Hello all!

Welcome back to First Sentence Fridays!  I’m excited I’m doing this again for the third book, THE FORGIVING KIND. In case you missed it, last week I explained if it seems like we’re getting started early, that’s because:

1. The book has more chapters, thirty-four in all (the others had twenty-eight)
2. January 29, 2019 is the “on sale,” date with the official release as February 5th, 2019

(note: the on sale date means the books are put on shelves in stores, or shipped if pre-ordered.)

You should have seen the look on my face when I figured out when I needed to start.

So, here we are and I can’t wait to introduce you to my new characters, and for you to start getting to know them.

But first, let’s talk for a second about what/or how I write.  By now, if you’ve read THE EDUCATION OF DIXIE DUPREE or THE ROAD TO BITTERSWEET, (or both!) you know I lean towards tough subjects and events.  My new bio says, “Donna Everhart is a USA Today bestselling author who writes stories of family hardship and troubled times in a bygone south.” I’ve also said my writing is gritty southern fiction with a down home style. Both the bio and that logline do a good job capturing the essence of the stories I like to tell.

I guess you could say I like to write what I like to read.  If you want to know what I have in my TBR pile, go to my Goodreads page and look at the list of books.  An employee of a local bookstore recently asked me, “Don’t you ever read anything  . . . happy?”  I couldn’t help but laugh because she looked worried about me.

THE EDUCATION OF DIXIE DUPREE was a certainly a hard-hitting story, written graphically and with intense scenes of both physical and sexual abuse.  THE ROAD TO BITTERSWEET had a softer tone, (at least to me) yet I had readers who left reviews declaring it was a tough read.  One said, “I gave up quickly on this violent book.”

My personal opinion about THE FORGIVING KIND is that it falls somewhere between DIXIE DUPREE and BITTERSWEET with regard to the difficulties the characters face, and how the story is written. There is racism, bigotry, and abuse.  Despite these very real issues, I hope as you read, you will also glimpse the magical moments, and you will see what the characters hold dear, see their efforts to make sense of what they’re experiencing.

As with my other two books, this is a southern fiction, coming of age story, and my main character is named Martha Simpson Creech, known as “Sonny.”  It’s Sonny’s voice you will come to know as we move through the chapters.

With that, here we go with the first sentence!

CHAPTER 1

1955

Daddy never wanted to do nothing much other than grow cotton, and the way he’d gone at it, we figured that would be the thing to kill him, but it wasn’t.