On the Hillwilla Road

Melanie Forde

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PROLOGUE

 
The golden eagle coasting on the updrafts rising from Beatrice Desmond’s forty mostly wooded acres surveys a landscape little influenced by man. No, the black walnuts and maples and sycamores far below did not coexist with the indigenous people who occasionally hunted and trapped but established no permanent settlements in this deeply crenellated section of the Allegheny Mountains. Nonetheless, the trees are old. Although logging is an ongoing industry in other parts of Seneca County, these particular hardwoods in southeastern West Virginia have stood undisturbed for many decades.

 
In spring, shade-loving morels and pungent wild leeks flourish beneath the trees. In summer, bear cubs exercise their claws on the bark. In fall, randy bucks leave traces of antler velvet on the trunks. In winter, legions of dark-eyed juncos hunker down on the low branches, just at the edge of the deep wood, to wait out the snow squalls before carbo-loading anew on dried seeds. The woods teem with life. Little of it is human.

 
The satellites that orbit far, far above the trees can spot all sorts of earth-based minutiae in exacting detail. But even their sharp eyes cannot penetrate the dense hardwoods—not even in winter—to say nothing of the full canopy months from May to early October. Google Earth is able to zero in, however, on the pasture lying in the lowest section of the Desmond farm. The eye-in-the-sky can make out the red barn at the pasture’s southwestern corner and, upslope, the small white farmhouse. Google Earth can identify the even smaller cabin, standing about one thousand feet south of the main house and serving as Beatrice’s office. And where the creek cuts through open land, it shows up on overhead photographs, as does the small pond fed by springs and mountain runoff.

On the Hillwilla Road Description:

When we last left Beatrice Desmond, mid-life protagonist of Melanie Forde’s engrossing debut novel Hillwilla, she had endured a long winter of sorrow to reach a spring full of promise. She had welcomed to her remote West Virginia farm a troubled young girl, Clara Buckhalter, whose presence drew Beatrice out of her lonely existence.
Now, On the Hillwilla Road, we follow Beatrice and Clara into new challenges. A major piece of unfinished business is Beatrice’s tantalizing friendship/romance with the dashing, wealthy, and extremely handsome Tanner Fordyce. These two seemingly mismatched people discover new and deeper connections—even as they continue to spar and infuriate each other.

 
Clara, attending a different school at Beatrice’s urging, finds herself involved with two new friends, Leslie and Lane, who are at times confusing and intimidating as well as caring. Meanwhile, all of the other characters from Hillwilla—Rodney Madsen, the pervert who preys on Clara; Charyce, Clara’s tarty mother; Evie, Beatrice’s droll best friend, and the entire Buckhalter clan of men and women who stubbornly and proudly bond to keep out strangers like Beatrice—provide drama, humor and complications galore. And Beatrice’s farm, replete with temperamental llamas; Ralph, her loyal English setter; and the occasional wild critter, further serves as an oasis of refuge and healing.

 

This fine sequel explores how such disparate individuals can grow to need and depend on one another, even as Beatrice finds herself confronted with a new and life-altering choice.

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