Title: Good Ground
Author: Tracy Winegar
Genre: Historical Romance
Publication Date: July 30, 2013 by Omnific
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Synopsis
Jim’s faith in God is tested by the death of his cherished
wife and child. His life becomes barren, and he loses hope and the ability to
continue.
But God plants in his heart the seeds of a new beginning and the will to go on
through an orphan child. Jim nurtures this child with the same devotion that he
invests in his land. The result is a son of whom any father would be proud.
Jim’s gift continues through Ellis.
Ellis in turn cares passionately for his own farm, his friends, and eventually
another lost soul. When he finds Clairey in the midst of a blizzard, he rescues
her from her desperate life, and she grows into a capable a strong woman under
his care. Jim’s legacy comes full circle.
All things grow in love. . .
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Clairey, A Woman We
Can All Appreciate
As a woman, I am bombarded by the message, on a daily basis,
that I am not enough. It is particularly difficult when my worsts are compared
to other women’s bests. We are living in an one up kind of culture, vying for
positions, and attention, and recognition, and acceptance in our every day
struggle to make a mark upon the world. It seems that no one can be comfortable
in their own skin, because that skin doesn’t come with a designer label. And no
one is comfortable with other people who are comfortable in their own skin
because that makes them feel inferior as well.
We, as women, begin to lose sight of who we are and what our
purpose is as a result of these messages we receive. More concerning still, are
the trends towards morphing into something we are not in order to satisfy our
society’s prerequisites for being desirable. Instead of coming to an
understanding of who we are and what we are capable of, instead of finding love
and acceptance for our inner voice, we do our best to squash it down, silence
it, make it conform.
Worse still are the women who just throw their hands up and
do their best to go in the exact opposite direction. They do things for their
shock factor, as if to say You can’t make
me. I won’t comply. They do more and
more to be increasingly salacious and to fight the powers that be until they
lose themselves completely and self-destruct. To them rebellion is the answer.
These two extremes are both, in my estimation, very
dangerous because they both foster contempt for individuality and integrity.
They both take away person identity and the process of understanding one’s self
based upon independent thinking and trial and error in order to find out for
yourself who you really are. Yes, it is important to follow some of the rules
society has established, otherwise we would live in anarchy, but it is just as
important to establish a set of person rules based upon the dictates of
conscious.
I really believe that the character Clairey is an ideal
woman, in fact the most interesting character in the book Good Ground. I base this theory on the fact that you see tremendous
growth in her throughout the novel. Here is a woman that has been told her
whole life that she is nothing, that she is no body, that she will never be
good enough. She is raised in poverty and deprivation, without many of the
benefits that we ourselves take for granted. Yet, she had the ability to listen
to her inner voice and discover who she is, and what she is capable of as she
evolves into a whole person. Clairey is willing to put in the hours and work
hard and sacrifice in order to get what she ultimately wants. She has the
wisdom to change what needs to be changed and the strength to hold to what she
treasures and sees as valuable in herself.
Of course she still has flaws, because that is also what
being a woman is about, but she also understands that despite her shortcomings
she deserves to be loved and cherished. In her mind there should be no
substitutes. Clairey doesn’t need praise - she doesn’t need approval in order
to be comfortable with who she is. She doesn’t approval in order to feel
worthy. The thing that makes her stand out in a crowd is the fact that she
remains true to who she really is. The real her is not flashy, or fantastic, or
over the top. She is not great beauty when one looks at her physical
appearance. Her beauty comes from a source within. She not only gives herself
permission to just be who she is, she offers that same privilege to those
around her. She is becoming, a work in progress. She is real. And that to me is
one of the most attractive qualities that a person can possess.
Book Trailer and Author Interview
About the Author
“By
day, a school librarian. By night, a wife and mother. But in those quiet
moments that are only mine, I write…”
Born
and raised on the flatlands of Central Indiana, Tracy moved to the highlands
of Utah at the age of nineteen. She quickly discovered that her brand
new, top-of-the-line hiking boots were a waste of good money because she
was never quite able to acclimate to the altitude in the Rockies. Tracy
claims to suffer from a type of disorientation she attributes to altitude
sickness to this day. It seems to be a permanent affliction. Her
husband Benjamin cohabitates in a home with Tracy and the four beautiful
but precocious children they lovingly created together. Although to
others, their home may seem alarmingly chaotic, it is an insanity of
their own making.
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Grandma’s Southern
Cooking
Breakfast was my favorite meal when visiting my grandma and
grandpa’s farm. When I awoke in the mornings it was to the smell of bacon.
Gathering at the table, we were met with quite the spread. She made biscuits
and gravy (most of the time from bacon drippings), bacon, eggs, sometimes ham,
and freshly sliced tomatoes, and made from scratch oatmeal. When I grow moody
and anxious over some new stressor in my life, my husband brings me home
biscuits and gravy from Cracker Barrel restaurant because they are the closest
thing to hers (although hers were better) and it is comfort food to me.
She was an incredible cook and knew all of her recipes by
heart and without the aid of measuring cups or spoons. This was a particularly
bad thing for our family, because when we asked her to show us how she made
something so that we could duplicate it, there were no recipes to share. Sadly
much of her cooking went with her when she passed.
My Aunt Rosemary is quite an accomplished cook too. She has
done her best to set a few recipes of Grandma’s to paper. When I undertook
writing Good Ground I knew that
adding details about the southern cuisine would be an integral part of the
book, because it was such an integral part of their way of life. The reason
Grandma was so good at cooking is because she was a nurturer and because it was
an expression of her love for her husband and family. I wanted Clairey to have
that same beautiful trait about her. Some of my foodie friends admitted that
they enjoyed the references to her cooking as much as they took pleasure in the
love story itself.
The following is a recipe for her corn bread as best my Aunt
Rosemary can recall. Hope you enjoy it as I did when I was a child. Share it
with someone you love!
Corn Bread:
1 cup Self rising flour
1 cup white corn meal
¼ cup shortening
Milk
Mix flour, meal, and shortening together until it resembles
coarse crumbs. Add enough milk to make the batter the consistency of cake
batter. Put a tablespoon of oil in bottom of pan and put it in 350 degree oven
until pan is hot and oil spreads all over skillet. (Iron skillets are very nice
with this recipe.) Remove pan and add batter. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes or
until top is browned.
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