Category Archives: Byrd, Sarah Martin

Sarah Martin Byrd. The Color of My Heart. Greenville, SC: Ambassador International, 2013.

color heartHow well do we know our neighbors?  How well do we even know our own family?  Laura Carter loves her husband, Cam, and although she knows his father Monroe is a hard, racist man, she treats her father-in-law with respect.  Laura accepts the fact that Cam, an accountant, has to help his father with his farm, and she does not object when Cam goes out at at night to assist his dad.  Laura believes that she and Cam are a team, and that together they can weather any storm.

Laura’s belief is put to the test in more ways than she could have imagined.  Laura has always known that she was adopted.  At her birthmother’s request, it was a closed adoption–Laura has never know anything about her birth family.  As The Color of My Heart opens, Laura’s birthmother, Nelda Brinson, is dying and Nelda’s grandmother makes the fateful decision to contact Laura.  Nelda and her Me-Maw live so close by that Laura can visit them, and in doing so she finds out that her mother and her people are African Americans.  As Laura, Cam, and their daughters are adjusting to that fact and getting to know their new family, their older daughter Larkin becomes pregnant.  The baby’s father is her long-term boyfriend, a boy whose father is a good friend of Cam’s father and who shares his racist views.  Sarah Martin Byrd weaves these three strands together in multi-generational story that contains history, horror, cruelty, compassion, and uplift.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2010-2019, 2013, Byrd, Sarah Martin, Davie, Iredell, Piedmont, Religious/Inspirational, Rowan

Sarah Martin Byrd. Guardian Spirit. Athens, OH: Lucky Press, 2011.

Survival for Millie and her two young children, Sadie and Sammy, requires thoughtful planning, strong willpower, and magic. When Millie finally musters the courage to leave her abusive husband, Brad, in Texas and to hide in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, she knows that she is walking into a world of uncertainty. Brad is likely to look for her with a vengeance, so Millie must distrust most people. The medication she needs for her cancer treatment makes using aliases impossible. Finally, nearly a quarter century has passed since she saw her beloved grandmother, Ann. Is she still alive? Will she want to see her long-lost granddaughter? Will contacting Ann put her life in danger?

As Millie, Sadie, and Sam make a cozy home in Ann’s abandoned cabin, Millie introduces her children to the nature of the mountains. Life goes well until Brad begins to hunt for his family and locates Ann.  The family appears to be in jeopardy, and it would be if it were not for Millie’s new doctor, Dr. Townsend. He has been having strange visions of the family, and his elderly Cherokee grandmother tells him about links between the Trail of Tears and Millie’s family’s ordeal. Dr. Townsend and his grandmother are with Millie, Ann, and the children when Brad finds them, and they protect them. When Sadie and Sammy witness their father’s inexplicable disappearance, they realize that their mother was right: there is magic in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2010-2019, 2011, Byrd, Sarah Martin, Children & Young Adults, Mountains, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Suspense/Thriller