The winner of a paperback copy of the book, Coldwater Revival by Nancy Jo Jenkins from my blogsite http://zyphe.blogspot.com is… (drumroll pls…) Chadwick Hollie… The publisher will be contacting you through the email you sent me.
Thanks to all those who joined in the contest. There will be another contest next month. Stay tuned!
I’m giving away a book at my blog http://zyphe.blogspot.com. The publisher has agreed to send a copy of Coldwater Revival, a debut novel of Nancy Jo Jenkins to anyone who visits my blog and posts a comment. Yes, you heard me right. All you have to do to win is visit my blog at http://zyphe.blogspot.com and leave a comment by clicking (comments) below the blog post and whoala! you already have an entry! Easy huh? Now, go to my blog and win it for yourself!!! You still have a week to post your comments…
Prologue
Some miracles pour down on us like a mighty river. Some fall with the gentleness of raindrops.
To
hear my papa tell it, I was the tiniest miracle ever dropped from the
heavens. At least from the cloudy firmament hovering over Coldwater,
Texas.
Seems my bent toward stubbornness first evidenced itself
while I was ripening in the fountainhead of my beginnings, and it
persists until this day. Culling out the hottest day of 1915, I arrived
two-and-a-half months ahead of schedule, on a day so hot the Devil
himself must have been riding the wind. Anyway… that’s what Papa
claimed.
“Should’ve stayed put in your swimming pool,” he used to tease. “Been a heck of a lot cooler.”
But,
of course, I hadn’t. My willful foot had reared back and mulekicked
Mama in the stomach, commencing her birthing pains. Thus I was born,
smack in the middle of Mr. Oswalt Peavy’s dry, dusty cotton patch.
Chapter One
Coldwater, Texas
1933
Three
weeks before I was to marry Gavin O’Donnell, I set my feet upon the
beaten path leading to Two-Toe Creek. What I had to offer Gavin in
marriage–my whole heart, or just a part–depended on the decision I would make today.
As
my feet tracked the dusty pathway they stirred loose soil to the air.
My heart stirred as well, for the guilt I had buried in its depths
smoldered as though my brother had just died, and not five years
earlier. In the shadowed days following the tragedy, my disgrace had
glared like a packet of shiny new buttons. I’d not thought to hide it
at the time. In truth, I’d thought of little, other than how to
survive. But at some point during that time of sorrowful existence,
when my days and nights strung together like endless telegraph wires, I
dug a trench around my heart and buried my shame.
From that day
until this, I deeded myself the actor’s role, closing the curtain on my
stain of bitter memories, hiding my sorrow behind a veil of pretense.
But that old deceiver, Time, had neither softened my guilt nor put it
to rest; only allowed it ample pause to fester like deadly gangrene.
Now, as the day of my wedding drew near, my heart cried out for
healing. It was, you see, far wiser than my head. My heart understood
its need for restoration – before I exchanged wedding vows with Gavin.
For this reason, I now walked the trail to Two-Toe Creek. To revisit my
failures of yesteryear and reclaim the peace that had slipped past the
portals of my childhood. Perhaps then I could give Gavin the entirety
of my heart.
