First Sentence Fridays and Free Book Friday! Chapter 7

What day is it? Do you know what day it is? (anyone got the Geico commercial in their mind?) Haha. Sorry Mr. Camel, it’s Friday! 🙂

Working in a turpentine camp in the Deep South during the Depression era was a combination of positives and negatives. It was rhythmic, often peaceful, yet the workload was brutal. The flat grassy savannas of a pine forest, and the tall longleaf pines were uniquely and oddly beautiful, yet the landscape was filled with danger in many forms.

A job during this time, with a place to stay (such as it was = shacks/shanties), and access to food was a Godsend, but once in a camp, which operated under a debt peonage system, getting out was almost impossible. Oftentimes, laborers became stuck in the system, unable to leave, a type of slavery.

The days started early, before the sun came up. By the time the first rays of light crept over the landscape, work had already begun. Sap started running around February to March and lasted through late fall. When temperatures soared, it’s easy to imagine the difficulty of working in such conditions.

Turpentine Worker, Georgia, circa 1937 beside a telltale catface

Chipping – one man is using a bark hack, the other a puller. A puller was used when the streaks in the bark, called a catface, became too tall to reach.

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Chapter 7

Del

The shack rouser shouted and rang a cowbell at 4:30 a.m.

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FREE BOOK FRIDAY!

This week I’m giving away a reader’s choice of one of my backlist books! The books available are:

The Road to Bittersweet
The Forgiving Kind
The Moonshiner’s Daughter

Unfortunately, I don’t have any more copies of The Education of Dixie Dupree. 🙁

This is a Del chapter, but we’re going to use a question about Rae Lynn for this giveaway. In The Saints of Swallow Hill, Rae Lynn is forced to make a very difficult decision that will impact her the rest of her life.

Some of you may not want to answer this question for personal reasons. That’s okay! There will be other chances to win a book. For those willing to share, and for a chance to win:

What is the most difficult decision you’ve ever made, and what effect has it had on you?

A winner will be randomly selected and announced on Monday!

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SNEAK PEEK!!!

Have you taken your sneak peek yet? You get to read the first SIX CHAPTERS of The Saints of Swallow Hill for FREE, and if that teaser doesn’t entice you to pre-order a copy to see what happens in the rest of the book, nothing will! For the sneak peek, you can select your choice of e-book, and one way to do this is via Goodreads where all varieties for download are available with one click.

Or – you can go straight to the Kensington Publishing Company site, and read the sample right here.

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NETGALLEY

Are you a NetGalley reviewer? The Saints of Swallow Hill is available for request! I’ve started seeing a few reviews. It’s so exciting to read what people are saying about the book!

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Last, but not least, don’t forget to:

Add The Saints of Swallow Hill to your Goodreads “To Read” shelf

Share this post with your reader friends!

Follow me on Goodreads, Twitter, Facebook, or my blog!

Doing the above helps a lot more than you think . . . but most importantly, I’m grateful for all of you following along here each week!