Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole

>> archiveNew Wingate novel weaves intriguing family saga

Lisa Wingate’s new novel, The Sea Keeper’s Daughters (Tyndale House, $19.99 hardcover, $14.99 paperback) revolves around family secrets that gradually come to the surface.

Whitney Monroe owns two restaurants in Michigan that are in financial trouble because a ruthless competitor is trying to drive her out of business. As she struggles desperately to save the restaurants, Whitney gets a message that her estranged stepfather in North Carolina is in the hospital after a bad fall.

So Whitney leaves her cousin Denise to run the restaurant while she inexplicably heads to the Outer Banks of North Carolina to check on her stepfather, Clyde, whom she loathes. After all, when Whitney’s mother died, she left the family-owned hotel to him as long as he continued to live there. Eventually it would go to her, but Clyde has been nothing but ornery and combative over the years.

Whitney would prefer to sell the run-down building and use the money to keep her restaurants alive, but she can’t as long as Clyde resides there. In the meantime, perhaps she can sell off some of her mother’s and grandmother’s antiques.

While going through them, however, Whitney discovers a letter from a great-aunt she’s never heard of. And then other letters begin to pop up, hinting at long-held family secrets involving the mysterious mixed-race Appalachian Melungeons, and Whitney is captivated. Even so, she would like to get Clyde situated in a nursing home so she can claim ownership of her building, dispose of it, and get back to her troubled restaurants in Michigan.

Meanwhile, two attractive young men with competing interests in the future of her hotel seem increasingly attracted to Whitney, and she to them.

As the family saga unfolds, Whitney is faced with tough decisions on two fronts:¬ what to do about the restaurants, and what to do about the hotel and her stepfather, not to mention the intriguing tale involving her ancestors.

Lisa Wingate, author of twenty-five books, lives in Clifton, Texas, near Waco. The Sea Keeper’s Daughters is a stand-alone novel but is set in the same region as her last book, The Story Keeper.

Wingate has a strong following in inspirational fiction and has won a number of awards, but her writing career may be about to ascend to the next level. In an e-mail, she said her next novel, The Foundlings, will be coming out in 2017 after it was purchased by a major New York publishing house “in one of those deals you dream about but don’t think will ever happen.” Stay tuned.

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Glenn Dromgoole, co-author of 101 Essential Texas Books has teamed up with Jay Moore to write a children’s picture book, Abilene A to Z, about the city’s history and culture – published fall 2015 by Abilene Christian University Press. Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.

>> Check out his previous Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Lit

5th annual Dobie Dichos slated for Nov. 6 in Oakville

On Friday, Nov. 6, 2015, the 5th annual Dobie Dichos storytelling event will take place at the Historic Oakville Jailhouse Lodge in Oakville, Texas, from 6:00 to 9:30 p.m. The cost of meal and performance is $15; admission for the performance only is $10.  Tickets go on sale in September

Presented by George West Storyfest Association, Inc., this event honors Live Oak County’s most famous son, J. Frank Dobie, to celebrate Dobie’s works and contributions to literature, folklore, and storytelling.  >>READ MORE