A destitute Southern belle must save her plantation home—Is a retired Union soldier the answer?Before we meet today's author, I want to announce that the winner of the e-copy of A Heart Reclaimed, by Elizabeth Maddrey, is:
cjenreffner@...
Congratulations! We'll get your book right out to you. I encourage readers to keep commenting and/or subscribe at right (above my list of books) in order to learn about new releases! U.S. subscribers are entered in the drawings a second time when they comment.
And now let's visit with novelist Beth White, author of the historical romance, A Rebel Heart (Revell, June 2018).
Beth White’s day job is teaching music at an inner-city high school in historic Mobile, Alabama. A native Mississippian, she writes historical romance with a Southern drawl and is the author of The Pelican Bride, The Creole Princess, and The Magnolia Duchess.Her novels have won the American Christian Fiction Writers Carol Award, the RT Book Club Reviewers’ Choice Award, and the Inspirational Reader’s Choice Award.
Please tell us one random thing we might not know about you.
I have dolphins in my back yard. No, really. Like Flipper. I live on Wolf Bay, near Orange Beach, Alabama, and sometimes when I sit on the swing on my dock, dolphins will swim by looking for fish. Pretty cool.
Wow, that would have me on that dock daily! You're right, that's very cool.
Please tell us a bit more about the plot of A Rebel Heart.
Five years after the final shot was fired in the War Between the States, Selah Daughtry can barely manage to keep herself, her two younger sisters, and their spinster cousin fed and clothed. With their family’s Mississippi plantation swamped by debt and the Big House falling down around them, the only option seems to be giving up their independence by leaving their ancestral land.Pinkerton agent and former Union cavalryman Levi Riggins is investigating a series of train robberies and sabotage linked to the impoverished Daughtry plantation. Posing as a hotel management agent for the railroad, he makes Selah a proposition—he’ll help her save her home, but only if it is converted into a hotel. With Selah otherwise engaged with renovations, Levi moves onto the property to “supervise” while he actually attends to his real assignment right under her nose.
Selah isn’t sure she entirely trusts the handsome Yankee, but she’d do almost anything to save her home. What she never expected to encounter was his assault on her heart.
What a great story premise. And the cover is gorgeous. I think many people assume southerners would have bounced back fairly well by five years post-war. Obviously you correct that misconception with your novel.
What is it about Selah that will make your readers care about her?
Selah Daughtry is indubitably a lady. But she will do whatever it takes to protect and provide for those she is responsible for—even if it means going into business as a hotel manager. She holds onto a lot of guilt over the way her family has treated slaves before the War, but she’s determined to make it right. She is smart, practical, and tender-hearted, and I enjoyed getting to know her as I wrote her story.
Imagine you’ve been contracted to write a novel about a real person. Who would you most like to write about?
Brigadier-General Don Bernardo de Gálvez, Spanish governor of New Orleans during the American Revolution. In a little-known quirk of history, Spain secretly funded the American cause and sent spies along the British-held Gulf Coast, from Mobile to Pensacola, to harvest intelligence for Continental strategy. Gálvez was an inspirational leader and administrator with a genius for the balancing act of the political, military and social world he inhabited. Also, he fell in love with, courted, and married a beautiful French Creole widow named María Feliciana de Saint-Maxent Estrehan. Oh my goodness, what a movie that would make!
Yes, and what a novel! Do it, Beth!
What is the last novel you read that you would recommend?
I honestly don’t read a lot of fiction at the moment, because I spend my free time researching and writing! But the last novel I loved was one of Sibella Giorello’s Raleigh Harmon Mysteries. They’re all fabulous (I think there are seven or eight in the series so far). Lyrical prose, deep characterization, cool mystery puzzle, fascinating heroine, slow-boiling romance. Funny as all get-out.
Thanks for that recomendation. I have so much respect for the minds of good mystery writers.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on the second book of the Daughtry House series (sequel to A Rebel Heart). It’s titled A Reluctant Belle, and it features the second Daughtry sister, Joelle. She’s tall and awkward and beautiful and nerdy and forgetful—and she’s in love with her childhood nemesis, Schuyler Beaumont. Unfortunately, just as she accidentally gets herself engaged to the young Methodist preacher who’s been following her around for a year (not Schuyler, unfortunately), Schuyler embroils them both in a political murder mystery.
Where else can readers find you online?
My website is www.bethwhite.net. Twitter handle @bethsquill. Or visit me on Facebook
The book can be purchased online via the following button:
Finally, what question would you like to ask my readers?
What are your favorite ways to hear about authors whose work you haven’t tried? Also, I’m curious about how far into a book you’ll go before you decide the story isn’t for you?
Thank you, Beth, for visiting and telling us about yourself and your book. Readers, Beth has offered to give away a signed copy of her novel. To enter, leave a comment and your email below in answer to Beth's question, above. "Please enter me" won't get you entered. Remember that U.S. subscribers are entered an additional time in each drawing. The drawing is done by email, so leave your email address, like so: trish[at]trishperry[dot]com.
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