Blackberry Days of Summer!
Beautiful blackberries in thick clusters, shiny and wet and bursting with tiny pockets of juice, and when you put them in your mouth you taste their bittersweetness in your mouth….bringing memories of the sweetness of summer…the bitterness of stories that become known!
Such as Ruth P. Watson’s Novel, Blackberry Days of Summer!” The novel begins as “The Great War” is coming to an end. As Robert Parker’s body is lowered into the grave, Herman Camm introduces himself to the mourning family. He is a beady-eyed, small-framed, well-dressed man with a mysterious stare—and he is about to drastically change the lives of three women: Mae Lou Parker; her daughter, Carrie; and Pearl Brown. In Jefferson County, Virginia, trouble arrives when Carrie reveals a disturbing secret that will haunt and change their lives forever. Mae Lou is fed up with Herman spending time with other women and she goes to confront him.
Everybody wants a part of him, including Willie; however, the tables are slightly turned when Willie ends up with a gun pointing directly at him. All of the stories converge when Herman is found dead from a shotgun wound. –
Ruth grew up in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in Lynchburg, Virginia. In her spare time, she has always enjoyed reading and writing and listening to good stories. After leaving Virginia for college, she relocated to Atlanta and worked as a project manager for a major corporation. While there she found herself writing once again, publishing stories in the company newsletter.
After completing her graduate work at Central Michigan University, she began to write daily. She is the recipient of the Caversham Fellowship, an artist and writer’s residency in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, where she published her first children’s book in Zulu, Our Secret Bond. She is a freelance writer and member of Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and has written for Upscale, Atlanta Journal and Constitution and other publications. She is an adjunct professor and project manager, who lives with her husband and son in Atlanta, Georgia. Hear our interview with Ruth P. Watson.
