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Vendor
Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
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SING IN THE MORNING, CRY AT NIGHT

Barbara J. Taylor

A page-turning debut novel set in Scranton, Pennsylvania, during the height of coal mining, vaudeville, and evangelism.
Almost everyone in town blames eight-year-old Violet Morgan for the death of her nine-year-old sister, Daisy. Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night opens on September 4, 1913, two months after the Fourth of July tragedy. Owen, the girls' father, "turns to drink" and abandons his family. Their mother Grace falls victim to the seductive powers of Grief, an imagined figure who has seduced her off-and-on since childhood.
Violet forms an unlikely friendship with Stanley Adamski, a motherless outcast who works in the mines as a breaker boy. During an unexpected blizzard, Grace goes into premature labor at home and is forced to rely on Violet, while Owen is "off being saved" at a Billy Sunday Revival.

Inspired by a haunting family story, Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night blends real life incidents with fiction to show how grace can be found in the midst of tragedy.

BARBARA J. TAYLOR was born and raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and teaches En- glish in the Pocono Mountain School District. She has a master's degree in creative writing from Wilkes University. She still resides in the "Electric City," two blocks away from where she grew up. Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night is her rst novel.
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Book

Published 2014-06-16 by Akashic

Comments

Solomon enticingly described the novel Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night by Barbara J. Taylor (Akashic), set in a coal-mining town in 1913, as 'one of those sit on the couch and don't bother me' reads.

"Best Summer Books 2014": ...It's a profound story of how one unforeseen event may tear a family apart, but another can just as unexpectedly bring them back together again.

An earnest, well-done historical novel that skillfully blends fact and fiction.

An absolute gem of a book filled with beautiful characters and classical writing techniques rarely seen in modern literature.

This story is at once poignant and hopeful, spiced up by such characters as Billy Sunday, the revivalist, and Grief, the specter who haunts Grace to the very edge of sanity. A rich debut.