New Release & Excerpt – Unspoken by Jann Alexander
Synopsis
A farm devastated. A dream destroyed. A family scattered.
And one Texas girl determined to salvage the wreckage.
Ruby Lee Becker can’t breathe. It’s 1935 in the heart of the Dust Bowl, and the Becker family has clung to its Texas Panhandle farm through six years of drought, dying crops, and dust storms. On Black Sunday, the biggest blackest storm of them all threatens ten-year-old Ruby with deadly dust pneumonia and requires a drastic choice—one her mother, Willa Mae, will forever regret.
To survive, Ruby is forced to leave the only place she’s ever known. Far from home in Waco, and worried her mother has abandoned her, she’s determined to get back.
Even after twelve years, Willa Mae still clings to memories of her daughter. Unable to reunite with Ruby, she’s broken by their separation and haunted by losses she couldn’t prevent.
Through rollicking adventures and harrowing setbacks, the tenacious Ruby Lee embarks on her perilous quest for home—and faces her one unspoken fear.
Heart-wrenching and inspiring, the tale of Ruby Lee’s dogged perseverance and Willa Mae’s endless love for her daughter shines a light on women driven apart by disaster who bravely lean on one another, find comfort in remade families, and redefine what home means.
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Excerpt
Chapter One
1935
RUBY LEE
I had never seen anyone dead before.
Momma had hold of my hand, hers larger and warmer and locked tight around mine, while her chest was heaving and she was stifling her gasps in the plain little prairie church so new I could smell its fresh-cut pine boards.
Footfalls echoed as people walked in with tentative steps, as though not to disturb the dead, of which there were two. They were laid out in simple caskets built only yesterday after my grandma, and then my baby sister, died with the brown dirt—dust pneumonia they called it—clogging their lungs.
They made my Granny Alma look like she was at peace, with her hands crossed atop her chest. Except she hadn’t been, because she was coughing in fits right before her eyes flew open wide and then rolled backwards and she gurgled her way out of this dry, dusty world. My momma had grabbed her hands and begged her not to leave us, sobbing and moaning so loud I was the only one to hear baby Nell’s raspy breaths.
I picked her up from the little cradle Pa had carved for my brothers before me and held her close to shush her; she was wheezing so bad. I put her on my shoulder the way Momma had showed me to help clear her lungs. I ran my hand over her silky hair, shush, shush, take a breath now, hearing her chest rattle, wiping the brown spittle from her mouth, until of a sudden I heard her silence louder than Momma’s wails. I shrieked, handing Nell to Momma; I’d felt the life go out of her. That’s when I knew what dying was.
I was ten and prone to coughing up the dust, too.
Momma cradled Nell in her arms, and her screams terrified me so I hear them still.
They closed the wood lid on her real tight; they wouldn’t let anyone see baby Nell laid out in her tiny casket, it was too heartbreaking. But I had already seen her, and she didn’t look peaceful. She looked startled, the way she had when we fed her cow’s milk from a bottle after Momma’s stopped coming.
That Sunday in April 1935 in the Panhandle was an uncommon bright day which didn’t reflect our family’s desperation. What little breeze there was blew gentle, unlike the stinging winds we were accustomed to. The spring air was so clean you could almost inhale it deep without coughing up dirt. The sun was golden and hopeful. Our families who’d been farming this desert during the five long years of the drouth were well acquainted with hope, though it was a currency our town’s shuttered bank no longer accepted.
The new windows in the church were propped open to the balmy air that afternoon of the double funerals, and I couldn’t see the dunes of dirt covering every square inch of town once I sat down—only the tufty white clouds skating along a blue sky, framed by the church windows.
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About the Author
Jann Alexander writes characters who face down their fears. Her novels are as close-to-true as fiction can get.
Jann Alexander is the author of the historical novel, UNSPOKEN, set in the Texas Panhandle during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression eras, and her first book in The Dust Series.
Jann writes on all things creative in her blog, Pairings. She’s a 20-year resident of central Texas and creator of the Vanishing Austin photography series. As a former art director for ad agencies and magazines in the D.C. area, and a painter, photographer, and art gallery owner, creativity is her practice and passion.
Jann’s lifelong storytelling habit and her more recent zeal for Texas history merged to become the historical Dust Series. When she is not reading, writing, or creating, she bikes, hikes, skis, and kayaks. She lives in central Texas with her own personal Texan (and biggest fan), Karl, and their Texas mutt, Ruby.
Jann always brakes for historical markers.
