Welcome to the tour for Alice's Portrait by Juliette Harper! This is a sci-fantasy novel that is adult but clean and appropriate for young adult readers.
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Alice's Portrait by Juliette Harper
A year after Kate, Jenny, and Mandy Lockwood inherit The Rocking L, the sisters try to concentrate on their collective and individual futures. In the previous book in The Lockwood Legacy series, Baxter’s Draw, the women made startling discoveries about their father’s secrets, but are mistaken in their belief that everything has now come to light. In Alice’s Portrait, the ghosts of Langston Lockwood’s past once again confront his daughters, forcing them to re-evaluate their understanding of their father and of what it means to be a Lockwood.
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Excerpt 2:
Like so many of Kate’s childhood
memories, this one began with Langston Lockwood’s scowling face. “Your Mama’s
got to go away for a while. I don’t want you brats underfoot. I’m sending you
to that god**mn Clara woman’s house. Mind your manners, Sister. You girls don’t
go shaming me, you hear? We have to live in this town.”
By eight years of age, Kate had
learned to say, “Yes, sir,” and keep her questions to herself. At her father’s
orders she went to her room and packed her bag, then did the same for her
little sister.
“Where we going, Katie?”
four-year-old Jenny asked. She was sitting on the floor of her room surrounded
by crayons, drawing chickens in a Big Chief tablet.
“We’re gonna go to Mrs. Wyler’s
house for a while,” Kate answered, folding her sister’s pajamas. “Daddy says
we’re in the way right now. Pack up your Crayolas, Jenny, so you can take them
with you.”
“But where’s Mama?” Jenny asked, her
lower lip starting to tremble.
Kate got down on the floor with her
sister and spoke urgently. “You can’t cry, Jenny, please. Daddy’s already mad,
and if he sees you crying he’ll holler at us more. Mama will be back.”
“Did she say so?” Jenny asked
uncertainly.
“I didn’t talk to her,” Kate said.
“I just know she’ll come back. I promise. Now stop crying, okay?”
Seemingly satisfied with her
sister’s assurances, Jenny started carefully putting her crayons back in the
box. “Okay, Katie,” she said. “I’ll be good. Do you like my chicken?”
Kate glanced down at the drawing.
“You always make the legs too long,” she said. “They look like those pink birds
in the zoo picture book.”
“Flaming go-gos?” Jenny asked.
Kate smothered a giggle, “I think
they’re called flamingos.”
When the sisters came down the hall,
each carrying a suitcase, there were no tears. Langston threw the cases in the
bed of the pick-up and never said a word on the drive to the Wylers’ place. He
pulled up in front of the house and said to the girls, “Get out. Do what Clara
says. Don’t make me come back over here. I’m busy.”
As Kate got out she heard Clara
Wyler say to Langston in a low, angry tone, “You ought to be ashamed of
yourself, Langston Lockwood, talking to little girls like that.”
“Tend to your own god***n business,
Clara,” Langston snapped. He waited for Clint Wyler to remove the suitcases
from the bed of the truck and then drove off in a cloud of dust without so much
as a backward glance.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Juliette Harper is the pen name used by the writing team of Patricia Pauletti and Rana K. Williamson. Like the characters of their debut series, The Lockwood Legacy, Juliette is a merging of their creative energies. Pauletti, an Easterner of Italian descent, is an accomplished musician with an eye for art and design. Williamson, a Texan from a long line of hardheaded Scots, knows the world of the Lockwoods like the back of her hand.“We decided to write under a pen name because neither one of us by ourselves could have created Kate, Jenny, Mandy, and their world,” says Pauletti. “Juliette is a little bit of us both. We want to be her when we grow up.”
“Patti teases me that I just don’t want to own up to writing a book with romance in it,” Williamson adds, “but that’s not true. I like the Lockwood women and the way they tackle everything life throws at them. And before we’re done, they’ll be ducking a lot. I imagine coming into the office every day and saying, ‘Okay Juliette, what’s going to happen now?’ She tells us, and we get it down on paper.”
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GIVEAWAY
The author will be giving away $100 Amazon Gift Card (INT) to the winner of the below Rafflecopter. The giveaway ends May 20th.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
This event was organized by CBB Book Promotions.
Thank you for the great review this book sounds like it is good
ReplyDeleteSuch an amazing set of books! xx
ReplyDeleteI love to find "new to me" authors!
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