Eden by Jamie Lisa Forbes


Publisher:  Pronghorn Press, (May 25, 2020)
Category: Literary Fiction, Southern Fiction, Family Fiction
Tour dates: May & June, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-941052-32-2
Available in Print and ebook, 285 pages

Description Eden by Jamie Lisa Forbes

Rowen Hart has been raised as the pampered son and only child of a prominent family in the small community of White Rock, North Carolina. It’s the 1950s and he’s drifting through the days, following the life path his parents have planned for him and preparing to go away to college. When his father’s suicide turns his world upside down, he finds himself responsible for his mother in their suddenly reduced circumstances that leave them dependent on his uncle, his father’s business partner.

Ill prepared to take over as head of the family, Rowen doesn’t know which way to turn. Then a neighbor’s ten year old daughter comes to live with them, baffling him with her wild behavior and never ending attempts to win his approval and making his new responsibilities even more overwhelming.

As Rowen tries to find his way, he begins to question everything about his upbringing, his current circumstances and his plans for the future as they turn to dust in his hands.

Praise Jamie Lisa Forbes

“Throughout this beautifully written story (Unbroken), I pictured the scenes, the characters, and visualized it all as if I walked among them. Five stars.”-Laurel Rain-Snow, Rainy Days and Mondays

“Unbroken is a powerful, absorbing book from the first page to the last. Forbes’ Wyoming ranch background adds rich flavors to the story. The author draws realistic, complex characters. Unbroken is an unvarnished testimonial to a way of life that few of us know.”– Mary E. Trimble, author of ‘ TUBOB: Two Years in West Africa with the Peace Corps’

“The Widow Smalls, is a collection of wonderful stories that will elicit a range of emotions, following a number of different themes, like loss, jealousy, regret and acceptance. Each of the stories was as well written as the last, and I enjoyed each one immensely. Wonderful diverse plots, linked with the similar thread of ranch life, and defined characters, made for a truly great read. Author Jamie Forbes, has really created something special here, a must read for all short story lovers.”- Michelle Geist, Verified Amazon Review

Guest Post Jamie Lisa Forbes

The topic offered to me for this guest post was what captures my imagination about the South. I can speak a great deal about what captures my imagination about North Carolina, my home state since 1994. 

          I first visited North Carolina in 1976 and being a Wyoming girl and accustomed to miles of Wyoming range, what captivated me then, and now, is the variety of magnificent landscapes in such a small area.  In the west, the Blue Ridge Mountains angle across the state: tree-covered peaks that drop dramatically into lush valley pastures. One of my favorite Blue Ridge sights is the late spring rhododendron bloom. Most of the understory of the Blue Ridge is covered with rhododendron thickets. Last spring when my little Arabian horse, Cody and I were winding up a mountain trail, the white and pink blossoms were so thick on either side of us that it felt as if we’d entered a fairyland. What compounded the feeling were the little streams tricking besides us.  Looking back down the mountain, all I could see was a cascade of white.

          Eastward are the rolling hills called the “Piedmont,” a country that alternates between woods and rolling pastures. This is where I live. Over time, I have come to appreciate the trees on my little acreage as individuals, from the hickory in my front yard that towers over the neighborhood to the three red oaks in the back, my “three sisters.”  Trees, I understand now, take a longer view of time than we do. These were here before me.  I pray they remain long after.

Every spring, the wood thrushes come back, birds with a song so melodic that Thoreau believed it “changes all hours to eternal morning” and so it does.  Fall in both the mountains and the Piedmont is the season where every tree brightens to its own unique color until all blend together in a palette of reds, oranges, yellows, russets, and golds.   

          Still farther eastward is the coastal plain, which is comprised of marshes and drained farmland.  In my first long drive from Greensboro to Currituck, on the northeastern coast, I was struck by the beauty of the farmland stretching all the way to the coast.  It was years later that I learned that all this land had been drained by slaves and yet I have not found one memorial to that fact.

          I was able to visit some of the sounds on a trip from Oak Island on the southern coast to Swan Quarter on the Pamlico Sound.  The sound country is rich in marsh grasses and filled with coastal birds. The sounds start from tree-lined banks broadening to ever wider waterways until in the distance; one can hear the waves and the beckoning of the ocean.

          It was the dichotomy between this lovely state and its social ills, influenced by its dark history that made me want to write about it.  North Carolina is home of the 1898 Wilmington Massacre, where white citizens rioted against elected black citizens. In Eden, I refer to the shooting of a black soldier in Durham in 1944.

I found that sexism is ingrained here, and domestic violence is commonplace. As of the modern era, the National Coalition against Domestic Violence released statistics showing 43.9% of North Carolina women as having experienced domestic violence, intimate partner abuse and/or stalking in 2014. There were 108 homicides in 2013 due to domestic violence. 

          In my own travels across North Carolina, I have been a witness to many family tragedies, and I would say that in all of them, the lack of equal opportunity to education and supportive resources has been the common denominator.

          In spite of the region’s struggles, or maybe because of it, its musical traditions have carried across the globe, including folk musicians such as Benton Flippen and Elizabeth Cotten, jazz musicians such as John Coltrane and Nina Simone and the state’s international legend, Doc Watson. North Carolina is rich in heritage and culture and yet marred by a legacy that it would like to plow under.

          In a small central North Carolina town, I met an older gentleman who was warm and jovial and full of hope despite a lifetime of struggle. Listening to him, I thought that the complacency that allowed racism, sexism and class bias to endure over decades is not the end of North Carolina’s story. Even in the smallest pockets of the state, unseen from the major highways, there are those of all races who reach out to bridge what divides

About Jamie Lisa Forbes

Award winning author, Jamie Lisa Forbes was raised on a ranch along the Little Laramie River near Laramie, Wyoming. She attended the University of Colorado where she obtained degrees in English and philosophy. After fourteen months living in Israel, she returned to her family’s ranch where she lived for another fifteen years.

In 1994, she moved to Greensboro, North Carolina. In 2001, she graduated from the University of North Carolina School of Law and began her North Carolina law practice.

Her first novel, Unbroken, won the WILLA Literary Award for Contemporary Fiction in 2011. Her collection of short stories, The Widow Smalls and Other Stories, won the High Plains Book Awards for a short story collection in 2015. Her law practice gave her the opportunity to travel many of the back roads of North Carolina and meet the unique and diverse individuals who inspired Eden.

Website: https://www.jamielisaforbes.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Jamielisaforbes
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JamieLisaForbes

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Giveaway Eden by Jamie Lisa Forbes

This giveaway is for the winner’s choice of print or ebook however, print is open to the U.S. only and ebook is available worldwide. There will be 2 winners. This giveaway ends July 1, 2020,midnight pacific time. Entries are accepted via Rafflecopter only.

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