Spotlight & Excerpt – The Dragons of Alsace Farm by Laurie Lewis @laurielclewis #historical
Synopsis
Fears and secrets are the dragons we each must face. . .
In need of his own redemption, Noah Carter finally confronts his childhood hero, the once-beloved uncle who betrayed him. Instead of vengeance, he offers forgiveness, also granting Uncle John a most curious request—for Noah to work on the ramshackle farm of Agnes Deveraux Keller, a French WWII survivor with dementia.
Despite all Agnes has lost, she still has much to teach Noah. But the pair’s unique friendship is threatened when Tayte, Agnes’s estranged granddaughter, arrives to claim a woman whose circumstances and abilities are far different from those of the grandmother she once knew.
Items hidden in Agnes’s attic raise painful questions about Tayte’s dead parents, steeling Tayte’s determination to save Agnes, even if it requires her to betray the very woman she came to save, and the secret her proud grandmother has guarded for seventy years.
The issue strains the fragile trust between Tayte and Noah, who now realizes Tayte is fighting her own secrets, her own dragons. Weighed down by past guilt and failures, he feels ill-equipped to help either woman, until he remembers Agnes’s lessons about courage and love. In order to save Agnes, the student must now become the teacher, helping Tayte heal—for Agnes’s sake, and for his.
Excerpt
“You were amazing, Agnes . . . so brave. You knew just what to do.”
She smiled. “I am all they have. Being needed makes you brave. Sometimes we simply do what we must. But then, you know a bit about that as well, don’t you?”
Noah looked at his pocked arms. “You mean my scars?”
“From cigarettes??”
Noah’s lips pursed as he remembered the feel of the burns. “It was my father’s way of motivating me.”
“Beast.” It was spoken like a curse, and it made Noah smile. “The shame is his. Not yours.”
Noah undid the ties that fastened the three-inch-wide leather band worn over his wrist. Beneath it were rows of straight scars. “Not just his, Agnes. I did these myself.” He felt his face burn with shame.
Agnes leaned on her shovel and searched an unknown spot in the sky. “When the bombings ended, only one tree remained in the park near my house. Everyone said we should protect it and honor it. I went out at night and threw rocks at it. I pulled on its branches and tried to kill it because I thought, better I should kill it than wait for the dragons to return and destroy this one also.”
Now Noah understood. “The Nazis were the dragons?”
“There are many dragons, mon cher. You fought yours in the only way you knew how, but that war is over now.”
“You think so?”
Agnes walked to him and placed a wrinkled hand on his cheek. “You slew your dragons. I can see peace in your eyes.”
Praise for the Book
Lewis has created outstanding characters who realistically portray the characteristics of the particular dragons each is fighting whether it is physical or emotional. – Jennie Hanson, Meridian Magazine
About the Author
Laurie (L.C.) Lewis was born and raised in rural Maryland where she and her husband still reside. She admits to being craft-challenged, particularly lethal with a glue gun, and a lover of sappy movies. The Dragons of Alsace Farm, her eighth published novel, was inspired by a loved one’s struggle with dementia. Her women’s fiction novels include Unspoken (2004) and Awakening Avery (2010), written as Laurie Lewis. Using the pen name L.C. Lewis, she wrote the five volumes of her award-winning FREE MEN and DREAMERS historical fiction series, set against the backdrop of the War of 1812: Dark Sky at Dawn (2007), Twilight’s Last Gleaming (2008), Dawn’s Early Light (2009), Oh, Say Can You See? (2010), and In God is Our Trust, (2011).
She is currently completing a political suspense novel planned for a November release. In March she will release a romance novel under the pen name Addison Tayte for Gelato Book’s “Destination Billionaire’s Series.” She loves to hear from readers, and she can be contacted at any of these locations.
