Carla Damron

Columbia South Carolina becomes a war zone with racial tensions threatening to ignite. A young man is in prison for beating up a store clerk -- his reason is that he just snapped after years of racial treatment and comments. It's enough to ignite racial tensions in the city. A bomb is thrown into the young man's mother's home and she ends up in the hospital near death. Then the protests start - at first there is calm but soon there are protests on both sides and they begin to get violent. There is prejudice in the police department and in the local politicians and the protests keep getting worse until there is a dead police officer and a group of white supremacists who decide that they want justice.

In the middle of all of this is social worker Caleb Knowles who is working to get to the bottom of who is egging on the problems as he tries to restore order to his town. Caleb is good guy who loves his town but also likes working out of the box when he can help other people. This book is a real page turner as tensions in Columbia continue to increase. Caleb is a well written character and I plan to read the previous books about him to get more of his background.… (altro)

Georgia is a social worker who works at a high stress job in a hospital. When she was younger, she heard voices and even though the voices have gotten quieter, they still talk to her when she's under stress. In the middle of the night after a hectic work day, she finds out that her beloved sister is missing. Peyton was her younger sister and Georgia had taken care of her for their entire lives. Georgia knows that she has to find her sister so she starts out on quest of her own because the police don't seem to be making much progress. As she calls her sisters friends and the university where she is working on a graduate degree, she finds that Peyton has been acting strange and been absent from her normal life for several weeks. Georgia finds out that her thesis is on health care for migrant farm workers but as she finds more clues, she discovers that Peyton has been working with Kitten, a young girl who is being trafficked. Did Peyton's questions in this area put her in grave danger? Will Georgia be able to find her sister and if not, will she be able to continue her sister's work and help Kitten escape?

This story is told in alternating chapters by three main characters - Georgia, Kitten and Lillian. Georgia is trying to find her sister, Kitten is trying to get out of her horrific life and Lillian has worked for the bosses of the trafficking ring for years and hopes that she is important enough to them to keep herself alive.

My advice is to start reading this book when you have a lot of time because you aren't going to be able to put it down. The characters are very written and the plot is fast and informative. It's a disturbing book in many ways but it's also hopeful and really relevant to our current world.

The Orchid Tattoo is fast paced and hard to put down. The characters are so well written that it kept me turning pages to find out if they would escape from their horrible lives. I found myself thinking about several of these characters even after I finished the book because I'm aware that there are young people currently trapped in this lifestyle. I know that this book will be difficult for some people to read but it's based on true facts of what is going on in our country (and all over the world) right now. We need to understand and be informed so that we can do our best to stop this terrible crime.

NOTE: This book has a content warning posted in the front: This novel contains references to child (teen) abuse and sex trafficking.… (altro)

"She wore her sins like a stone necklace." This one of the first descriptions of Lena Hastings as the novel starts. Lena has just survived breast cancer and reconciled with her husband as the story opens. She has had the bad luck in her life and she feels that now is the time for life to be good. However, that day, her husband is in a horrific car crash that takes his life. This is the story of how the family and other interconnected characters deal with life without Mitch to hold it together for them. There are a lot of characters but they are all touched by Mitch's death -- there is his widow, Lena who is an artist unable to paint since her cancer scare, her sons Sims and Elliot, her daughter Becca who is trying to control her life by self-harming and then three other main characters who play a large role in the novel but are not part of the family - Sandy, the nurse in ICU who is on probation for using drugs and Joe, the homeless man who lives in the cemetery and has been helped out by Mitch over the years and Tonya who was injured in the car crash with Mitch along with her small son. It sounds like a lot of characters but there is no confusion and they are all part of the central theme of the novel - that no matter what happens in our past, there is hope for the future by showing compassion to others - both within our families and to the other people whose lives are intertwined with our own.

I enjoyed this book and getting to know these characters. I loved the way that the author managed to interweave their lives and make it all so believable. The author has a background in social work and it's very apparent that she has a great understanding of life for homeless people based on her story line about Joe, the homeless man whose story line is so important to the novel.

One more comment -- I usually don't pay a lot of attention to who publishes a book but I have read three books this year published by Story River Books, a publisher of fiction based at the University of South Carolina, and all of them have been excellent. I plan to look for the books that they publish in the future because they publish books that I enjoy and that need to be read!

I definitely enjoyed this book and highly recommend it to all of my reader friends.… (altro)

The Stone Necklace by Carla Damron
The necklace brings together many from different tragedies.
Starts out with Leena: cancer, surgery, chemo. Mitch, the husband tries to keep it all together.
Joe the homeless man who does chores for them. He had left a stone and it appears in Mitchs briefcase every morning.
Follows Tonya in a car that gets in an accident-her son Bryon is ok, she blames herself for texting..... Mitch had run a red light and crashed into her car due to his medical emergency.
Story also follows Becca, Sims and older brother who all gather at the hospital for their father. Also Sandy who's a recovering addict hat is a nurse in the hospital.
Confusing at times as everybody has so much going on.
Like this book because it is about a lot of different people, different ages, different careers and they have one thing in common...
I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device).… (altro)