When Stars Align Virtual Book Tour July 2011 Blog Tour

When Stars Align Virtual Book Tour July 2011

Join Carole Eglash-Kosoff, author of the historical fiction novel, When Stars Align (Author House), as she virtually tours the blogosphere July 5 – 29 2011 on her first virtual book tour with Pump Up Your Book!

About Carole Kosoff

An avid student of history, Carole Eglash-Kosoff is a native of Wisconsin. After graduating from UCLA, she spent her career in the apparel industry and teaching fashion retail, marketing, and sales at the college level. Her first book is The Human Spirit. She has also established the …a better way! Scholarship program, which provides money and mentoring for worthy high school students for both their first and second year of college. Carole Eglash-Kosoff lives and writes in Valley Village, California.
Her latest book is When Stars Align.
You can visit her website at www.whenstarsalign-thebook.com or connect with her at Facebook at www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=553077163.

About When Stars Align

Carole Eglash-Kosoff’s first novel, WHEN STARS ALIGN, is set in 19th century Louisiana, at a time and place where mixed-race relationships are both illegal and unacceptable. How can these defiant lovers–and their love–survive?
The time is a crucial period in American history–the Civil War and the years of Reconstruction following it–and the characters are Thaddeus and Amy, who share a forbidden love that can get them both killed. For he is a mulatto ex-slave, and she is white. In the novel, whenever Amy asks if she and Thaddeus will ever be together, his answer is “When stars align.”
The place is Louisiana, where Moss Grove, a large Mississippi River cotton plantation, has thrived from the use of slave labor while its owners lived lives of comfort and privilege. Thaddeus, conceived from the rape of a young field slave by the heir to the plantation, is raised as a Moss Grove house servant. His continued presence remains a thorn in the side of the man who sired him.
Deepening divisiveness between North and South launches the Civil War and changes Moss Grove in ways no one could have anticipated. With the war swirling, we see the battles and carnage through Thaddeus’ eyes.
After the Civil War ends, the period of Reconstruction begins, and there is a glimmer of hope for the former slaves: black legislators are elected and help to pass new laws. With the help of Union soldiers, schools are established to educate those who were formerly prohibited from learning to read. Medical clinics are opened; businesses are established. Hope flourishes. Thaddeus returns to Moss Grove and to Amy, hoping to share their newly won freedoms. Perhaps the stars will now finally align for the young lovers…
In 1876, however, in the most contested election in American history, the ex-Confederate states barter the selection of President Rutherford B. Hayes in exchange for removal of all Union troops from their soil. Within a decade, hopes are dashed as Jim Crow laws are passed, the Ku Klux Klan launches new violence, and black progress is crushed.

Upcoming from Carole Eglash-Kosoff

Synopsis of Winds of Change (a continuation of When Stars Align) coming soon

Amy had taken her daughter, nephew, and a son she’d had never been able to acknowledge, born from her love with Thaddeus, her colored lover, to San Francisco to live, away from intense racial scrutiny.  The Civil War and the brief hopes of Reconstruction had passed.  Racism has turned violent across the states of the old Confederacy.  Amy dies unexpectedly and leaves a note asking that she be buried at Moss Grove, a Louisiana cotton plantation, where, as a young girl, she and Thaddeus had first met.  The love they shared would never be accepted. 

The three agree to honor Amy’s request and return, only to discover new revelations about who they are.  Stephen and Bess will be unable to consummate their love as they, as well as Josiah, discover facts that will change the lives of each of them.

Follow their loves and passions during a tumultuous time in American history that included the inventions of airplanes, automobiles, telephones and movies during decades of lynchings, economic upheavals, the Spanish-American War and World War I.  Winds of Change is a soaring historic fiction novel that stands alone but follows the next generation from those we came to know in When Stars Align.