Dear friends, October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. We should strive to let victims know they ARE NOT ALONE! During these Covid months there is a heightened concern for victims. Lets Encourage them to ask for help.
In conjunction with the month I am releasing my latest novel, THE ONLY GIFT, a novel of abuse and survival in the early 20th Century.
This is a novel that I was encouraged NOT to write. It’s the story of spouse abuse. I was told that since I had no experience with abuse, I should not write about it. This made me stop and think and for a while I put the manuscript in a drawer and walked away from it.
As months passed, the story and the characters just kept calling to me, so I took it out of the drawer and finished the story. My mind kept repeating, “I didn’t have first hand knowledge of what it was like being in the 10th mountain division, or what it was like to grow up as a black woman in Alabama, but still I wrote those books.”
Quite frankly The Only Gift is my favorite work of mine. I love the characters and how the main character overcomes her abuse, escapes, and becomes a strong, talented woman. Yes, it is a book about abuse! But it is more, it is a book about strength and survival.
I researched, I studied, and I talked to many, many women who went through some kind of abuse. I had the book read by women who were abused and by women who were not abused. I have had good responses from all of those women. I was encouraged to finish the book and not to change the scenes of abuse which are very graphic and harsh. The setting is 1895–1952, the rural South and west coast Florida. It is a novella, not a full length novel, only 30,000 words. A shortread.
Because I do not want anyone to read the book who will internalize the story and be upset by it, I have included a cautionary note on the back cover of the book, on the first page of the book, and on any advertising for the book. I will add a cautionary note every time I talk it. I tell such readers which two chapters to skip if they don’t want to read specifics about the abuse.
How it came about: I once heard the story of a woman who left her husband and children and disappeared for over 20 years. When she returned things did not go as she imagined they would and she ended up in a psychiatric hospital, know locally as the insane asylum or mental institution. When I thought about her life I wondered why she left her family for all those years. Where was she? What was she doing, etc? I made a list of reasons why she might have left, and the only reason that I could find that was strong enough for her to leave not only her husband but also her children was spouse abuse.
I was awake day and night as my mind wrote one scenario after another. THE ONLY GIFT is the result of that feverish activity. Mallie, our main character, rightly fears for her life, but after a miraculous escape, she slowly begins to heal, grow and be stronger. Along the way, she discovers a talent she did not know she had.
After years of healing, she returns home and is then admitted to the asylum. Her new found talent grows and saves her from becoming the kind of patient that we often imagine will be in a mental institution. The talent gives a purpose, gives her strength that she didn’t know she had, and helps her cope until she dies at the age of seventy-four.
One of the early readers said she liked the way Mallie grows and the way her life develops while she is in the institution. She said she hoped that anyone who is abused and anyone in a mental hospital might finally have a life like Mallie’s for it was a positive life.
I wanted you to be aware that the book is now available, but that I don’t want you to read it if it will upset you. For those who will read it, I hope you will come to care about the characters as I https://www.amazon.com/Only-Gift-Julia-Faye-Smith/dp/1099608384/ref=sxts_sxwds-bia-wc-drs-ajax1_0?cv_ct_cx=The+only+gift
Kindle and paperback.
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