A second-chance romance set in the heart of Appalachia that will make you root for first love, forgiveness, and family.
Lenore Wheeler knows what a hard life, heartbreak, and failure tastes like. Heading home to the backwoods Appalachian town she swore she’d never return to with her young daughter in tow, she can’t imagine her future getting much bleaker.
Then she comes face-to-face with the one man she never expected to see again.
Jesse Yates was supposed to escape the mountains, make something of himself, and attain every dream Lenore destroyed. He’s determined to wear down her resolve and win her back, but she’s got a secret to keep and reasons to keep her old flame at arm’s length.
Lenore already broke her own heart to save Jesse, but she’ll do anything to protect her daughter from the same fate.
Except fate has a funny way of working out, especially when all roads lead to home.
FAQs:
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A complete standalone novel.
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Also a NaNoWriMo novel.
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I wrote 75k words of this book during November 2015. It sat, unfinished, in my cloud drive until the characters started whispering to me again. It was rewritten and finished in 18 days in 2020.
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My second favorite novel.
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The characters speak a dialect of American English known as middle Appalachian. Think WV, Kentucky, etc. These accents/speech patterns/proverbs are distinct from Northern or Southern Appalachian.
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Linguistic studies have proven that Appalachian/Southern accents are perceived as unintelligent, regardless of the level of education of the speaker.
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There is still no sexual education (or abstinence-only education) provided in many American schools. Even speaking of menstruation to prepare daughters is uncommon in Appalachian households to this day.
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No. Wuthering Heights is not one of my favorite books. I hated that novel.
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I own an antique copy of Brave New World from the first American print run. It's worth over $5000.