current titles
The Education of Asa Paxton: Coming of Age in the Heart of Dixie offers an historic view of rural life in the South through the eyes of young adults--the self-proclaimed Misfit Clique--who suffer through puberty's awkward, embarrassing, and sometimes humorous moments. Asa emerges at seventeen a handsome young man, still an outcast because of the company his family keeps. Secrets soon collide with the force of a tornado, threatening to tear families apart and send the innocent to prison-or worse.
The Education of Asa Paxton is the first novel in the Haint Blue Series. The word "haint," meaning haunt, is thought to have come from the Gullah language of enslaved West Africans in the Carolina Low Country. Indigo/era tinctoria, a shrub also known as True Indigo, was a cash crop harvested to make dye for the European market. The Gullah believed the indigo color resembled water, which haints would not pass. In addition to a home's porch, the door, window frames, and shutters were painted indigo. Today, in the Heart of Dixie, many front porch ceilings are painted haint blue. In addition to protecting homes from the haunting nature of ghosts, which Alabama is known for, the color is also believed to ward off nesting birds, wasps, and other insects.
coming fall 2025
The second installment in the Haint Blue Series follows Asa and Rosaleigh into a whirlwind of change spurred on by the world teetering on the edge of WWII.