BLUES FROM DOWN DEEP by Gwynne Forster tells the story of how the power of family can shape and heal us.
Regina Pearson has never really known any family other than her late, widowed father. He cut ties with his family in North Carolina long ago and moved to Hawaii with Regina’s mother, then raised Regina alone following his wife’s accidental death. Living among the native Hawaiians so different from herself created in Regina an aching for people to call her own. Regina finds among her late parents’ effects a letter written forty years earlier that leads to her mother’s sister, Maude, a been-there, done-that blues singer, and her nonagenarian maternal grandfather, head of the extended family in New Bern, North Carolina.
For Regina, going to North Carolina to see Aunt Maude is the chance of a lifetime—an opportunity to bond with the people who share her roots, her blood, and her heart, and find the pieces of her she’s been lonely for all these years. But the big, warm, loving family Regina’s dreamed about is nowhere in sight. Instead, she finds uncles, aunts, and cousins torn apart by secrets and lies, petty squabbles and heartbreaking wounds stretching back for years—a contentious clan ready to draw Regina front-and-center into their troubles whether she wants to be there or not. And just as her new family conflict threatens to overwhelm her, Regina discovers a passionate connection she hadn’t counted on with a man who’s ready to show her what real family’s all about—and what it takes to keep the love flowing.
Gwynne Forster is a native North Carolinian who grew up in Washington,
D. C. She holds bachelors and masters degrees in sociology, a master's degree in economics/demography and has additional graduate credits in journalism.
February
2011
