The Setting for the Story

Reason #3 to pre-order The Promise of Jesse Woods
Setting is important to every story—and in the ones I tell, I try to make the setting so much a part of the tale that you feel as if you are there. My friend Sharon wrote and said, "When I was growing up, I never imagined I could go back home through a book. Thanks."

In The Promise of Jesse Woods, you'll taste potato salad at a church potluck that didn't turn out lucky for my friends. You'll see fireflies rise from the earth like prayers and smell the smoke of a campfire on the hill that overlooks Dogwood. Feel the humidity of June. And the bugs and gnats. And the cool breeze in the evening.

One of the principal characters is Jesse Woods. She lives in a ramshackle house "on the side of a hill that hung like a mole on the face of God."

As I wrote, I pictured the spot on the road by our house that led to a gas well and a "V" in the hills. When I was a kid there were no houses in sight on that spot, just trees and brush. My friend Rex drove there the other day and took these pictures.




On the flat spot at the bottom of the hill are three crosses. I have no idea where they came from or who put them there, but as I drove past them recently, I gasped. That was the very spot I pictured Jesse's house. Then I had to laugh. You can't make this stuff up. What a setting for a story.

I hope you get to read about Jesse's promise, her life, how much Matt loved her, and what happens 12 years later.

Photo credit: Rexford Chambers

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