BooksChatter: ☀ Beneath a Thousand Apple Trees

Thank you for joining us on the Virtual Book Tour to celebrate the release of Beneath a Thousand Apple Trees, a Coming of Age Fiction novel by Janie DeVos (30 Aug. 2016, Lyrical Press, 228 pages).

PREVIEW: Check out the book's synopsis and excerpt below. Read the first six chapters with Kobo Preview.

Author Janie DeVos will be awarding a digital copy of Beneath a Thousand Apple Trees to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour. Please do take part: comment on our post and follow the tour where you will be able to read other excerpts (☀).

Synopsis | Teaser | About the Author | Giveaway & Tour Stops

Synopsis

As the 20th century dawns, the world is transformed in dizzying ways. But nestled in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains is a place, and a family, out of time—where one young girl will grow to face the challenges of each generation before her—and discover whether she has the strength to overcome them…

The eldest surviving daughter of Anna Guinn, Rachel rarely ventures far from her home in the Appalachians, aside from an occasional trip into town to trade a penny for a peppermint stick. Sometimes she yearns for more, but as much as she fears her mother’s unstable mind, she is anchored by the strength of her grandmother, Willa. Freed from an abusive marriage, Willa holds the family together through hardship, all the while fulfilling her role as keeper of her neighbors’ carefully guarded secrets—the most painful of which may be her own.

In this isolated, eccentric world where people depend on moonshine to put food on the table, hang talismans to chase away ghosts—and tragedy can strike as suddenly as a coiled copperhead—Rachel wonders what life has in store. Most of all, she worries whether she and her sister have inherited the darkness that lurks inside their mother. Her one respite is the town’s apple orchard, the ally she finds there—and the revelation that she can take her destiny into her own hands, decide what to leave behind—and what is truly worth carrying into the future…

Teaser: Excerpt

CHAPTER 3

The Wart Buyer

      There was a certain awe and respect that went with the title of Wart Buyer. Perhaps it had something to do with a secret fascination with witchery, although a Wart Buyer was certainly not a witch. She was, however, thought of as a healer, although my great-grandmother never claimed to be such. But I know that when Big Grandma treated Minna George for the warts on her hand, Minna swore up and down that Big Grandma had also healed her rheumatism. And then there was Tycee Burns. She claimed that after Big Grandma got rid of the ugly wart on her forehead that she no longer had the paralyzing headaches either.
      I didn’t know if one thing was really connected to another, but I did know that Big Grandma held a lot of people’s secrets, and they were as closely guarded as the ancient secret of how the healing of a wart actually took place. People respected Big Grandma’s ability to hold that knowledge close to her, and so they entrusted more knowledge, of the personal kind, to her care. Far more than she probably wanted, needed, or knew what to do with. Simply because she held the enigmatic title of Wart Buyer, she had a certain aura of mystique and power, and was set on a level that was higher and demanded more respect than your every day, run-of-the-mill mountain folks.
      Anyone that knew something that others did not was placed on a pedestal built on the foundation of folklore, myths, superstition, and magic. The Wart Buyer was highly revered. In people’s minds, she had done something worthy of being given that role. The million-dollar question, though, was what? What had the Wart Buyer done to be set so far apart from the rest? The answer never came, of course. But, regardless, people treated all Wart Buyers with great reverence, and entrusted their greatest secrets, hopes, and dreams to them.
      There could only be one person in the family who bought warts. And, until she (for it was usually a woman in the role) figured it was time to pass the secret knowledge of wart buying down, that person would remain the sole purchaser. The only way this ancient practice could be accomplished, Big Grandma explained to me (while carefully keeping from me the secret of how it actually worked), was that the one with the wart had to agree to sell the wart. Only then would the process work. If the seller was a non-believer, or joked about the reality of such a remedy working, then there could be no deal made. But, once the deal was agreed upon, then Big Grandma would take a penny out of a mason jar filled with them, and rub the wart gently but thoroughly with it. Then she gave the seller the penny and he or she was instructed to never, ever spend it, but to tuck it safely away instead. If the penny was used or lost, the wart would return. And that was true. I saw it happen, just as I saw warts miraculously disappear a few days after the ritual was performed.Since there could only be one wart buyer in a family, when the torch would be passed down was a decision only the present buyer could make. It was usually near the end of the buyer’s life, though. Then, the newly designated Wart Buyer kept the secret to herself until it was time for that buyer to pass it on to the next one selected.

Beneath a Thousand Apple Trees
Available for pre-order NOW! Out on 30 Aug 2016!

About the Author

Janie DeVos is a native of Coral Gables, Florida. She attended Florida State University, then worked in the advertising industry for over a decade, including radio, cable television, public relations and advertising firms.

Though her career changed over the years, one thing didn’t—her love of writing. She is an award winning children's author. Beneath a Thousand Apple Trees is her adult debut.

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