Tuesday Memes: Sing In The Morning, Cry At Night

Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where you can share the first paragraph, or a few, of a book you are reading or thinking about reading soon.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along!

Today I am spotlighting Sing In The Morning, Cry At Night by Barbara J. Taylor

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.

Opening Paragraph

Grace lay in bed, listening to Violet mill about the kitchen, but for what? Breakfast, that was it. Something to eat before heading off on the first day of school. “I’m her mother,” Grace murmured. “Her mother,” she repeated, pushing herself up, swinging one leg onto the floor adn then the other. She heard a milk bottle clank against the lip of a metal cup and pictured the eight-year-old sitting at the table. “I’m her mother,” she said again, this time tasting the anguish as it rose from her stomach. She leaned forward, wretched into the pot beside the bed, crawled back under the covers, and shut her eyes. “Lord, forgive me,” she prayed, waiting for the back door to close behind Violet.

My Teaser

    Owen looked at Hattie. He’d seen the two women talking together at church on occasion, but it hadn’t occurred to him that they were more than acquaintances.

page 35

So...what do you think? Is this one you would pick up? Leave a comment below!