I'm absolutely delighted to welcome historical novelist, Alethea Williams, today. She's sharing Willow Vale with us, so settle in and enjoy!
Cover
Blurb:
From opposite sides of an ocean, two people
wounded by the Great War are fated to meet and try to rebuild their lives. FRANCESCA SITTONI, brought against her will
to America
by the husband she never loved, finds herself alone — widowed, pregnant, and
with a small daughter to support.
Terrified of being deported back to the impoverished country of her
birth, Francesca answers an ad placed by Wyoming
rancher KENT REED. As their contracted
year together passes, Francesca begins to ask if she is cook and housekeeper to
the wounded veteran …or a secretly sought mail-order bride as the neighbors
insist? Only Kent Reed, burned by
mustard gas and his spoiled former wife’s desertion, knows his heart’s true
desire when it comes to the beautiful Tyrolean immigrant woman now living in
the uncomfortably close quarters of his small ranch house.
Willow Vale Excerpt:
Elena peered down
into pitch blackness. The smells of damp earth, sawdust, and raw meat wafted
out. Elena looked at her mother, eyes round. “Ooh, Mama. You not going in
there?”
“Sure I go in
there. Why not?”
“There’s bats and
spooks in there.”
Both of them,
Francesca knew, were remembering the eerie howling of the night before. She
didn’t want to descend into the unfamiliar darkness either. But she couldn’t
let Elena see her fear.
“Ach, Elena. Don’t
start again with the monsters, eh? No bats and no spooks in there. I promise.”
Francesca held the
lamp higher and placed her foot on the first step down. Elena clutched at her
skirt.
“Don’t leave me,
Mama.”
“Don’t pull at me,
Elena. You make me fall down the stairs.”
Francesca tried to disengage her daughter’s fingers while holding
the lamp up with the other hand.
Elena only clutched
tighter. “Don’t leave me!”
Francesca reverted
to the dialect of Val di Non. “Elena, do you want something to eat?”
The child nodded.
“Then let go so I
can get us something to eat.”
“I can’t! I’m
scared.”
Francesca sighed.
The decision she made now set a precedentand she knew it, but she didn’t know
what else to do. She had a job to do, and she couldn’t do it with Elena
clinging to her skirt.
“Go back to the
mister, Elena,” she said. “Go and see if he needs some help.”
The little girl
looked about fearfully. Stars were beginning to twinkle in the darkening sky,
but they didn’t shed much light. The unfamiliar outlines of barn and
bare-limned cottonwood trees and rail fencing loomed. Francesca couldn’t give
Elena the lamp or she’d never find her own way around the cellar. She’d trip
and fall in the dark and start screaming, and all her careful concealment of
her fear would desert her. Then both Elena and the mister would know what a
fraud she was, and how terribly frightened.
Where was that ugly
dog when she could use him? The dog could walk the child to the house, help
take the edge off her fear.
Francesca gave
Elena a gentle shove, her heart almost breaking as she pushed the child in the
man’s direction.
“Go, cara,” she
said. “You know you will be safe with him, no?”
“Sì, Mama.” Elena’s
voice quavered only a little now.
Francesca’s voice
faltered more than the girl’s. She didn’t know which of them were more afraid
right now. Protecting Elena at this moment meant directing her toward the
greater danger of coming to depend on the big red-haired American man.
Francesca’s heart
mourned. A year. Maybe, if you’re lucky, you’ll
have a papa for a whole year this time, my Elena.
“So go to him,
then,” she said aloud, in the old language she rarely spoke anymore. She hadn’t
much use now for her native tongue, except maybe to send her daughter away from
her, and toward the threat —or salvation?—who was Kent Reed.
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Author
Bio:
(Christine) Alethea Williams is the author
of Willow Vale, a post-WWI novel of a
Tyrolean immigrant who finds her destiny in southwest Wyoming. Alethea grew up in a boom-and-bust
railroad town, with her nose perpetually in a book while living in a world of
robust trona miners. She attended every writing class available, from poetry to
creative nonfiction, absorbing her teachers’ knowledge of mastering the writing
craft and their experience of publishing. Williams has contributed a monthly
newspaper column subsequently turned into the ebook Boomer Blues Book: Staying Alive and Sane in the Modern American West.
Willow Vale is her first novel. A
past president of Wyoming Writers, she presently lives in the Northwest with
her husband and her longtime friend, Amazon parrot Bob.
What a lovely evocative cover desogn, Alethea, and a vey intriguing excerpt. A huge thank you for visiting today.
Slainthe!
Thanks for having me on she said, he said.
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