WOW: Glow & Cracked

Synopsis (2012 Debut March)

In the autumn of 1941, Amelia J. McGee, a young woman of Cherokee and Scotch-Irish descent, and an outspoken pamphleteer for the NAACP, hastily sends her daughter, Ella, alone on a bus home to Georgia in the middle of the night—a desperate action that is met with dire consequences when the child encounters two drifters and is left for dead on the side of the road. Ella awakens to find herself in the homestead of Willie Mae Cotton, a hoodoo practitioner and former slave, and her partner, Mary-Mary Freeborn, tucked away in the fertile Takatoka Forest. As Ella begins to heal, the legacies of her lineage are revealed.

Glow transports us from Washington, D.C., on the brink of World War II to 1836 and into the mountain coves of Hopewell County, Georgia, full of ghosts both real and imagined. Illuminating the tragedy of human frailty, the power of friendship and hope, and the fiercest of all human bonds—mother-love—this stunning debut will appeal to readers of both Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees and Amy Greene's Bloodroot.

Cracked by K M Walton

Synopsis:

Sometimes there's no easy way out.


Victor hates his life. He has no friends, gets beaten up at school, and his parents are always criticizing him. Tired of feeling miserable, Victor takes a bottle of his mother's sleeping pills—only to wake up in the hospital.

Bull is angry, and takes all of his rage out on Victor. That makes him feel better, at least a little. But it doesn't stop Bull's grandfather from getting drunk and hitting him. So Bull tries to defend himself with a loaded gun.

When Victor and Bull end up as roommates in the same psych ward, there's no way to escape each other or their problems. Which means things are going to get worse—much worse—before they get better….