The Weight of Cloth, my debut novel, has a cover!
Here it is “open.”
Here’s a close up of the back.
The blurb reads as follows:
South Carolina. Mid-1700’s. Four narrators: one privileged and three enslaved.
When Eliza is just sixteen, her father departs for the West Indies leaving her in charge of three heavily mortgaged plantations. Her authority will be challenged, including by her mother. A second epidemic erupts and a slave rebellion sweeps the countryside, upending assumptions about safety and order. Can Eliza survive and bring a profitable indigo crop to market? Can she hold out for love rather than settle for a marriage of convenience?
Melody, also sixteen, fights against the constraints of slavery with small rebellions. Her most subversive act? Teaching her sons to read. Will freedom lay down a path near enough for it to matter?
July sews like a Parisian couturier, but her defensive pride crumbles when two boys die of the pox. She cries out to the Ancestors for help.
Saffron and her daughter, Maggie, are bewildered and traumatized by the harrowing voyage from Africa. Saffron calls upon her innate gift of language to make sense of things, but Maggie’s nearly catatonic. Meanwhile, the plantation’s best hunter, Indian Pete, catches Saffron’s eye, and she wonders if love can exist in such a place. His knowledge of the landscape holds the key to a daring opportunity that could change Saffron and Maggie’s fate forever.
The Weight of Cloth offers an unflinching view of history through facts gleaned from the letters of Eliza Lucas Pinckney and extensive research. In spite of the relentless degradation of slavery, the story speaks to the power of resistance and love and highlights both small and large acts of courage. These characters and their stories will stay with you long after you finish the last page.
Tomorrow my first proof arrives! It’s coming from Amazon.
I’ve set a publication date for September 5, 2024.
When that date is firmed up, I’ll let you know.
Congratulations!
Thank you! It’s a big step forward.
I need the inspiration…🙃
I saw your last posted quilt. Kinda captured the mood. Seriously nuts.
😵💫
Great blurb–I can’t wait to read it!!! Bravo, Dee.
Thanks Ellen!
Congratulations Dee!! The cover is gorgeous and I love the write up! Yay!! Best wishes for a fantastic success.
Thanks Ginny. And thanks for being one of my beta readers! And for securing that amazing retreat in Assisi.
Dee~ Congrats!!! It looks amazing and reads like a dream. I can’t wait!
Thanks Nancy. I really like how it came out.
YEEEEEEAAAAAAAYYYYY!!!!!!
Congratuations, darlin’!
Thank you thank you.
congratulations! love this cover!! september 5 is my husband’s birthday, what a great gift this will make….
That’ll make it easy for you to remember!
🎵🎶🎵I’m so excited 🎵🎶🎵I’m trilled for you along with everyone that is going too be able to read your novel.
I’m thrilled too. Been a really long time coming.
September is going to be a stellar month and I cannot wait for The Weight of Cloth to arrive. September is my birth month and what a way to celebrate by holding a copy of The Weight of Cloth in my hands!
This has been a long time coming and through it all, Dee, you never gave up, kept refining, until the words and pages came together in a novel that will be so worth the wait. For in September, we will behold the birth of an important novel and most importantly, the introduction, to a wider audience, of a gifted, caring, clear-eyed writer whose intelligence, compassionate, deeply researched subject matter, will do so much to lift the discourse of what it means to be strong in the face of adversity and to persevere against all odds.
Well you laud me in advance of reading but I’ll take it!
My words come from having read the excerpts that you posted here; they gave me a strong sense of the whole of your book.
It’s perfect. Congratulations on every step of the long road bringing you to this amazing accomplishment.
Thanks Deb. For saying so and for everything else!
IT’s HAPPENING!!!!! I am so beyond happy for you
Love and Love