Beloved Mother
by Laura Hunter
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Pub Date 01 Apr 2019 | Archive Date 18 Apr 2020
Bluewater Publications | BWPublications
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Description
A story of the lives of three women, tightly woven together and surviving the harsh societal environment of an Appalachian mining town in the early to mid-1900s. Two religions contrast with each other—the Cherokee spirits of the native people and the Old Testament God of the white settlers—as each woman struggles to find her place. Love and hate, marriage and adultery, childbirth and abortion, all have their parts to play. Beloved Mother accurately portrays the evilness in humanity, in which the wicked corrupt the innocent to create a vicious cycle of abuse, until one person—with a heart of understanding and forgiveness—has the courage to end it.
Advance Praise
Laura Hunter has poured her heart and soul into the pages of Beloved Mother. Her talent and her passion are present in every scene, every chapter, every image, every line. There's magic in this book! — Michael Knight, author of Eveningland (2017 Okra Pick)
Beloved Mother is an adventure story about three generations of daring women. Hunter tells us that “women have within them so much love and so much hate they sometime confuse the two,” one of the many mysteries about this fast-paced novel that will keep you wondering. — Denton Loving, author of Crimes Against Birds
Language and scene set the stage for a journey through time with three women . . . connected through blood and passion, each bound to follow her own path toward self-discovery. Though Beloved Mother spans nearly forty years, the story is interwoven tightly. The characters are compelling in their struggles to find love and a meaningful place in the world, and the action never flails. . . . Hunter has created a believable world inhabited by authentic characters, a world the reader willingly enters and leaves reluctantly only when the last page is read. — Connie Jordan Green, author of The War at Home Beloved Mother is the kind of rich story that brands itself in memory. I can still see the mining camps, smell the scents of the woods and mountains, and recall the unique people, entwined with the land, their histories, and each other. — T. K. Thorne, author of Noah’s Wife: 5500 BCE (Winner of “Book of the Year” for Historical Fiction)
Looking for riveting characters, an evocative setting, and a plot so filled with twists and turns that you'll want to hang on for dear life? Look no further than Laura Hunter's Beloved Mother. — Jennie Ivey, author of Tennessee Tales the Textbooks
Beloved Mother, Laura Hunter’s debut novel, is both inventive and lyrical. This mythic tale unfolding at the crossroads of what is real and might be real will surprise time and again. — Darnell Arnoult, author of Galaxie Wagon (Winner of the 2017 Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing)
Laura Hunter has created a world in which the land matters. Set in Appalachia, her novel crosses regional boundaries that include Native American traditions and industrial progress, while exploring the timeless themes of greed, exploitation, kinship and family. Her characters do not escape unmarked. Neither does the landscape. As in life, scars and shadows result. And though the divide between the physical and metaphysical, the imagined and empirical, the supernatural and natural is not conquered, it is survived. And survival is the truest test of story we have. Here, Hunter’s love of story shows. — Wendy Reed, author of An Accidental Memoir
In Laura Hunter's Beloved Mother, everything and everyone is connected, by root systems deep beneath the surface. The world of nature intermingles with that of humans, of the Cherokee and the white people who settled their land, and Turtleback Mountain, the Great Spirit's sacred place, towers over them all. With lyric description, conflict that tears the heart, and a girl named Lily who must claim her history in order to see her way forward, this novel gives us characters that ring true and a story both fresh and timeless. — Jennifer Horne, Poet Laureate of Alabama and author of The Little Wanderer
Laura Hunter’s epic first novel, Beloved Mother, set in small coal mining towns surrounding the mythical Turtleback Mountain, explores the complex lives of three generations of mountain women—Mona Parsons Slocomb, Anna Parsons Goodman, and Lily Marie Goodman—from the 1920s to the 1960s. . . . This is a powerful, beautiful book, both unflinching and unsentimental in its depiction of human cruelty and deception and deeply compassionate toward characters who, like many of us, stumble through dark hemlock forests, tripping over rattlesnakes and copperheads and collapsing mines that turn coffins on their heads, leaving us as changed as the characters we’ve read about and come to fear and love. — Lex Williford, author of Superman on the Roof (Winner of the 2015 Rose Metal Press 10th Annual Flash Chapbook Prize)
Marketing Plan
Beloved Mother - Laura Hunter
Ship Date: February
Publication Month: April 1, 2019
Pages: 292
Trim Size: 5.5x8.5
Binding: Perfect Bound
ISBN: 978-1-934610-98-5 Price: $18.95
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-949711-09-7
Price: $9.99
Publicity Contact: Angela Broyles – Publisher Angela.Broyles@gmail.com or 256-762-7153
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Available Editions
EDITION | Paperback |
ISBN | 9781949711097 |
PRICE | $18.95 (USD) |
Links
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Really enjoyed this. Refreshing read, great job. Full review on the blog coming shortly. . Really great job!
What a great book! This story, which spans the time period of the early 1900's through the middle of the century, is about three women living in an Appalachian mining town. The religion of the oldest, known as Two Tears, is that of the Cherokee people, which she adopted when she was rescued from an abusive husband by a Cherokee man, at the age of sixteen. The second oldest, Anna, the younger sister of Two Tears, lives by the established Old Testament religion of the white settlers of the area. Lily, Anna's daughter, learns from Two Tears, (who she refers to as Fee Granny) about, and becomes enthralled by, the Cherokee beliefs, developing great sensitivity to and awareness of the world around her. The lives of these women is greatly affected by their beliefs and their dire financial situations. But this is not a story about religion by any means. Instead, it illustrates how the poor and marginalized, often women, suffer and manage to live their lives as best they can.
This was a very well written and absorbing novel. I strongly recommend it.
Thank you to Netgalley, the author Laura Hunter and the publisher Bluewater Publications for granting my request for an ARC in return for my honest opinion.
Beloved Mother is a very good book. It hooked me at the beginning and I loved every word. The writing is well done and the characters are well thought out and developed nicely. I would read more stories by Ms Hunter.
You'll want to read this one slowly and carefully, taking in every nuance and hanging on for quickly-moving plot swerves. In this epic story of three generations of women and the multi-faceted worlds they inhabit, we find incredible strength through a long list of hardships and shifts in their realities. I loved the Native American thread that runs through this book -- and is in fact why I chose to read and review it -- and the magic that courses through it. A standout line that shows you what you're in for here: “women have within them so much love and so much hate they sometime confuse the two." Yeah, it's thought-provoking like that, a natural for book club discussions, and one for which you'll want to save your complete focus. It's got plenty of depth, and is one worth keeping on your bookshelf to read again in the future.
Readers who liked this book also liked:
Jodi Picoult; Jennifer Finney Boylan
General Fiction (Adult), Literary Fiction, Women's Fiction