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| EDITOR'S SYNOPSIS | |||||
Adie—married to Buck, her baby’s skirt-chasing father—is unprepared for marriage and motherhood. She spends her days with her new baby, Grace Annie. Buck spends his with the conniving daughter of the man he works for. Adie welcomes the friendship of midwife Willa Mae Satterfield. Having grown close to her after Grace Annie’s birth, she confides that her baby sister, Annie survived choking on a jelly bean, only to drown in Cold Rock River a few months later. Willa Mae replies, “My two little chillens Georgia and Calvin drowns in that river, too.” What she won’t say is how and why. Adie takes refuge in Tempe’s journal. It tells an amazing tale, but the further she reads, the more questions the diary raises. After “the freedom” comes, Tempe sets out to find her lost children and meets Tom Barber, another freed slave. Tom and Tempe marry and have one daughter, Heart. When Tom is killed in a drunken brawl, Tempe takes Heart and settles on a small patch of land in north Georgia owned by the Spencer family. There, Heart blossoms, eventually marrying an elderly neighbor and giving birth to Georgia and Calvin. Adie has questions: Could Willa Mae be Heart? How—and why—did the children die? And is it possible that the man who now owns the house in which she lives be Willa Mae’s grandson? As COLD ROCK RIVER rushes to its surprising, shocking ending, questions of family, race, love, loss and longing are loosed from the mysterious secrets that have been kept too long. And the depth of the connection between two women united by place and separated by race—and a century—is revealed.
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| PROLOGUE | |||||
| I was five that spring Annie choked on a jelly bean. She was twenty months old—she
wasn’t supposed to have any. Mama made that quite clear. Sadly,
I wasn’t a child that minded well, so I gave Annie one anyway.
I figured she ought to taste how good they were. I figured wrong.
Annie choked bad on that jelly bean, and her face turned blue. Mama wasn’t home—she’d gone to Calhoun to sell her prized jams; sold twelve jars of her double-lemon marmalade. Imagine that; there’s Mama, waving folks over to get a sample of her jam—selling her heart out—and all the while Annie’s choking to death. My pa slapped Annie on her back; smacked her hard with the side of his hand, right between her shoulder blades. Pa had hands the size of skillets. He smacked her twice, but it didn’t do any good—might have made it worse. Annie stopped making the sucking sounds she made when her face changed colors, and her body went limp, and her pretty blue eyes just rolled up and disappeared right inside her cute little head. My older sisters, Rebecca and Clarissa—twin girls Mama had two years before she had me—got on their knees and prayed like a preacher. I didn’t get on my knees. I watched Pa beat on Annie instead. It was more interesting. “She can’t die,” I said. “She’s in our family.” “Oh hush, you ninny,” Rebecca said. “You don’t know nothing.” “Call an ambulance, Rebecca!” Pa shouted. Rebecca dialed zero for the operator on the big black phone and tried to explain where Route 3, Box 949 was. “It’s in Cold Rock, but it’s not on a street, ma’am,” she said. “It’s on a route! Ain’t you ever heard of a route? Who hired you anyway?” Pa heard it all and realized help was not coming anytime soon. His eyes were crazed as a horse that’s been spooked by a snake. It scared me plenty. I dropped to my knees. “Pleasegodpleasegodpleasegodpleasegod. . .” I chanted sing-song. Pa stuck his thumb backwards down Annie’s throat and choked her worse. But, what do you know? That jelly bean popped right up out of her mouth! Annie started coughing real hard and crying. Pa hugged her to his chest and patted her softly on the back—like she was a China doll and would break—which I thought was very strange, seeing as he nearly pounded her to death when she was choking. We found out later what Pa did is the worst thing to do if someone’s choking. Pa didn’t know that. He did what he thought he had to, and it saved Annie’s life. When Mama got home she hugged every one of us and said, “Well, sometimes the worst thing turns out to be the best thing.” Too bad it didn’t work out like that the next time Annie needed help. |
In 1953 rural Georgia, with the Vietnam War cranking up, pregnant
seventeen-year-old Adie Jenkins discovers the diary of pregnant
seventeen-year-old Tempe Jordan, a slave girl, begun as the
Civil War is winding down. Adie’s haunted by the memory of
her dead sister; Tempe’s overcome with grief over the sale
of her three children sired by her master.
