It’s Monday! What are you reading? Feel free to grab this meme and hop over to bookjourney.wordpress and join in the fun.
I am originally from the great state of Mississippi, and the work I am reading this week feels like my old uncle is sitting in his rocking chair on the front porch telling me a story. I have always struggled with dialects in the written word, both writing them and reading them. Some read pretty awful, some are difficult to get through (I’m thinking Mark Twain), and once in a great while an author nails it.
S.K. Nicholls absolutely rocks it in RED CLAY AND ROSES. I’m about halfway through the book and enjoying it immensely.
THE BOOK BLURB
A fictionalized true story of life in the Deep South during the time of Jim Crow Law, and before Roe vs. Wade. Women were supposed to keep quiet and serve, abortion was illegal, adoption difficult, and racism rampant. The discovery of an old ledger opens a window into the dynamics of the 1950s-60s, when the world was beginning to change. Unspoken secrets are shared between Beatrice, The Good Doctor’s wife, and Moses Grier, their black handyman. The Grier’s daughter, Althea, suffers a tragedy that leaves her family silent and mournful. Her brother, Nathan, looks for answers from a community that is deaf, blind, and dumb. A summer romance between Nathan and Sybil, an independent, high-spirited, white woman, leaves more unresolved. Sybil is torn between living the mundane life of her peers, or a life that involves fastening herself to a taboo relationship. Witness social progress through the eyes of those who lived it.
AUTHOR S.K. NICHOLLS
Susan Koone Nicholls is an R.N. who lives in Orlando, Florida, with her husband, Greg. She was born, raised and educated in Georgia, where she also raised her family. She has three children, a step-son, and two grandchildren. Orphaned from her mother at an early age, she spent time in foster care and in a children’s group home in the North Georgia Mountains, The Ethyl Harpst Home.
RED CLAY AND ROSES is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords, and you can check out her blog here on WordPress.
Lori Crane 
What an awesome kindness! You know, that was probably the most challenging thing ever about writing this piece. Getting the dialect the way the ear hears it, without being silly or contrived and maintaining respect. Turning off spell check and grammar check, editing the finite details. I wanted Moses to sound like Moses when I wrote this, but I also wanted to show how much I genuinely respected the man.
You accomplished it perfectly!