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Eden by Jamie Lisa ForbesEden 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
Eden by Jamie Lisa Forbes

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.

My Thoughts Eden by Jamie Lisa Forbes


It is 1950, as Rowen Hart is about to go off to college, his world splits apart when his father commits suicide. His mother takes to her bed and the only one left to help pick up the pieces is their housekeeper Adeline.  Rowen has a summer job picking tobacco but he slacks off quite a bit.  As the book opens, he has slacked off to attend a trail that 10 year old Eden is called to testify at.  Her father died around the same time and Rowan’s father. She testifies that her uncle shot her father but no one believes the 10 year old, including her own mother.  Eden shows up on the doorstep of Rowans and asks his mother if she can live with them.

She looks up to Rowen and takes to following him around.  He goes to his Uncle, who was in business with his father to get his father’s share.  His uncle said there was nothing left from his father’s share and gives him a little money for his mother.  He says he will give his mother a small sum every month but Rowen will have to pay for college and also make up the balance his family will need to survive. He suspects his uncle is lying about his father’s share but just doesn’t have the backbone to argue.  Against his mother’s and Adeline’s wishes, he decides not to go to college.

Rowan’s luck turns when their neighbor Claude stops by to repair the broken gate that Rowen keeps putting off fixing.  Actually, he doesn’t really know how and doesn’t have the proper tools.  Rowen comes out of the house to ask Claude why he is fixing their fence and then proceed to help as Claude directs them.  Claude sees something in Rowen and invites him to work for him on his construction crew until the end of summer when he will leave for college.  Of course he doesn’t go to college.

As the months and years go by, Rowen starts to mature.  He marries and has 3 children and keeps bring money home.  However, he still has a long way to go.  There are many times I wanted to slap some sense into him.  I wanted someone to slap some sense into him!

The characters leaped of the page and welcomed me into their dysfunctional lives. I couldn’t help joining them; I was caught like a deer in headlights.  I especially loved Eden, so precocious and full of life despite her lot in life.  I would love to tell you more but don’t want to risk spoilers.

I really had a hard time putting this book down and be warned, there were parts that made me cry like a baby.  Jamie Lisa Forbes owes me a box of tissue!  She really captured the 1950’s south, warts and all.  Her take on the human condition reminds of the greats like John Steinbeck and Harper Lee!  This is her third book and I also read and loved the first two.  The first two won awards and I believe ‘Eden’ is just as deserving! She really captures the heart and soul of her characters.  I imagine they haunt her as they will haunt me for a long time to come.  I just can’t get them out of my head.  I highly recommend ‘Eden’ and give it 5 stars!

About Jamie Lisa ForbesEden by 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

Buy Eden by Jamie Lisa Forbes


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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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Follow Eden by Jamie Lisa Forbes Tour


Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus May 15 Kickoff & Guest Post

Jo Amazon May 18 Review

Amy Locks, Hooks and Books May 19 Review & Excerpt

David Goodreads May 20 Review

Bookgirl Goodreads May 21 Review

Betty Toots Book Reviews May 22 Review & Interview

Lu Ann Rocking Book Reviews May 26 Review & Guest Post

Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus May 27 Review

Just Another Reader May 29 Review

StephenMatlock.com June 1 Review & Interview

Linda Lu Goodreads June 5 Review

Dawn Bound 4 Escape June 8 Guest Review

Jas International Book Promotion June 12 Review

Becky Sincerely Uplifting June 15 Review & Excerpt

Kathleen Celticlady’s Reviews June 22 Guest review

Mindy A Room Without Books is Empty June 24 Review

Kimberly Amazon June 30 Review

Eden by Jamie Lisa Forbes

Eden by Jamie Lisa ForbesEden 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
Eden by Jamie Lisa Forbes

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 ForbesEden by 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

Buy Eden by Jamie Lisa Forbes

To be announced closer to publication.

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.

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Follow Eden by Jamie Lisa Forbes Tour


Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus May 15 Kickoff & Guest Post

Jo Amazon May 18 Review

Amy Locks, Hooks and Books May 19 Review & Excerpt

David Goodreads May 20 Review

Bookgirl Goodreads May 21 Review

Betty Toots Book Reviews May 22 Review & Interview

Lu Ann Rocking Book Reviews May 26 Review & Guest Post

Just Another Reader May 29 Review

StephenMatlock.com June 1 Review & Interview

Linda Lu Goodreads June 5 Review

Dawn Bound 4 Escape June 8 Guest Review

Jas International Book Promotion June 12 Review

Becky Sincerely Uplifting June 15 Review & Excerpt

Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus June 19 Review

Kathleen Celticlady’s Reviews June 22 Guest review

Mindy A Room Without Books is Empty June 24 Review

Kimberly Amazon June 30 Review

Eden by Jamie Lisa Forbes