"On a brisk February morning while walking to work, Ruth Foster is stopped by the local sheriff. He insists she accompany him to a health clinic, threatening to arrest her if she doesn't undergo testing in order to preserve decency and prevent the spread of sexual disease. Though Ruth has never shared more than a kiss with a man, by day's end she is one of dozens of women held at the State Industrial Farm Colony for Women. Some are there because they were reported for promiscuity by neighbors, husbands, strangers. Some were accused of prostitution. Others were just pretty and unmarried. Or poor and 'suspicious.' One was eating dinner alone in a restaurant. Another spoke to a soldier.
Josephine's sin was running a business as a single woman. Maude's was trying to drown her sorrows. Frances had lost her mind. Opal married a man with a mean streak. Some, like fifteen year old Stella, are brought in because they're victims of assault. Superintendent Dorothy Baker, convinced that she's transforming degenerate souls into upstanding members of society, oversees the women's medical treatment and 'training' until they're deemed ready for parole. Everyone at the Colony learns to abide by Mrs. Baker’s rule book or face the consequences—solitary confinement, grueling work assignments, and worse. But some refuse to be cowed. Some find ways to fight back—at any cost."
"Talk of impending war is a steady drumbeat throughout North Carolina, though Joetta McBride pays it little heed. She and her husband, Ennis, have built a modest but happy life for themselves, raising two sons, fifteen-year-old Henry, and eleven-year-old Robert, on their small subsistence farm. They do not support the Confederacy's position on slavery, but Joetta considers her family to be neutral, believing this is simply not their fight.
Her opinion is not favored by many in their community, including Joetta's own father-in-law, Rudean. A staunch Confederate supporter, he fills his grandsons' heads with stories about the glory of battle and the Southern cause until one night Henry runs off to join the war. At Joetta's frantic insistence, Ennis leaves to find their son and bring him home.
But soon weeks pass with no word from father or son and Joetta is battered by the strain of running a farm with so little help. As the country becomes further entangled in the ramifications of war, Joetta finds herself increasingly at odds with those around her—until one act of kindness brings her family to the edge of even greater disaster."
"During the Great Depression, labor camps crop up in remote areas throughout the American South. Destitute workers live under terrible conditions. Trapped in these isolated locations, workers are entirely dependent on the often greedy, abusive camp owners who provide food and housing at grossly inflated prices. But for the most desperate among America's vast unemployed, these camps are often the last and only option.
This much is true for three individuals whose lives intersect in the deep woods of Georgia at the Swallow Hill turpentine camp in 1932. For Rae Lynn Cobb, a young woman disguised as a man, Swallow Hill offers distance and anonymity from those who would wrongly imprison her for killing her husband. For a charming bachelor named Del Reese, it's a place where backbreaking work might drown out memories of a recent trauma.
But Swallow Hill is no easy haven. The camp is ruled by a sadistic boss named Crow and the greedy commissary owner Otis Riddle, a man who takes out his frustrations on his wife, Cornelia. Del and 'Ray Cobb' are tested as they struggle to survive harsh, brutal conditions. As Rae Lynn forges a deeper friendship with Del and Cornelia, she begins to envision a path out of the camp. But she will have to come to terms with her past before she can open herself to a new life and seize the chance to begin again . . ."
"Generations of Sassers have made moonshine in the Brushy Mountains of Wilkes County, North Carolina. Their history is recorded in a leather-bound journal that belongs to Jessie Sasser's daddy, but Jessie wants no part of it. As far as she's concerned, moonshine caused her mother's death a dozen years ago.
Her father refuses to speak about her mama, or about the day she died. But Jessie has a gnawing hunger for the truth—one that compels her to seek comfort in food. Yet all her self-destructive behavior seems to do is feed what her school's gruff but compassionate nurse describes as the 'monster' inside Jessie.
Resenting her father's insistence that moonshining runs in her veins, Jessie makes a plan to destroy the stills, using their neighbors as scapegoats. Instead, her scheme escalates an old rivalry and reveals long-held grudges. As she endeavors to right wrongs old and new, Jessie's loyalties will bring her to unexpected revelations about her family, her strengths—and a legacy that may provide her with the answers she has been longing for."
"For twelve-year-old Martha 'Sonny' Creech, there is no place more beautiful than her family's cotton farm. She, her two brothers, and her parents work hard on their land—hoeing, planting, picking—but only Sonny loves the rich, dark earth the way her father does. When a tragic accident claims his life, her stricken family struggles to fend off ruin—until their rich, reclusive neighbor offers to help finance that year's cotton crop.
Sonny is dismayed when her mama accepts Frank Fowler's offer; even more so when Sonny's best friend, Daniel, points out that the man has ulterior motives. Sonny has a talent for divining water—an ability she shared with her father and earns her the hated nickname 'water witch' in school. But uncanny as that skill may be, it won't be enough to offset Mr. Fowler's disturbing influence in her world. Even her bond with Daniel begins to collapse under the weight of Mr. Fowler's bigoted taunts. Though she tries to bury her misgivings for the sake of her mama's happiness, Sonny doesn't need a willow branch to divine that a reckoning is coming, bringing with it heartache, violence—and perhaps, a fitting and surprising measure of justice."
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