Those shouts should have signaled the happiest week of the year, for as long as the Yule log burned, field slaves would not have to do any heavy work. But for Josepha these words foreshadow mystery and terror.
The first hint comes a few days later when slave catcher Benjamin Michaelson acquires her as payment for a gambling debt. As Michaelson loops a heavy chain around Josepha’s neck, the woman who raised her calls out urgently, “Don’t forget to hold your head up high.”
That is something that will be difficult to do—until Josepha meets Reeca Fitzgerald. Despite rumors about Michaelson’s sadistic actions, Reeca is forced to work for him as a seamstress when her father, a suspected abolitionist, is supposedly conscripted into the army.
When Reeca encourages Josepha to help conceal coded messages in quilts for those riding the Underground Railroad, Michaelson becomes fixated with destroying the two teens. Now Josepha and Reeca must discover whom to trust in order to survive.
Set in one of the most notorious pro-slavery towns on the Kansas–Missouri border, THE UNDERGROUND GIFT is a rollercoaster of fear and revenge. The conflicts, however, are timeless.
To read the first three chapters, visit http://www.scribd.com/doc/65444198.
43 comments:
Your characters are great! I really enjoyed reading the first five chapters of your book and can't wait to read more.
I enjoyed reading this very much. You've done an excellent job developing Josepha's character. I'm going to go back and read this again. This will be a very good book and very entertaining.
I am forwarding your link to Nira and Dalya, my two lovely daughters who will for sure want to read this book with me. I have tasted your "sample," and I want more!
Regarding the slavery, oppression, and freedom themes of your book, may all humankind find the "kin" and "kind" in our individual and connected beings.
Have a wonderful day and a great time writing!
Azul, your comments made my entire day and then some. For someone to say they want to forward your words to another is one of the best forms of praise. Then to say that you want to read more and that you felt the message behind the book is truly the icing on the cake.
Your sentence "May all humankind find the 'kin' and 'kind' in our individual and connected beings" is the essence of this book. What is done to one is done to all, and if you allow cruelty to exist for one group of people, then what will stop it from spreading to the next group and the next? One day the person who didn't take a stand for another might find him or herself a member of that next group on the hate list. Perhaps one of the most classic recent examples of this is Hitler.
I'll never understand humankind's need to try to dominate and destroy others. In the meantime, I'll try to write words that will inspire people to find the strength to resist cruelty and make choices that will lead toward good.
Thank you again for your beautiful comment.
Michelle
Your comments, in turn, do the same for me, Michelle! Amen, when it comes to inspiration for choices that lead to good.
I have just read the first couple of pages, and the book looks riveting! I am going to forward this to both of my daughters.
Hi, JA:
Thank you very much for your comment and for forwarding this preview to your two daughters.
I've been thinking about posting The Underground Gift at www.authonomy.com, because manuscripts that receive high marks from readers might catch the eyes of the editors at HarperCollins, normally a closed house to a currently unpublished author such as myself. The fact that you cared enough to forward this manuscript to your daughters just might have tipped the scale into my going with a "yes" decision.
If I do post this with Authonomy, I would upload the entire manuscript. When I do so, I'll be sure to let my followers and subscribers know with a special blog post.
Wishing you a great day, and thank you again!
Michelle
I really enjoyed the part of your book I read. As a former librarian, now retired, I would buy it for my library. I hope that your publisher will be able to push it with enough publicity to get it noticed. Best of luck on your book ventures, and I'll keep reading!!!
Joan, yours is the kind of endorsement every writer hopes for. Thank you very much. Librarians have much influence on the writing market, as you have your finger on the pulse of both readers and the latest trends.
Wishing you a great day, and thank you again!
Michelle
Your book is interesting, absorbing and very smoothly written; I can't wait to read the rest of it.
Thank you, JR, not only for your uplifting words but for being one of this blog site's most dedicated followers. Your comments as well as Jean, Pat, Azul, JA and Joan's are inspiring me to say "yes" to posting the full version of The Underground Gift at www.authonomy.com. Although the manuscript would be available online for only a month, if it receives enough positive feedback from readers like you, it could tip the scale for a book-publishing editor considering whether to offer a contract. Thank you again!
Michelle
I was telling someone who reads YA fiction about your book over the weekend, and she said it sounds really good.
Hi, SB:
I appreciate your letting others know they can read the first five chapters of The Underground Gift online and leave a comment as well as vote for what they'd like my next book to be about. Feedback like this will help me write plots that readers are looking for.
Wishing you a great day!
Michelle
Congratulations on finishing your draft ... I can't wait to read it! I look forward to catching up with you on Facebook ... Hugs ... Brenda
The Underground Gift is phenomenal! A real page-turner with heart and history too. It's one of the best novels I've read about those times. I bet that for YA readers it would have the stature of Beloved or Cold Mountain. You'll have no problem getting it published ... get it out there soon.
Steve, as someone who greatly admires your books, your words have given my writing soul wings. Thank you very much! It's one thing to envision what you hope a book will be and another to hear that one of your readers believes you are on the way to achieving those dreams and goals.
Michelle
Wow! You are an amazing writer. I am already lost in the story! My husband loves it too. I read the first two chapters to him aloud. I cannot wait to continue! Thank you for sharing this with us.
Jodi, you've opened my eyes to a new aspect about my book--that it could make a great read aloud. I'd not thought of it in that light before, but with the characters' rich speech patterns and sayings, I now can envision this as an audio book.
Thank you very much for the uplifting words in your comment; I hope you and your husband continue to enjoy reading the book as much as I enjoyed writing it! Josepha and Mammy also are two of my favorite characters in the book, although I'd be hard pressed to name just two. :)
Michelle
I'm reading your novel and loving it! It's great! I want to finish it but then I don't want it to end!
Tee, that's exactly how I felt when I was writing this manuscript: I wanted to feel the joy that comes when you've been able to bring an idea and feelings to life using words, but I didn't want to say goodbye to my characters!
Michelle
There are many wonderful things about your book--the characters, the historical facts from the obvious extensive research you did, great suspense, wonderfully written descriptions and great "word smithing." I found the opening chapters of slave life on the plantation absolutely fascinating, and your descriptions and your use of imagery are terrific.
Doing the research for The Underground Gift was almost as fascinating as finding out each morning what my characters had to say as I started my daily hour of writing. :) Having lived both in the South as well as only a few miles from where the book takes place I think is what really helped me when it came time to getting the words to come out in a way that conveyed how the research and ideas made me feel. Thank you very much for your comment, ES.
Michelle
I just finished reading the excerpt, and the writing is lovely. It sounds like a very powerful story, and I look forward to hearing updates on your road to publication!
Thank you very much for your comment, AC! Last week I sent the first three chapters and synopsis to Bell Bridge Books, a Memphis-based publisher that specializes in Southern fiction. They are looking for Civil War novels and to expand their young-adult booklist. And because Bell Bridge's Debra Dixon is an avid quilter and coded quilts are an important theme in my book, I'm hoping this connection will resonate with her too. My blog, Facebook and Twitter followers will be the first to know what I hear!
I like the idea of mystery and secret codes layered into a historical novel about the Underground Railroad. As a former teacher, this sounds like the kind of book I would want available for students. Quite apart from the classroom appeal, it sounds like a good read.
Thank you very much for your comment, EV. I first learned about the role coded quilts might have played in the Underground Railroad from a chance (or maybe not so chance ...) comment Nancy Carter, our Kansas City, Kansas, Realtor, made. While waiting for escrow to close, I had some extra time on my hands, so I started doing research. What I learned about the topic and the area around our new home town was so fascinating to me, I thought, "Hmmm, I should write a book about this." And so I did!
It is one of my dreams/goals that this book be one that students read, as its theme is one I believe is one we never should forget--that what is done to one is done to all. Or as Madeleine L'Engle wrote in her book A Swiftly Tilting Planet "hate hurts the hater more than the hated."
Michelle
Your writing put me right there in the story and the era. Best of luck with your book, Michelle!
—from Elizabeth Varadan's comment at http://michellefayard.blogspot.com/2011/06/socially-networked-reader-in-progress.html
Since you excel in writing books set in the past (a perfect example is Imogene and the Case of the Missing Pearls), your feedback is pure gold to me, Elizabeth; thank you very much!
Michelle
I love they way you represent your characters and the sequence of events. GOOD job! I wish you the best of luck.
Two of my favorite characters in The Underground Gift are Josepha and Mammy, as their deep love for one another is a memory and knowledge that will help Josepha face being a slave to someone as cruel as Benjamin Michaelson. Although the story is fiction, the sequence of events follows what happened on many plantations in those times--a "week of Sundays," as the time between Christmas and the end of the year was known, ending on New Year's Day by learning who in the Quarters your master planned on selling on the auction block.
Thank you very much, Josie, for not only reading the preview my book but letting me know what it is about it that you like!
Michelle
I was reading your chapters of your book, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of it.
Ah, may a book editor and/or agent say the same thing. :) Thank you very much for your comment, frankjchick.
Michelle
A friend gave me Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver and told me to read it. I started it but had to put it down last night and continue my reading of The Underground Gift, which I had already started.
Mammy and Josepha will have to part soon, and the wisdom Mammy is trying to impart to her beloved
daughter is painful, as she already knows her daughter's fate with new "Master."
You are some writer, Michelle. This book will be published, and it will be loved by many!
Thank you very much for these beautifully uplifting words, Jodi. What a compliment for an author to hear that a reader can't wait to return to a book she's written!
Even though yesterday I received my first declination from a publishing house, I know I'm one step closer to fulfilling my goal. True, it made me feel a little bit down, but when I read what you had written below, I said to myself, "That's right; I will be a published author one day." It must be true, if Jodi says so. :)
Michelle
Wow, that was a very sad ending to Chapter 5! I was sad all night and this morning when I woke. The use of "new" with life was very interesting. Usually I associate "new" with a positive outlook. It is too hard to imagine being Josepha and her family with Massa "Masochist" Michaelson taking her away.
Oh, Jodi, I hate to hear that you are so sad, but on the other hand the author part of me knows this is probably a good thing, because I was able to use words to let you feel what Josepha was feeling, and the words worked for you.
You opened my eyes to something I didn't consciously realize about the juxtaposition of how "new" usually has such a positive connotation to the reality of what lies ahead for Josepha; maybe subconsciously that word choice was a good one, because it gives you pause as to what we've come to believe "new" to mean is not how a slave would define the word.
I love your nickname for Benjamin Michaelson! It is so true, and things will get much worse before they get better, but, oh, just wait for the ending, for how Josepha, and Reeca, succeed in the end and how Michaelson creates his own downfall, even though it was inadvertent, will help temper the sorrow slavery makes us feel. You'll find a few humorous moments in the upcoming Reeca arc, but starting with Chapter 12, Michaelson re-enters the scene with a speaking role; ick!
Michelle
I absolutely loved your book!! Benjamin Michaelson is character that unfortunately many of us have encountered in our lives. He is so real in so many ways.
You know, TR, it's a real shame that I didn't have to dig very far to develop Benjamin Michaelson's character, because I've known more than one person who thought and acted as he did. Maybe the methods for how someone like this chooses to act vary somewhat through the ages, but that desire and ability to create soul-cutting pain is one that's still happening today on both the microcosmic and the macrocosmic level.
I just finished reading Susan Campbell Bartoletti's book They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group, and she nails it when she says, "The use of terror--the use of violence and fear as a physical and psychological weapon--is as old as humanity ... (F)ear is peddled, and ... we're often manipulated to fear the wrong things." If my book could help even one person feel inspired to change how he or she treats others, I will be able to call it a success.
Thanks again for the comment!
Michelle
There's some beautiful writing in there and a compelling story. Is this a YA?
Thank you very much for your kind words, Rosi. I've been calling this a young-adult book, since Josepha and Reeca are 15 years old, almost 16 by the book's end, but with everything that happens to the two of them, it probably could go either way.
Ideally I'd like to keep it as a YA, because it is this age group I'd like to have think about the consequences of hating someone or a group of people. Adults too often are too set in their ways to want to change much in this respect, I fear.
Wishing you a great day!
Michelle
The Underground Gift, what a wonderful book! Though this story takes place in the United States during the Civil War, it could take place in almost any country in any time period.
It is a well written book, and the characters are so real that many of us will be able to relate in some way to them, possibly by having met someone with traits somewhat like theirs. The progression of each character and how their lives meshed together was smooth with a clear understanding. I couldn’t put the book down because I wanted to know what was in store for each character, but as I came to the end of the book I was sorry because I felt as if I were a part of each one’s lives.
Bravo for The Underground Gift! I hope there will be more books to come!
Tee, your words are sad but true--what Benjamin Michaelson does and tries to do to Josepha and Reeca has happened, is happening and, regrettably, will continue to happen here and throughout the world. It is my dream that those reading this book will be inspired to take a stand--and it doesn't take much--to help end hate.
So many facets of the book's characters were inspired by people or situations I've known (as well as a bunch of research!). Again, you speak so truly when you say all of our lives are intertwined, and what happens to one happens to all.
I was just as sad to come to the end myself and hope the next book will be as moving an experience. Thank you very much for your comment.
I read the first chapter and I'm very excited to read the rest. Excellent writing.
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