Winter of Redemption (18 page)
Read Winter of Redemption Online
Authors: Linda Goodnight
- This story took place in the fictional town of Redemption, Oklahoma. What stands out in your mind about the setting? In what way did the setting add to the mood and tone of the book?
- Who were the main characters? Did you like them and feel sympathy for them? Discuss their issues. How would you have helped each one resolve their problems?
- Describe some of the secondary characters. Which ones seemed the most real to you? Can you identify with any one of them? Why?
- Kade struggled with self-loathing. Why? Was he justified in his feelings? What made him so cynical?
- Because of the things that happened during his year undercover, Kade distanced himself from God. How did this affect his life? His relationships?
- Discuss why denying emotions is a bad thing. Name several ways Kade was harmed by his own emotions.
- Sophie is a strong, happy character, but like everyone, she has problems. What is her biggest unresolved issue? How does it affect her relationship with men?
- What do you think about the way Sophie's father continued to love his ex-wife? Do you think he was right? Or just unwilling to move on?
- Have you, like Kade, ever had a problem you felt you could not talk about? What happened? How did you deal with the feelings?
- What is the primary theme of
The Christmas Child?
Can you give examples from the story to substantiate your answer? - Think about the title of this book,
The Christmas Child.
Who is this referring to? Is there more than one Christmas child in the story? - Sophie believes in miracles. Do you? Have you ever experienced a miracle? Describe it and how it came about.
- Kade's personal motto is “Life is a rat race and the rats are winning.” Do you have a motto? If not, can you think of one that fits your attitude and beliefs?
- Christmas in Redemption receives major focus. What are your thoughts on town-sanctioned Nativity scenes?
- Ida June and Popbottle Jones are considered too old to raise an adopted child. What are your thoughts on the topic of parental age and adoption? What about single-parent adoption?
Welcome to Honey Ridge, Tennessee, where
NEW YORK TIMES
BESTSELLING AUTHOR
LINDA GOODNIGHT
invites you to a house rich with secrets and brimming with sweet possibilities in
Memories of motherhood and marriage are still fresh for Julia Presleyâthough tragedy took away both years ago. Finding comfort running the Peach Orchard Inn, she lets the historic place fill the voids of love and family. Life is calmâ¦until a stranger with a young boy shows up and disrupts the loneliness of her world. Julia suspects there's more to Eli Donovan than his motherless son, Alex. Offering the guarded man work, she glimpses someone whoâlike herâhas a heart in need of restoration. But with the chance discovery of a stack of dusty love letters found in the lining of an old trunk, a Civil War romance envelops Julia and Eli, challenging them to risk facing yesterday's ghosts for a future bright with hope and healing.
Available now in ebook!
Don't miss the second title in the
Honey Ridge
series,
a beautiful story full of hope, haunting mystery and the power to win your heart.
"Her beautiful storytelling, coupled with a well-crafted, poignant plot, will touch readers' hearts from the first page."
â
RT Book Reviews
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A bestselling writer and a shy librarian are brought together by a vulnerable little boy, a powerful thunderstorm and an attraction that neither can deny. Read on and fall in love with
New York Times
bestselling author Linda Goodnight's latest title ,
THE RAIN SPARROW
â¦
It was a dark and stormy night, a cliché Hayden Winters dearly loved. These broody, moody nights of lightning and thunder and violent wind fueled his imagination like no other. A man intent on committing murderâ¦
The storm had moved in around midnight, interrupting his original plans to sleep. He could never sleep on a night like this. Didn't want to, especially here in a house filled with memories and secrets.
Everyone, he believed, has a secret, and the south was filled with them. That's why he'd come.
Hayden had a secret, too, a psychological canker worm. One that was eating a raw, black hole in his soul. Not that he'd ever let anyone see inside to know that much about him. To the world, Hayden Winters was a winner, a success, a man who brushed problems away with a charming smile. He was a man invited to the best parties he seldom attended and who gave rare, but coveted interviews. A man with a charmed life.
But on these dark, moody, broody nights the demons danced around the edges of his fertile mind. He wondered at his sanity, and knew it was only by a merciful God that he was strong of
constitution and could keep the demons in their rightful place. Most of the time.
So he killed people. Dozens of them. Books littered with bodies fed some perverse need in the populace and kept his bank account fat and happy.
In the elegant rented bedroom-the Mulberry Room-lit only by the glow of his laptop, Hayden rose, went to the windows to watch and listen as rain lashed the sides of Peach Orchard Inn with its silver-on-black fingers clawing to get in.
The view outside was far different than it had been upon his arrival earlier today. An Australian shepherd, graying around the edges, had drowsed on the long and glorious antebellum veranda. Hayden had immediately envisioned himself at the wicker furniture, feet up on the railing with a glass of Julia Presley's almost-famous peach tea and his imagination in flight.
The two-story columned mansion had shone in the sun, glowing in its whiteness with dark trimmed shutters, flowers spilling everywhere and thick vines twining like great green arms around the oak trees. He'd driven down the winding lane of massive magnolias right into an antebellum past, far from the distractions and manic pace of the modern world.
Peach Orchard Inn, a simple name for a magnificent house, restored he would bet, to better than its former glory. His assistant, who knew him better than most, though not well, had
discovered the inn while on vacation and suggested he write the next bestseller here. Exhausted by the city bustle and another romance gone sour, he'd jumped at the idea. His ex should have taken him at his word. He'd told her from the beginning that he was neither husband nor father material. The reasons for this aversion he'd kept to himself, more for her protection than his. She didn't know that, though, and had been hurt.
He hated hurting people. Other than in his books. And the latest episode drove him deeper into himself. A man like him ought not to need other people.
He could work here, rest here, research small town secrets for the next thriller. There were plenty of interesting places to commit murder.
Across the road, a single light glowed like a beacon in the storm. The source was the abandoned, dilapidated grist mill that had once been part of this farm. He knew this because he was ferociously curious and knowing was his business. Abandoned buildings provided perfect places to get away with murder. He'd be suitably inspired here among the hills and hollows of southern Tennessee.
A blue-fire javelin of lightning, fierce as a bolt straight from the hand of Zeus slit the night like a fiery blade. Gorgeous stuff.
Hayden stretched, rolled his neck, considered a walk in the
violence.
He'd be up most of the night during a wild thunderstorm of this magnitude. He could feel the yet unformed story brewing in his blood, a bubbling cauldron of energy and creativity.
Coffee, and plenty of it, was a must. He wasn't a Red Bull kind of guy. Something about it seemed addictive to him and if there was anything he feared greater than losing his only useful resource-his fertile mind-it was addiction. Addictions came, he knew, in many forms.
Leaving the laptop curser to blink a blind eye, he let himself out of the luxurious Mulberry Room and made his way down shadowy stairs carpeted in blood red, his hand on the smooth wooden banister, taking care on the creaky third step he'd noticed earlier. No self-respecting author of murder and mayhem missed a creaky step.
Lightning illuminated the curved staircase and thunder rumbled like a thousand kettle drums. The house stood steady, quiet even, as if it had weathered too much to be bothered by a thunderstorm. There were stories here. He could feel them.
Hayden's Scots-Irish blood heard the dance of his ancestors in the thunder, saw wave-tossed fishing vessels on storm gray seas and imagined a woman standing on the shore, hand to her forehead watching while in the misty shadows lurked the equally watchful predator, biding his time.
Hayden tucked away the image for future reference. The new
book was to explore the dark undercurrents hidden behind the welcoming smiles and sweet tea of a small town in the rural south, not the storm-tossed coasts of Ireland.
At the base of the stairs, he crossed the foyer through to an area the proprietress had termed the front parlor, a room of time past with a marble fireplace enclosure and Victorian décor, and into the much more modern kitchen. He fumbled for a light switch, mildly concerned about waking the sister-owners who resided somewhere on the first floor, but dismissed the concern in favor of coffee.
A quick survey of the brown granite countertops revealed no coffee maker. He cursed himself for not remembering to ask about essential coffee equipment in his rented room, of which there was none. Here, in the large copper and cream kitchen, the coffee machine could be anywhere. He had no luck locating it but found a teabag caddie, a discovery that made him snarl.
While he pondered the usefulness of lemon zinger tea, his cell phone buzzed against his hip. He winced at the sudden racket, though if the thunder didn't wake the house, a ringtone shouldn't. Still, out of consideration and being the new guest in the place, he slapped the phone silent. He'd intended to dump the device in the bottom of his suitcase and forget it for a few days, but out of habit, he'd stuck the phone in his back pocket.
“A pity,” he grumbled. “And stupid.”
He knew who the caller was. The only person who ever called
him in the dead of night. She'd been the one who taught him never to sleep too soundly.
“Hello, Dora Lee.”
He heard her quivery intake of breath and braced himself for the histrionics or cursing. One or the other was inevitable.
When she didn't respond, a tingle of worry forced a regrettable question. “Are you all right?”
“No, I'm not all right, though a lot you care. I'm sick. You know I'm sick and you don't help me. How am I supposed to get my medicine?”
Hayden closed his eyes and leaned against the hard counter edge. He could imagine her there in the cluttered trailer among unwashed dishes and fast food containers filled with dry, half-eaten meals, hair wild and eyes wilder, hands shaking in desperation. “What did you do with the last money?”
“You think that's enough? You think I can pay rent and buy food and keep the lights on with that?”
His sigh was heavy. “Is the electricity off again?”
“Been off. I had to have my medicine. What good is lights if a body hurts too bad to open her eyes.”
“Dora Lee, I won't send money for any more pills.” God knew, he'd contributed to her addiction too long already with the ever raw hope that she'd change, a hope that even now burned with a flickering flame. “You're killing yourself. I'll come to Kentucky, get you into a clinicâ“
The scream in his ear was louder than the thunder. “Shut up! Shut up, you hear me? You ungrateful scum. I should have drowned you when I had the chance for all the good you've done me. Keep your filthy money.”
The line went dead in his ear.
Weariness of the last few months pressed in. His stir of creative energy seeped out like life's blood on the kitchen tile.
He should never have given her his cell phone number, but the desperate little boy inside him still yearned to make things better with his embittered, addicted nightmare of a mother. Even when he was small, before the dark and deadly underbelly of a coal mine had killed his gentle father, Dora Lee had popped illegally gotten pills for imaginary headaches and hated her only child. And he didn't know why.
His mother had no idea the same hated son was now Hayden Winters, successful novelist. It was a secret he would never share with her. Could never share. The ramifications were too deep and disturbing to consider.
