Women of a Promiscuous Nature by Donna Everhart

 On a brisk February morning while walking to the diner where she works, 24 year-old 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 chaste 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 15-year-old Stella, are brought in because they’re victims of assault. She’s too naive and broken to understand how unjust this imprisonment is.

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. Sooner or later, everyone at the Colony learns to abide by Mrs. Baker’s rule book or face the consequences—solitary confinement, grueling work assignments, and worse.

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Amazon.com: Women of a Promiscuous Nature eBook : Everhart, Donna: Kindle Store

Donna Everhart is the USA Today bestselling author of vivid, authentic Southern fiction, including the Southeastern Library Association Award-winning The Road to Bittersweet, the Indie Next Pick, Amazon Spotlight/Debut Pick, The Education of Dixie Dupree, The Forgiving Kind, and The Moonshiner’s Daughter. Her fifth novel, The Saints of Swallow Hill is out now.

Born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, she now lives with her husband just an hour away in the Sandhills area of the state. Please visit her online at DonnaEverhart.com.

Don't come at me, I know I say this about every book released, but this is Everhart's best book yet. I learn so much from every book. She is an author that I can't recommend enough. This is a 5-star two times book. I highly recommend it.
Mary Reader received this book from the publisher for review. A favorable review was not required, and all views expressed are our own.

When the Jessamine Grows by Donna Everhart

 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.

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Amazon.com: When the Jessamine Grows: 9781496740700: Everhart, Donna: Books

Donna Everhart is the USA Today bestselling author of vivid, authentic Southern fiction, including the Southeastern Library Association Award-winning The Road to Bittersweet, the Indie Next Pick, Amazon Spotlight/Debut Pick, The Education of Dixie Dupree, The Forgiving Kind, and The Moonshiner’s Daughter. Her fifth novel, The Saints of Swallow Hill is out now.

Born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, she now lives with her husband just an hour away in the Sandhills area of the state. Please visit her online at DonnaEverhart.com.

My Thoughts...

I could not put this book down. Everhart always writes books that I learn so much from each page. This is a must read. I highly recommend this one.

The Mary Reader received this book from the publisher for review. A favorable review was not required, and all views expressed are our own.

The Saints Of Swallow Hill By Donna Everhart

 

Where the Crawdads Sing meets The Four Winds as award-winning author Donna Everhart immerses readers in a unique setting—a turpentine camp buried deep in the vast pine forests of Georgia during the Great Depression—for a captivating story of friendship, survival, and three vagabonds' intersecting lives…

It takes courage to save yourself...

In the dense pine forests of North Carolina, turpentiners labor, hacking into tree trunks to draw out the sticky sap that gives the Tar Heel State its nickname, and hauling the resin to stills to be refined. Among them is Rae Lynn Cobb and her husband, Warren, who run a small turpentine farm together.

Though the work is hard and often dangerous, Rae Lynn, who spent her childhood in an orphanage, is thankful for it--and for her kind if careless husband. When Warren falls victim to his own negligence, Rae Lynn undertakes a desperate act of mercy. To keep herself from jail, she disguises herself as a man named "Ray" and heads to the only place she can think of that might offer anonymity--a turpentine camp in Georgia named Swallow Hill.

Swallow Hill is no easy haven. The camp is isolated and squalid, and commissary owner Otis Riddle takes out his frustrations on his browbeaten wife, Cornelia. Although Rae Lynn works tirelessly, she becomes a target for Crow, the ever-watchful woods rider who checks each laborer's tally. Delwood Reese, who's come to Swallow Hill hoping for his own redemption, offers "Ray" a small measure of protection, and is determined to improve their conditions. As Rae Lynn forges a deeper friendship with both Del and Cornelia, she begins to envision a path out of the camp. But she will have to come to terms with her past, with all its pain and beauty, before she can open herself to a new life and seize the chance to begin again. 

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Amazon.com: The Saints of Swallow Hill: A Fascinating Depression Era Historical Novel: 9781496733320: Everhart, Donna: Books 

Donna Everhart is the USA Today bestselling author of Southern fiction with authenticity and grit, including the Southeastern Library Association Award-winning The Road to Bittersweet and her most recent novel, The Moonshiner’s Daughter. Her fifth novel, The Saints of Swallow Hill, will be released in February 2022.

Born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, she now lives with her husband just an hour away in the Sandhills area of the state. Please visit her online at DonnaEverhart.com.

My Thoughts...

Historical fiction lovers are in for a treat. This book is not one you can put down. 

The details and the writing are fantastic, this is a story you won't soon forget.

You have to grab a copy of the 5 star masterpiece.

The Mary Reader received this book from the publisher for review. A favorable review was not required and all views expressed are our own.

The Moonshiner's Daughter By Donna Everhart

Set in North Carolina in 1960 and brimming with authenticity and grit, The Moonshiner’s Daughter evokes the singular life of sixteen-year-old Jessie Sasser, a young woman determined to escape her family’s past . . .

 
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.

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https://www.amazon.com/Moonshiners-Daughter-Donna-Everhart/dp/1496717023/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1578235014&sr=8-1

A USA Today bestselling author of authentic, gritty Southern fiction, including THE EDUCATION OF DIXIE DUPREE, (Indie Next, Amazon Best Book, Nov. 2016) THE ROAD TO BITTERSWEET, (Southeastern Library Award) THE FORGIVING KIND, and THE MOONSHINER'S DAUGHTER.

Donna Everhart writes stories of family hardship and troubled times in a bygone south. A native of North Carolina, she resides in her home state with her husband and their tiny heart stealing Yorkshire terrier, Mister. Readers can also visit her at www.donnaeverhart.com. 

My Thoughts...

I deemed Everhart the queen of gritty southern fiction.

Everhart's fourth book blew me away. She is a very talented author. Living in NC this made this book even more fun to read. Everhart has done her research and this book was such a fantastic read.
If you have never read a book by Everhart change that soon. She is an author to watch out for. New York Times is on her radar.
I gave this book 4 stars and recommend it.
The Mary Reader received this book from the publisher for review. A favorable review was not required and all views expressed are our own.

The Forgiving Kind By Donna Everhart

In this masterful new novel, set in 1950s North Carolina, the acclaimed author of The Road to Bittersweet and The Education of Dixie Dupree brings to life an unforgettable young heroine and a moving story of family love tested to its limits.     
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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https://www.amazon.com/Forgiving-Kind-Donna-Everhart/dp/1496717007/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?crid=2KE185RMMPEF0&keywords=the+forgiving+kind+by+donna+everhart&qid=1551380558&s=gateway&sprefix=The+Forgiving+Kind%2Caps%2C320&sr=8-1-fkmrnull

A USA Today bestselling author of THE EDUCATION OF DIXIE DUPREE, THE ROAD TO BITTERSWEET, and THE FORGIVING KIND, Donna Everhart writes stories of family hardship and troubled times in a bygone south. A native of North Carolina, she resides in her home state with her husband and their tiny heart stealing Yorkshire terrier, Mister. Readers can also visit her at www.donnaeverhart.com.

My Thoughts...
Being set in North Carolina did not hurt at all. Being that that's where I live.

I really liked the southern slag in this book. Everhart had it down pat. I cried and I was angry. This is one of those books that you love to hate. Sonny was my favorite character and she made the whole story. I wanted to kill Mr. Fowler with my bare hands. This was really good, gritty, edgy, Southern fiction. I can't wait to read more of Everharts books. Don't miss this 4 star read. I HIGHLY recommend it! The Mary Reader received this book from the publisher for review. A favorable review was not required and all views expressed are our own.