☀☄ Forget Me Not - Allison Whitmore

Thank you for joining us on the Virtual Book Tour for Forget Me Not, an Historical Fiction by Allison Whitmore (14 September 2015, Booktrope Editions, 452 pages).

PREVIEW: Check out the book's synopsis, trailer and excerpt below, as well as our Q&A with author Allison Whitmore. Read the first three chapters with Amazon Look Inside.

Allison Whitmore is offering our readers one signed copy of Forget Me Not, and one digital copy to a randomly drawn winners via Rafflecopter; you have until 30 November 2015 to enter!  Please do take part: comment on our post and follow the tour where you will be able to read other excerpts (☀), interviews (ℚ) and reviews (✍).

UPDATE: You might also like Allison Whitmore's latest release, The Lost Heir - do check it out! (15/01/2016)

Synopsis | Trailer | Teaser | Author Q&A | About the Author | Giveaway &Tour Stops

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Synopsis

Theodora “Teddi” Donovan and Calvin Wynne have always hated each other. They didn't have a choice after Teddi's bootlegger father killed Calvin's and left them both orphaned. The scandal has fueled gossip in quiet, quaint Brookhurst, New York, for over a decade.

When a friendship develops between them as teenagers, they are ridiculed and shunned by the strict society that dictates life in their town. As they grow older, friendship turns into love, and Teddi and Calvin have to choose between their future and the scepter of their past.

Spanning continents and decades, Forget Me Not is a coming-of-age story about truth, self-reliance, and the freeing power of love.

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Teaser: Excerpt

PROLOGUE
“When They Were Young”

1933
WHEN THEODORA “TEDDI” DONOVAN was eleven, she was called filth, and she had no idea why. She lived in a perfect house on a perfect street in the middle of a perfect town. Her grandfather was a respected judge, and her grandmother a pillar of the community. Of course, her parents, who’d been dead for less than a year, had not left such an unsullied reputation behind. But Teddi didn’t think anyone blamed her for that— at least, until she heard it from her uncle’s mouth one Saturday afternoon.
      Teddi trudged up the stairs of her grandparents’ house, the place she now called home, with a satchel full of her mother’s paintings on her left shoulder and a ginger cookie in her right hand. As she reached the second floor landing, the sound of a car pulling up to the house quickened her pace. With swift legs, she made it up the two flights to the attic and propped her paintings in a dusty corner near a pair of old file cabinets. After finishing her ginger cookie, she extracted each painting from the satchel. Two were of the old lighthouse at the edge of town— her mother’s favorite subject. The third, however, was Teddi’s true candidate for contemplation. It held a watercolor eye on the Brooklyn Bridge beyond the glistening orange and black waters of the East River, the New York City skyline etched into the distance. She sighed, studying the colors and lines of the painting. New York was pretty, but Paris was the city of her dreams these days. It was where her sister Liza had run away to, where she had escaped.
      Teddi tapped her lower lip with her finger as she studied the painting. It needed an easel. She knew her grandmother kept one. She searched the spaces between a few boxes and trunks with her eyes but didn’t see anything until she came to an old vanity and found what she’d been looking for behind it. Taking the picture stand over to the open space in the middle of the attic, warmth filled her veins. Her mother was there with her now. She could see her on the front porch of their old house, painting the day away.
      “That’s the way to handle things, old boy,” she heard a male grumble float in from the front lawn. Forgetting the painting for a moment, she went over to the windowsill and slid onto it to look down into the yard. She made out the faces of Dr. Zeke Jessup, a local physician with a long nose and empty blue eyes, and her Uncle Richard. Richard, a tall serious man with a pencil moustache and an engorged belly, laughed, the cold yet jovial sound filling the trees and filtering into the attic.
      “The little piece of trash’s still here, so I haven’t handled much,” said Richard. Teddi’s stomach soured. Was he talking about her?
      “Your mother has a soft spot for that one,” said Doc Jessup. “She’s all right. Kind of a sweet thing in her own way.”
      “She’s filth, just like her sister,” Richard spat. “They’ll both be the death of this family.” Filth, Teddi thought. The death of the family? Why would her own uncle say things like that about her and her sister? It had to be because of Liza and her parents. She couldn’t think of anything she’d done wrong herself. She looked at Richard and knew that he was probably just being cruel. He wasn’t very nice to anyone, but he’d never said anything like that to her. His eyes flashed up and spotted Teddi in the window. She gasped, waiting for him to say or do something. Instead of acknowledging her, he looked back at his friend.
      “Your troubles are in the past. Don’t worry so much. That kid won’t do anything. And Liza’s long gone.” The doctor laughed, then clapped Richard on the back. “Let’s go for a drink.”
      “Sounds good to me. Olive!” Teddi’s uncle shouted to his docile new wife, who was somewhere in the house. “Damn woman. Be right back.”
      Richard flapped the front door open so loudly, it rattled the attic window.
      Teddi turned to look at the New York painting, wishing she could slip into it and find her escape like Liza had with Paris. But really what could such a city bring to someone like her? She had never been to Manhattan, but it was a place of her past— her mother’s home.
      The attic door snapped open at the bottom of the stairs, and the sound of footsteps filled the room. Three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Teddi hopped to her feet, hands clutched behind her back.
      “I thought I heard something up here,” her uncle said, climbing fully into the room.
      “Grandfather said I could play here,” Teddi said, her voice small.
      Richard’s eyes swept Teddi’s sanctuary, first landing on the file cabinets then the trunks and boxes, before falling back on Teddi herself. “Playin’ house up here, little miss spy?” he asked, not waiting for a response. To Teddi’s horror, her Uncle Richard approached her mother’s painting. “You shouldn’t eavesdrop on adult conversations.”
      “I wasn’t,” Teddi insisted.
      Richard grunted, looking closer at the artwork. “What’s this you got?”
      Teddi shrugged, feigning thin interest. “It’s just a painting.”
      “You like to paint?” He hunched over the easel.
      She shrugged again. She didn’t particularly, but she didn’t want to tell him that. His eyes scanned the floor until he seemed to hone in on a can of house paint. He picked it up, looked around, spotted an empty tin of brushes and brought it up to the painting. He rapidly set each item in front of it. He poised to make his masterpiece. He dunked a wide brush into pale blue paint.
      “No! Don’t!” Teddi cried, wanting to snatch the painting away, but her diffident legs locked her in place.
      “You can’t start a painting with all that ugly on it. You need a blank canvas,” he said, licking the pale blue color over her mother’s work with his paintbrush.
      “There,” he said. Powerless, Teddi bit down a sob. Tears spilled over her cheeks as she watched him paint over more of it. He threw the brush down. “Look what a mess you’ve made. Your grandmother won’t like this very much, will she?” He walked back to the steps. “We’re family. Don’t ever forget that.” She couldn’t stop the tears from continuing down her face. “Your mother and father are gone. Your sister’s never coming back. Time to make a fresh start. Understand?”
      Teddi nodded once, hating herself for being unable to speak at that moment. Then her uncle descended the steps and returned to calling out for his wife. He left half of the painting unstained, but Teddi wanted to rip it apart after he’d touched it. It was gone, destroyed. She couldn’t bear to look at it. So she took a deep breath, then reached for the brush, dipped it into the blue paint and colored the rest of it. A blank canvas the color of the sky stared back at her where her mother’s work had once been. Maybe she would learn to paint one day and put something new there. She wasn’t one to give up on things easily.
      After a few minutes, Teddi put the brush down and went to sit on the windowsill again. When Richard pulled away with Doc Jessup, she shifted her eyes to the trees that lined her grandparents’ street. Above them, she could see into her neighbor Ben’s yard and onto part of Main Street. A little further into town, she could see the orphanage and in the furthest distance, she could see the top of the lighthouse. She’d grown up not too far from it in a small cottage with her family. Then that night had taken them. All she knew about it was from the article she’d read one morning after Gertrude, her grandparents’ maid, forgot to clear the front page of the Brookhurst Observer away.
      Judge Donovan's Son— a Bootlegger and a Murderer? The article said that after struggling to stop her father from shooting Reverend Wynne, her mother had fallen on a rock and suffered a fatal head injury. The reporter suggested that the minister likely knew something about her former bootlegging father's latest criminal activity and threatened to expose him. It briefly mentioned her sister Liza's disappearance with no explanation. Teddi looked back at her mother’s dead painting. It looked like her old life— gone forever.

Forget Me Not - available NOW!

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About the Author

Allison Whitmore started her first novel, Forget Me Not, one icy morning in her dorm room in Southampton, NY.  After many years of teaching high school English, she came back to the novel to rewrite it.

Allison comes from a family who loves history and enjoyed immersing herself in the research that brought Teddi and Calvin’s world to life.

She lives in her hometown, Los Angeles, California.


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Giveaway and Tour Stops

Enter to win one signed copy or one digital copy of Forget Me Not by Allison Whitmore – a Rafflecopter giveaway
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Follow Forget Me Not's tour at:

Oct 2: I Heart Reading
Oct 4: I’m an Eclectic Reader ☀
Oct 6: Majanka’s Blog ℚ
Oct 8: Cassidy Crimson’s Blog ☀
Oct 10: Bedazzled Reading ☀
Oct 13: Books are Forever ✍
Oct 14: Please Pass The Books ☀
Oct 16: The Single Librarian ☀
Oct 18: The Book Daily ℚ
Oct 20: Editor Charlene’s Blog ☀
Oct 22: Back Porchervations ✍
Oct 25: Bookaholic Ramblings ☀
Oct 28: Indy Book Fairy ☀
Nov 1: Bleeding Heart Blog ☀
Nov 2: SolaFide Publishing Book Blog ℚ

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