Join Christa Allan, author of the contemporary fiction novel, The Edge of Grace(Abingdon Press), as she virtually tours the blogosphere September 5 – 30 2011 on her second virtual book tour with Pump Up Your Book!
About Christa Allan
A true Southern woman who knows that any cook worth her gumbo always starts with a roux and who never wears white after Labor Day, The Edge of Grace is Christa’s second novel. Her debut women’s fiction, Walking on Broken Glass, released in February from Abingdon Press. She is under contract for three more novels that will release in 2012 and 2013. She has been teaching high school English for over twenty years, earning her National Board Certification in 2007. The mother of five adult children and the totally smitten Grammy of two granddaughters, Christa and her veterinarian husband, Ken, live in Abita Springs, Louisiana.Visit her website at www.christaallan.com.
You can connect with Christa at Facebook athttp://www.facebook.com/ChristaAllan.Author.
About The Edge of Grace
When Caryn Becker answers the telephone on most Saturday morning, it’s generally not a prelude to disaster. Except this time, her brother David’s call shifts her universe. Her emotional reserves are already depleted being a single parent to six-year-old Ben after the unexpected death of her husband Harrison. But when David is the target of a brutal hate crime, Caryn has to decide what she’s willing to risk, including revealing her own secrets, to help her brother. A family ultimately explores the struggle of acceptance, the grace of forgiveness, and moving from prejudice to love others as they are, not as we’d like them to be.My review will be posted September 29th, 2011
EXCERPT:
The last two words I said to my brother David that Saturday were “oh” and “no,” and not in the same sentence–though they should have been.On an otherwise ordinary, cartoon-filled morning, my son Ben sat at the kitchen table spiraling a limp bacon slice around his finger. His last ditch effort to forestall doing his chores. I was having a domestic bonding experience with the vacuum cleaner. My last ditch effort to forestall the house being over- taken by microscopic bugs, dead skin, and petrified crumbs. I’d just summoned the courage to attempt a pre-emptive strike on the intruders under the sofa cushions when the phone rang.
I walked into the kitchen, gave Ben the “don’t you dare touch that phone with your greasy bacon hands” stare, and grabbed the handset.
EXCERPT:
The last two words I said to my brother David that Saturday were “oh” and “no,” and not in the same sentence–though they should have been.On an otherwise ordinary, cartoon-filled morning, my son Ben sat at the kitchen table spiraling a limp bacon slice around his finger. His last ditch effort to forestall doing his chores. I was having a domestic bonding experience with the vacuum cleaner. My last ditch effort to forestall the house being over- taken by microscopic bugs, dead skin, and petrified crumbs. I’d just summoned the courage to attempt a pre-emptive strike on the intruders under the sofa cushions when the phone rang.
I walked into the kitchen, gave Ben the “don’t you dare touch that phone with your greasy bacon hands” stare, and grabbed the handset.
It was David. “I wanted you to hear this from me,” he said. An all-too familiar sensation–that breath-sucking, plum- meting roller coaster feeling–I’m thinking he’s been fired, in a car wreck, diagnosed with cancer, six months to live . . . But, no, it wasn’t as simple as that.He told me he was leaving in a few days for a vacation. With a man. Leaving with a man. Crossing state lines from Louisiana to Mexico to share sun, sand, and sheets with a per- son of the same sex.
My universe shifted.
He came out of the closet, and I went into it. For perhaps only the second time in my life, I was mute. Not even sputter- ing, not even spewing senseless syllables. Speechless.
“Caryn, are you still there?”
No. I’m not still here. I’m miles away and I’m stomping my feet and holding my breath in front of the God Who Makes All Monsters Disappear.
I think I hear God. He’s telling me I’m the monster.
Wisps of sounds. They belonged to David. “Did you hear what I said? That I’m going away?”
I hung up. I didn’t ask “Why?” because he’d tell me the truth my heart already knew.
“What did Uncle David want?” Ben asked.
I spun around and made eye contact with my unsuspecting innocent. “Get that bacon off your finger right now, mister. Wash your hands, and go do whatever it is you’re supposed to be doing.”
He shoved the bacon in his mouth, his face the solemn reflection of my emotional slap. From the den television, the Nickelodeon Gummy Bears filled the stillness with their
“. . . bouncing here, there, and everrrrrywherre . . .” song. “And turn that television off on the way back to your
room.”
“. . . bouncing here, there, and everrrrrywherre . . .” song. “And turn that television off on the way back to your
room.”
“Okay, Mom,” said Ben, his words a white flag of surrender as he left the room.
Now what? I decided to abandon the vacuuming. Really, was I supposed to fret about Multi-Grain Wheat Thin crumbs and popcorn seeds when my only sibling was leaving for Mexico with another man?
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