In the Midnight Rain by Samuel Barbara; Wind Ruth

Author:Samuel, Barbara; Wind, Ruth
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Contemporary Romance, Womens Fiction
Publisher: Amazon.com
Published: 2011-09-19T05:00:00+00:00

Camp: golden days overlaid with a kind of honeyed brightness. Silvery nights spent entwined and laughing and talking.

Maybe because she was so eager to be able to enjoy the nights, Ellie worked by day, and she found a new inspiration and enthusiasm for her project. She lined up interviews with a baker's dozen of elderly Gideon residents and spent three days solid driving around town to talk to them—and the results were better than Ellie had expected. People remembered Mabel vividly, remembered the first time they heard her sing—in church as a nine-year-old, belting out "Rock My Soul" to a stunned congregation at the Church of God; at a school program when Mabel was twelve; at Hopkins' one hot summer night in 1943.

It was great material, and one hot afternoon more than two weeks after she'd started sleeping at Blue's house every night, Ellie transcribed the notes carefully to index cards, letting the visions of Mabel move through her while a CD of her music played in the background. Ellie hummed along, making a mental note to seek out stories from more whites. The accounts she'd collected thus far were heavily weighted to the black, and that was fine, but Ellie wanted the white side of the story, too. How had the other half of the segregated town felt about Mabel Beauvais? How soon had they known the little colored girl with the big voice would be a star that would put Gideon on the map?

She still hadn't had a chance to talk to Gwen Laisser, the woman she'd met on the river. Blue said she often left town for fairly long stretches. The truth was, Ellie was computing enough information she didn't strictly need Mrs. Laisser's tale, but she had liked the old woman and wanted to get her memories down.

Ellie yawned. Afternoons were tough. She grinned at that and looked up at the big house. She wasn't sleeping as much as usual, after all.

The phone rang. Startled from what had promised to be a lovely daydream, Ellie answered. "Hello?"

"Well, I guess you're still alive, then, if you can answer the phone."

"Grandma!" A teeny stab of guilt pricked her. "Hi!"

"Hi, yourself. Do you know it's been nigh on a week since you called me, girl?"

"No way!" Ellie swiveled in her chair to look at the calendar. "Oh, wow. You're right. Sorry about that. I've been up to my elbows in interviews. Time got away from me. Is everything okay?"

"Fine. Got the corn planted and cut some fresh rhubarb for pie this morning. How's the book going?"

"Pretty good. I'm not sure I'm going to get to the bottom of Mabel's disappearance, but it'll be a good book anyway. She was really something."

"And your other search?"

Ellie sighed. "I don't know." She thought, suddenly, of Connie's husband with the green eyes. She hadn't looked him up yet, and to remind herself to do it on her next trip to the library, she scribbled a note. "I haven't been following up those leads much.

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