Cheer and shout! Sing and dance!  
Long days of darkness, doubt, dejection are gone and past. 
Dawn has come with celebration in the birth of a book, 
Written for all who never doubted the light would come. 
Now to celebrate, let us make merry. Rejoice! 
Cheer and shout! Sing and dance! 
Hairt Before Dawn is here at last.
 

After all these years of seeking an agent, a publisher, reviewers, and so on, Hairt Before Dawn a novel of perseverance is now available online as an ebook and as a paperback from Amazon, maybe from a bookstore near you, and as a signed copy from me.

The cover, created by Alison Lyne, shows Harriette Lindstrom, a blind girl called dumb Hairt, with her beloved coonhound Mutt. The subtitle, a novel of perseverance, is for me and my persistence in getting this story in print as much as it is for Hairt in her struggle to prove her worth.

You’re probably thinking as most readers do, “What’s the book about?” Here’s a bit of the back cover text to answer that.

Nothing—not blindness, shunning, or fire demons, not even the evil Mr. Dayton—can stop Hairt when she follows the spirit of Maybelle, her birth mother, and sets out to prove her worth.

Middle Tennessee, 1904.  The Black Patch is torn apart in a violent struggle between tobacco farmers and against big business. Fifteen-year-old Harriette Lindstrom, dumb Hairt, is caught up in the conflict. Totally blind and determined to prove she can do more than milk cows and work tobacco, she leaves the farm, her adopted family and her dear coonhound Mutt. At the Tennessee School for the Blind, she has friends, learns her singing is exceptional, and meets the boy with a special voice. Best of all, cataract surgery restores some of her vision, and Hairt lives her dreams of love and acceptance until those dreams turn into nightmares of persecution and fear. Then the dreaded Night Riders appear.

I am very thankful for all the dear people who’ve had faith in me and my writing, and I want them to know this is their book, the one they asked for. I’ll say more about the process of writing and publishing of Hairt Before Dawn in future blogs.

Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things. Psalm 98 NIV