Reprinted from September 4, 2013 Fernandina Beach News-Leader.
Book Club Travels Through Time
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The Traveling Book Club members shown standing in the back row, left to right, are Melissa Camp and Billie Carlock. Seating in the front row, left to right, is Cheryl Parham, author Jane Marie Malcolm and Amy Chambers. |
As is the custom on their annual vacation, members of the seven person Traveling Book Club from Ringgold, Georgia, just south of Chattanooga, Tennessee, pick a place to visit and then an author from that area. This time, four in their group drove some seven hours to spend time on Amelia Island. Member Melissa Camp did an internet search of historical fiction on Amelia Island and Malcolm’s name and her Goodbye Lie trilogy appeared.
Camp, along with Billie Carlock, Cheryl Parham and Amy Chambers, all teachers at Heritage Middle School in Ringgold, had read The Goodbye Lie by the time Malcolm met them at the bookstore two days later. What was requested to be a book discussion ended up in an expedition of many of the historical places described in the novel set in 1882, with an occasional reading of a descriptive paragraph from the book.
From the docks to The Florida House, up Centre Street and on to St. Michael Catholic Church, Amelia Island Lighthouse, Fort Clinch and Amelia Beach, plus much more in between, they ended their journey in the dark in Old Town.
“About all we could see up in Old Fernandina was the outline of the Pippi Longstocking house," Malcolm explained, "but it was enough for them to realize the distance between old and new Fernandina, as I wanted."
Questions and opinions regarding their common interest, The Goodbye Lie, filled the time, making the hour hand seemingly whip around the clock. “As a writer, it is so wonderful when readers get it and enter my world. I hope these ladies are hooked for life because there is more to come!” As a reminder of their time on Amelia Island, Malcolm left each of the women with one of her hand painted "Secret Pebbles", featured in her Amelia Island’s Velvet Undertow, the second novel in the series.
“The secret in the pebble is what is shared,” the author said. “May their love of reading about the escapades of my fictional Dunnigan family and my love of writing about this close Irish clan bring The Traveling Book Club back to see new friends and old places here on our island.”
For information about Amelia Island’s Goodbye Lie Trilogy (where Little House on the Prairie meets Gone With The Wind in Fernandina, Florida), visit Malcolm's website at http://www.graciousjanemarie.com/, her family friendly blog at http://www.http/graciousjanemarie.blogspot.com/ and read her free and silly online Martha Bear stories at http://www.marthabear.com/. The Goodbye Lie and Amelia Island's Velvet Undertow are available online and where books are sold.
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Jane Marie,
I wanted to thank you for how "gracious" you were in meeting us and sharing a great evening of fun. We are meeting Friday with the rest of the "girls" who were not able to make it on the trip. They will be so jealous! It is true that we are officially "Good-bye Liars" since I know we will be back and not able to say good-bye to such a peaceful, relaxing place so full of history and stories that are waiting to be told. Now you just have to publish those stories, so we can read them! Thanks again for a wonderful step back into history.
Billie
