Stopping at both Raleigh and Charleston for a night, the four hundred or so miles trip passed quite pleasantly. Adam met her at the train. "God he's handsome," she reminded herself, not having seen her brother for three years when he had visited her in London. Adam had inherited his mother's artistic side and not the commercial nature of their father. Am...
Life at The Mist, Cotton's family plantation had not only survived the Civil War but they were actually thriving. Most of the former slaves had remained, now employed by Cotton. Although they were receiving a very menial amount of cash, Cotton insured that they had food, shelter and, above all, fair treatment. She was making the farm a success both financia...
I come home after a long day at work. Luckily, my family will be there waiting for me. My name is Madeline Jean Madison. I'm a Black woman living in the town of Montreal, Province of Quebec. I teach business at the Quebec Technical College or Q.T.C. The life of a middle-aged Black woman in the Confederation of Canada isn't easy but I manage. At forty three,...
Pat walked carefully through the wooded area. All his senses were fully alert. The ground was covered with dry leaves twigs and dead foliage. It was impossible to walk silently. Each footstep resulted in the crackle of dry material. It appeared to Pat that the area had not had a fire in several years. Fires on an almost yearly basis ravaged most areas in th...
INTRODUCTION TO READERS WET ENCOUNTERS is a novel-length story of love, lust and betrayal that takes place on a tropical Pacific island during the second half of the twentieth century. It's seventeen chapters pivot around a single event that takes place when two people are forced to take refuge in an abandoned cabin when they are cut off by rising floodw...
Author's note Thanks to all who added comments on the site and emailed me. Also thanks to those of you who gave the story such high marks. I have published this second part more quickly than I probably will subsequent episodes, which I aim to submit to Lit every ten days or so. I am sorry about the errors in the first part, especially literals. Editing is...
(1) I stood terrified and shaking, my hands cuffed, and an ankle chain attached to the ring embedded in the floor. In 1793, I had just turned 22 years old. My muscles were huge, having worked in the fields for sixteen hours or more per day. My former master had died, no grief there, he had been a sadistic man who worked his slaves like farm animals. He had...
"Hey Preacher," the voice coming from the phone shocked me. No one had called me that since my last days in Vietnam. Four years at home and still trying to get past those days. "Jim you son of a bitch, I almost didn't recognize your voice." He had to know that it was a lie. Not more than a dozen people in the whole world knew me by that name. "What the hell...
The days at the Plantation grew shorter and the temperature began to drop. We had harvested crops, canned food, mulched the gardens, prepared seed for the spring planting, and brought in more fuel and firewood for the winter. I stood beside Maggie in the kitchen, laboring away over the stove as we cooked for the fifty or so residence who we had come to know...
The reception was held at a nearby plantation restored to its original charm. Horse-drawn carriages brought honored guests to the front stairs, where an equally debonair gentleman promptly escorted each elegantly dressed woman to the ballroom. The plantation owner saw her from across the marble floored room, the chandeliers setting her auburn hair brilliant...