the colored woman who runs the kitchen and her husband Lester give her hope.
Magdala, my second novel tells the story of Magdala Martin, Coral Butterfield’s mother. It’s 1893 when Magdala only fifteen sees her father lynched in the woods of rural South Georgia. She leaves home with her mother and sisters. In that same boarding house where Millie will land years later, Magdala gets a job as a nanny for John Gibson, the Yale-educated owner and widower with an infant daughter. A friendship develops from a love of books and soon they are sharing their thoughts about the writings of Frederick Douglass and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
And finally I found Carolyn Allen in my husband’s family tree and she wanted her story told. So I wrote about her in The Girl in the Red Beret. Through Carolyn I meet George Middleton. They share their story with me, with their voices alternating from one chapter to the next. George takes me to 1940’s Birmingham. With Carolyn I meet her parents, sisters and her high school love Cole Williams in 1920’s Flovilla, Georgia.
I dare not tell you more or you won’t read my books. Come along with Millie, Magdala, and Carolyn. You’ll find your way into their stories. You’ll find these stories familiar, some parts may even be your own.
