Wednesday, 10 July 2013
Alison
Tillman is 18 years old. The place is Deep South America and its 1967. Alison
is due to marry her high school sweetheart. Up to this point, Alison has never
questioned her life on her Daddy's farm or the relationship between her parents.
She has never given a second thought to the coloured farmhands on the farm or
to other coloured townspeople, viewing their treatment within the town as the
'norm'. However, all that is about to change, quite suddenly when she firstly
finds the body of a black man from town and later witnesses her fiancé and
brother beat a young black boy. These two events are almost light bulb moments
in Alison's life and she begins to question her whole way of life, her
beliefs and her love for her fiancé. Just when Alison doesn't think she
can get any more confused or uncertain about her future, she meets a
handsome young black man and the secret friendship soon develops into something
more. But, like everything within such racially tense times, the potential consequences
of their relationship holds danger from all around. However, Alison is soon
surprised by those closest to her and finds allies in the most unlikely of
places.
From the
outset I loved this book. I was drawn into Alison's life and as a character she
fascinated me. I loved her bravery and felt her frustrations. Alison wants so
much to change the world, but to voice the strong opinions she has would not
only wreak havoc in her own personal life, but also the lives of her family
members. The book offers the reader a frightening but accurate insight
into 1960's America during the American civil rights campaign. It deals
sympathetically and with passion, the struggle of ordinary people to be heard
and to be treated with dignity and respect. Melissa Foster has created a story
that is filled with not only love, emotion and fear, but an awareness that such
atrocities have happened very recently in our history. Sadly, for some, they
are still happening. Have no Shame had me on the edge of my seat throughout as
I feared for Alison and what might become of her. The tension throughout the
book was almost palpable. I'd highly recommend Have No Shame. The ebook also offers you the option to read the story with or without the Southern Dialect in the narrative. I read it with the Southern Dialect and it only added to the overall feeling of being there and being part of Alison's plight. I found myself reading in a Southern drawl! A brilliant idea to include both options.
Would you
like to win a copy of this book?
BOOK INFO
The racially-charged prejudice of the deep South forces
eighteen-year-old Alison Tillman to confront societal norms—and her own
beliefs—when she discovers the body of a hate crime victim, and the spectre of
forbidden love turns her safe, comfortable world upside down.Alison has called Forrest Town, Arkansas home for the past eighteen years. Her mother’s Blue Bonnet meetings, her father toiling night and day on the family farm, and the division of life between the whites and the blacks are all Alison knows. The winter of 1967, just a few months before marrying her high school sweetheart, Alison finds the body of a black man floating in the river, and she begins to view her existence with new perspective. The oppression and hate of the south, the ugliness she once was able to avert her eyes from, now demands her attention.
When a secretive friendship with a young black man takes an unexpected romantic turn, Alison is forced to choose between her predetermined future, and the dangerous path that her heart yearns for.
HAVE NO SHAME is an emotionally compelling coming of age novel featuring a young woman who cannot reconcile the life she wants with the one she’s been brought up to live. Have No Shame will resonate with anyone who has ever fallen in love, and those who have been forced to choose between what they know in their hearts to be true, and what others would like them to believe.
Paperback, 304 pages
Expected publication: May 6th 2013 by World Literary Press
ISBN
098905084X (ISBN13: 9780989050845)
Excerpt
Chapter One
It was the end of winter 1967, my father was
preparin’ the fields for plantin’, the Vietnam War was in full swing, and
spring was peekin’ its pretty head around the corner. The cypress trees stood
tall and bare, like sentinels watchin’ over the St. Francis River. The bugs
arrived early, thick and hungry, circlin’ my head like it was a big juicy vein
as I walked across the rocks toward the water.
My legs pled with me to jump from rock to rock,
like I used to do with my older sister, Maggie, who’s now away at college. I
hummed my new favorite song, Penny Lane, and continued walkin’ instead of
jumpin’ because that’s what’s expected of me. I could just hear Daddy
admonishin’ me, “You’re eighteen now, a grown up. Grown ups don’t jump across
rocks.” Even if no one’s watchin’ me at the moment, I wouldn’t want to
disappoint Daddy. If Maggie were here, she’d jump. She might even get me to
jump. But alone? No way.
The river usually smelled of sulfur and fish,
with an underlyin’ hint of desperation, but today it smelled like somethin’
else all together. The rancid smell hit me like an invisible billow of smog. I
covered my mouth and turned away, walkin’ a little faster. I tried to get around
the stench, thinkin’ it was a dead animal carcass hidin’ beneath the rocks. I
couldn’t outrun the smell, and before I knew it I was crouched five feet above
the river on an outcroppin’ of rocks, and my hummin’ was replaced by retchin’
and dry heavin’ as the stench infiltrated my throat. I peered over the edge and
fear singed my nerves like thousands of needles pokin’ me all at once. Floatin’
beneath me was the bloated and badly beaten body of a colored man. A scream
escaped my lips. I stumbled backward and fell to my knees. My entire body began
to shake. I covered my mouth to keep from throwin’ up. I knew I should turn
away, run, get help, but I could not go back the way I’d come. I was paralyzed
with fear, and yet, I was strangely drawn to the bloated and ghastly
figure.
I stood back up, then stumbled in my gray
midi-skirt and saddle shoes as I made my way over the rocks and toward the
riverbank. The silt-laden river was still beneath the floatin’ body. A branch
stretched across the river like a boney finger, snaggin’ the bruised and beaten
body by the torn trousers that clung to its waist. His bare chest and arms were
so bloated that it looked as if they might pop. Tremblin’ and gaspin’ for
breath, I lowered myself to the ground, warm tears streamin’ down my cheeks.
While fear sucked my breath away, an underlyin’
curiousity poked its way through to my consciousness. I covered my eyes then,
tellin’ myself to look away. The reality that I was seein’ a dead man settled
into my bones like ice. Shivers rattled my body. Whose father, brother, uncle,
or friend was this man? I opened my eyes again and looked at him. It’s a
him, I told myself. I didn’t want to see him as just an anonymous, dead colored
man. He was someone, and he mattered. My heart pounded against my ribcage with
an insistence—I needed to know who he was. I’d never seen a dead man before,
and even though I could barely breathe, even though I could feel his image
imprintin’ into my brain, I would not look away. I wanted to know who had
beaten him, and why. I wanted to tell his family I was sorry for their loss.
An uncontrollable urgency brought me to my feet and
drew me closer, on rubber legs, to where I could see what was left of his face.
A gruesome mass of flesh protruded from his mouth. His tongue had bloated and
completely filled the openin’, like a flesh-sock had been stuffed in the hole,
stretchin’ his lips until they tore and the raw pulp poked out. Chunks of skin
were torn or bitten away from his eyes.
I don’t know how long I stood there, my legs
quakin’, unable to speak or turn back the way I had come. I don’t know how I
got home that night, or what I said to anyone along the way. What I do know is
that hearin’ of a colored man’s death was bad enough—I’d heard the rumors of
whites beatin’ colored men to death before—but actually seein’ the man who had
died, and witnessin’ the awful remains of the beatin’, now that terrified me to
my core. A feelin’ of shame bubbled within me. For the first time ever, I was
embarrassed to be white, because in Forrest Town, Arkansas, you could be fairly
certain it was my people who were the cause of his death. And as a young
southern woman, I knew that the expectation was for me to get married, have
children, and perpetuate the hate that had been bred in our lives. My children,
they’d be born into the same hateful society. That realization brought me
to my knees.
Author Bio
Melissa Foster is the award-winning author of four International
bestselling novels. Her books have been recommended by USA Today's book blog,
Hagerstown Magazine, The Patriot, and several other print venues. She is the
founder of the Women’s Nest,
a social and support community for women, the World Literary
Café. When she's not writing, Melissa helps authors navigate
the publishing industry through her author training programs on Fostering
Success. Melissa has been published in Calgary’s Child
Magazine, the Huffington Post, and Women Business Owners magazine.
Melissa hosts an annual Aspiring Authors contest
for children and has painted and donated several murals to The Hospital for
Sick Children in Washington, DC. Melissa lives in Maryland with her
family.
Visit Melissa on The Women's Nest, Fostering
Success, or World Lit
Cafe.
Authors
Links:
I love the sound of this book - really powerful and evocative. Fab review, JB. Have entered RC, but I suspect I'm going to get this one anyway! :) xx
Fab review JB. So glad you enjoyed Have No Shame :)
Thanks for reviewing as part of Melissa's tour.
Shaz