The Summer of Grace — Media Kit
BookLife Editor’s Pick
"Jones crafts a skillful transformation for Gracie, who, in due time, must decide what family really means—and accept the consequences that come with that decision. Well-crafted prose captures the spirit of a segregated South (“every time I found out a secret, the world seemed meaner”), evoking the sometimes-painful transformations that accompany childhood. Ultimately, Gracie’s metamorphosis illustrates the distress (and the freedom) that comes with learning the truth—a subtle lesson that Jones delivers with grace."
Book Description
In 1951 Tidewater, VA ten-year-old Gracie sits, tears streaming, clutching her dog. Her daddy is sending her and Brown Hound to Grandma Emily for the summer. They are too rowdy for her high-strung mother.
On the North Carolina farm Gracie meets her family. Great Granny Jane smokes a pipe and is fast with her cane, Grandma Emily is loving but firm, and cousin Jane has a swashbuckler's heart. It is a wild and heady freedom, away from her mother's scorn and her father's indifference. The girls explore ancient cemeteries, brave the conjure woman, fight, make up, and sleep tangled like puppies. But Marcell looms.
With unreadable eyes, dark skin that holds a tragic history and a deep hatred of dogs, the solitary housekeeper's power lies in concealing family secrets. Can she send Brown Hound away? With reckless courage born of fear and hope, the girls resolve to save Brown Hound, smash through shuttered layers of yesteryears secrets and reveal the families' truth.
Media Downloads
About the Author
Karen Jones
Author, broadcast journalist and freelance writer Karen Jones is the author of Up the Bestseller Lists! A Hands-On Guide to Successful Book Promotion, Death for Beginners, and The Highland Witch.
Jones has fifteen years of experience in television news as an on-air anchor and feature reporter where she wrote and produced the Associated Press Award winning series The Haunting of Virginia. She co-directed the Chesapeake Writer’s Conference, was an advisor to The Bay School of the Arts, and is a member of the National League of American Pen Women, and the Authors Guild.
She has taught writing seminars at the University of Richmond, Christopher Newport University, LSU and CNU. She has held week-long intensive writing camps for adults on Ocracoke Island, NC and will be holding her next writing camps in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains.
Jones lives beside the Atlantic Ocean with her amazingly tolerant husband who has just given a big sigh, because she is beginning to write her next book.
