Yes, indeed there’s always time for hope and the holidays always fill my heart to the brim. I’m so looking forward to Christmas. The last few weeks I’ve felt fall in the air and it’s made the anxiousness even worse. We’ve gotten so much good rain and I feel very blessed.
HOPE’S ANGEL came out last year about this time and is set in the fictional town of Genesis where the real town of Thurber, Texas once was a thriving community. It contained the only coal mine in the state and it was also the only company run town. It was owned by the Texas and Pacific Coal Company. Nothing was free enterprise, not even the doctor. Everyone was paid in company script that could only be spent in the company store.
My fictional hero, Jericho Cane, lives there and he and his partner sell beef to the company to feed the miners. But Jericho never steps foot out of his house until after everyone goes to sleep. He suffered a horrible accident that’s left him horribly scarred so townsfolk call him a monster. He only goes out under cover of darkness.
Christmas holds painful memories so it’s nothing he wants to celebrate. His daylight hours are spent working on the sculpture of an angel holding the hand of a little girl. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do with it when it’s done and he doesn’t care. It’s for himself really.
But a pretty new doctor arrives and she’s not frightened of him. She sees his pain and is determined to help him. She’ll find him something worth living for.
I wrote the first five chapters of this story eight years ago and set it aside when I began writing for Sourcebooks. I ran across it recently and decided to finish and self-publish it. This story of acceptance and compassion needs to be read.
But back to Thurber. In 1886, immigrants flooded in from Italy, Germany, Ireland, and many other countries, all looking for work. The Texas and Pacific Coal Company hired all ages–even boys as young as fourteen. This picture of a group of them isn’t very good but I see the look of despair on their faces and want to cry. Immigrants had it so rough and were taken advantage of at every turn.
Once the coal played out, the company turned to manufacturing brick. They paved half the streets in our growing state a great many of which are still being used today.
I visited Thurber a couple of times only it’s now a ghost town. Nothing much remains except one restaurant called The Smoke Stack. If you’re ever that way, stop in. The food is excellent. My sister and I visited the cemetery and were struck by the sheer number of children’s graves. I’m not sure what happened to them but it was very sad seeing the little lambs on top of the tombstones. Maybe some kind of epidemic would be my guess.
Jericho Cane and Irish doctor Kathleen O’Shea have quite a story to tell and I hope you enjoy it. This sweet romance is $2.99 in Kindle Unlimited and the print book is $9.99.
If you haven’t gotten in the holiday spirit yet, maybe this will do it. I know a good many of you read Christmas books all year and that’s good. I’ll have this available in Audible next month so look for that.
How do you choose which holiday stories to read? Christmas in the title, the cover, the price, or by the author? I’m giving away three ebook copies so don’t forget to leave a comment.
Linda Broday