18-year-old Opal is a young Black woman working as a housekeeper in a small Southern town in the 1930s--and then the Klan descends. A moving story that confronts America's tragic past, When Stars Rain Down is both heartwarming and heart-wrenching. This summer has the potential to change everything. The summer of 1936 in Parsons, Georgia, is unseasonably hot, and Opal Pruitt senses a nameless storm brewing. She hopes this foreboding feeling won't overshadow her upcoming 18th birthday or the annual Founder's Day celebration in just a few weeks. She and her Grandma Birdie work as housekeepers for the white widow Miss Peggy, and Opal desperately wants some time to be young and carefree with her cousins and friends. But when the Ku Klux Klan descends on Opal's neighborhood, the tight-knit community is shaken in every way possible. Parsons's residents--both Black and white--are forced to acknowledge the unspoken codes of conduct in their post-Reconstruction era town. To complicate matters, Opal finds herself torn between two unexpected romantic interests--the son of her pastor, Cedric Perkins, and the white grandson of the woman she works for, Jimmy Earl Ketchums. Both young men awaken emotions Opal has never felt before. Faced with love, loss, and a harsh awakening to an ugly world, Opal holds tight to her family and faith--and the hope for change. <ul> <li>Historical fiction set in the rural south&nbsp;</li> <li>Stand-alone novel</li> <li>Book length: 101,000 words</li> <li>Includes discussion questions for book clubs</li> </ul> "When Stars Rain Down is so powerful, timely, and compelling that sometimes I found myself holding my breath while reading it. Rarely have I been so attached to characters and felt so transported to a time and place. This is an important and beautifully written must-read of a novel. Opal is a character I will never forget." --Silas House, author of Southernmost "Angela Jackson-Brown interrogates race, love and family with empathy and style, making her an author you will want to read again and again. This tale of America's tragic past is both compelling and cinematic as the Pruitt and Ketchum families struggle in the mire of racism in the 1930s. It's a moving novel that boldly illuminates the past but also speaks directly to today's politics and the power of faith. You will fall in love with the book's resilient protagonist Opal. I certainly did." --Crystal Wilkinson, author of The Birds of Opulence "In this world there are writers and there are artists. Angela Jackson-Brown is both." --Sean Dietrich (Sean of the South), author of Stars of Alabama

When Stars Rain Down

Literature & Fiction

Jackson-Brown, Angela

United States

Thomas Nelson

As 1947 opens, Eva Cardon is the twenty-four-year-old owner of Washington, D.C.’s, most famous Black-owned restaurant. When her path crosses with Courtland, a handsome white senator from Georgia, both find themselves drawn to one another—but the danger of a relationship between a Black woman and a white man from the South could destroy them and everything they’ve worked for. 
Few women own upscale restaurants in civil rights era Washington, D.C. Fewer still are twenty-four, Black, and wildly successful. But Eva Cardon is unwilling to serve only the wealthiest movers and shakers, and she plans to open a diner that offers Southern comfort to the working class. 
A war hero and one of Georgia’s native sons, Courtland Hardiman Kingsley IV is a junior senator with great ambitions for his time in D.C. But while his father is determined to see Courtland on a path to the White House, the young senator wants to use his office to make a difference in people’s lives, regardless of political consequences. 
When equal-rights activism throws Eva and Courtland into each other’s paths, they can’t fight the attraction they feel, no matter how much it complicates their dreams. For Eva, falling in love with a white Southerner is all but unforgivable—and undesirable. Her mother and grandmother fell in love with white men, and their families paid the price. Courtland is already under pressure for his liberal ideals, and his family has a line of smiling debutantes waiting for him on every visit. If his father found out about Eva, he’s not sure he’d be welcome home again. 
Surrounded by the disapproval of their families and the scorn of the public, Eva and Courtland must decide if the values they hold most dear—including love—are worth the loss of their dreams . . . and everything else. 
The author of When Stars Rain Down returns with a historical love story about all that has—and has not—changed in the United States Historical romance set in civil rights era Washington, D.C. Stand-alone novel Book length: approximately 120,000 words Includes discussion questions for book clubs

The Light Always Breaks

Harper Muse

“I have often said that good poetry makes you think or feel deeply; great poetry makes you do both. And great poetry is not found in lofty ideals like Truth, Nature, God, or Love. It happens where life happens, down in the midst of things, in the spaces between our hearts. Angela Jackson-Brown’s House Repairs, is great poetry. In it you will find what makes poetry necessary. You will find honesty and pain, beauty and atonement in these poems, where the power of strangled and realized possibility sings…” – Robert Gray Author of Drew: Poems from Blue Water &amp; Jesus Walks the Southland “Angela Jackson-Brown offers herself… no, she announces herself to us as Spirit-Woman, and we would do well to heed the histories of hurts and healings woven beautifully and brutally through her poetry. She eviscerates in one three line poem only to coax us back and salve us with long, loving wordstrokes in the next…” – Colleen S. Harris Author of The Kentucky Vein, These Terrible Sacraments &amp; God in My Throat: The Lilith Poems “Early on in this debut collection, Angela Jackson-Brown admits she’s writing from her own life, but that isn’t exactly true. Instead, I would say she’s redefined it – redefining what it is to be black, what it is to be a woman with her real woman’s body, and most of all, what it is to survive in a world that did not always want her and in which she did not always even want her own self…” – Nickole Brown Author of Sister and Fannie Says: A Biography-in-Poems

House Repairs

Poetry

Negative Capability Press

The country is changing, and her own world is being turned upside down. Nothing—and no one—will ever be the same. 
Georgia, 1962. Rose Perkins Bourdon returns home to Parsons, GA, without her husband and pregnant with another man’s baby. After tragedy strikes her husband in the war overseas, a numb Rose is left with pieces of who she used to be and is forced to figure out what she is going to do with the rest of her life. Her sister introduces her to members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee—young people are taking risks and fighting battles Rose has only seen on television. Feeling emotions for the first time in what feels like forever, the excited and frightened Rose finds herself becoming increasingly involved in the resistance efforts. And of course, there is also the young man, Isaac Weinberg, whose passion for activism stirs something in her she didn’t think she would ever feel again. 
Homeward follows Rose’s path toward self-discovery and growth as she becomes involved in the Civil Rights Movement, finally becoming the woman she has always dreamed of being. 
Praise for Homeward: 
"This is a harrowing novel about the push and pull of fidelity, family, and faith under the crush of history. Angela Jackson-Brown has written a deeply emotional novel that feels timeless while also speaking to the particularly troubled times in which we live." 
—Wiley Cash, New York Times bestselling author of When Ghosts Come Home A stirring tale of one woman’s experience in the Civil Rights movement that changed a nation, written from Angela Jackson-Brown’s experience of being born and raised in the rural South. Stand-alone novel Includes Discussion Questions for book clubs

Homeward: A Novel

A young woman’s coming of age against a backdrop of an unseasonably hot summer in 1936 Georgia is upended by KKK activities that raise questions about her community’s unacknowledged racism and the kind of person she wants to be. (general fiction).

When Stars Rain Down (Thorndike Press Large Print Black Voices)

Thorndike Press Large Print

1978. The year I turned ten and the year my mama killed herself. She was thirty-five, and dying is the last thing that should have been on her mind. After the death of her mother, Sylvia Butler's father, a man she knows only from an old photo, takes her from Louisville, Kentucky to Ozark, Alabama to live with his family. But his wife resents everything about this intruder, from her out-of-wedlock conception to her dark skin and nappy hair.
 When the wife's younger brother Charles returns from Vietnam, Sylvia thinks she has found a friend and confidante, only to be hurt again, but this time, in a manner she never could have imagined.
 Set under the backdrop of the Deep South in the 70s and 80s, this coming of age story of redemption and grace follows Sylvia in her journey from awkward girl to confident young woman, at last standing on her own.

Drinking from a Bitter Cup

WiDo Publishing

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