Road to Pleasant Hill
The first of three books
It is 1834. Ten-year-old Betsy Johnson is still reeling from the deaths of her parents when she and her younger brother Tad are uprooted from their Eastern Kentucky farm and sent hundreds of miles away to live with the Shakers at Pleasant Hill.
Betsy is frightened by stories that the strange group whirls and twirls wildly in their religious services and that they separate families and take all their possessions. Is this any place for her to grow up?
Right after the stagecoach delivers Betsy and Tad to their new home, the two are torn apart. Betsy is sent with the girls; Tad goes to the boys’ side of the house. The night gets worse when Betsy is blackmailed into keeping a roommate’s secret, one that could be deadly for the whole village.
Step into 1830’s Shaker life and explore the unique aspects of this communal society that worked to create a “heaven on earth.”
- Meet Betsy: After the isolation of mountain life, she finds that having 100 sisters and brothers makes light of any workload and multiplies the fun when it is shared with friends.
- Tad: Shy and sensitive, he is homesick for his parents and lost cabin home.
- Grace: Her artistic talents are trumped only by her ear for gossip — and putting it to good use.
- Ruth: A natural teacher, everyone says, but Betsy teaches her that keeping secrets can kill.
Follow Betsy as she makes new friends – and enemies, – discovers her own gift of healing and arrives at a new meaning of family.
This Shaker adventure continues through a three-book series
In the second book, scheduled for publication in 2010, Tad takes center stage in a story titled ‘Tis a Gift. After two years with the Shakers, Tad still doesn’t fit in. He tries to do what is expected of boys his age, but everything - from milking cows to baling hay - ends in disaster. He would rather be listening to the music of the wind blowing through tall grasses or watching the dance of a bumblebee. But that bully Fred just won’t allow it.
The third book in the series spotlights Grace. The spunky, artistic, clever Grace is weaving a future for herself outside the stone fences of Shaker Village. But, her silken dreams end up in all kinds of knots – for herself and the whole village. - Read for yourself in Tree of Life, coming in 2011 — all are part of the Think Young collection from MotesBooks.
And then ...Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill in the 1830s is just the first stop on the Kentucky Girls Books history tour. In future books we’ll introduce other fictional girls and explore some of Kentucky’s other culturally rich, historic settings, including the caves of Western Kentucky, the coal camps of Eastern Kentucky, the horse farms of Central Kentucky and the German immigrant settlements of Northern Kentucky. We hope readers will identify with the girls in our stories, see that girls face similar problems no matter what the culture, place and time, and that they have the strength and resourcefulness to tackle whatever comes their way. |
Road to understandingWe hope readers, especially those between the ages of 7 and 12, will identify with Betsy and the other young heroines in our stories and realize that girls in different cultures, different places and different times all have faced problems similar to their own. All of our books feature brave, resourceful girls in historically accurate and realistic settings. We hope that meeting some of the strong girls in Kentucky’s past will nourish today’s girls’ interest in women’s history, help them develop an appreciation for women’s issues throughout time, and encourage them to be pro-active in securing their own places in today’s world. Our dream is to see our books become prime educational resources for libraries and schools. We would love to see them incorporated into the state-mandated curriculum for teaching Kentucky history in the state’s elementary schools. |
| Wow! -- Wonderful news April 7, 2010 |
Road to Pleasant Hill nominated for the Kentucky Bluegrass Awards, |
The annual Kentucky Bluegrass Awards (KBA) were established in 1982 to encourage Kentucky students in grades K - 12 to read quality children's literature. It encourages student reading and subsequent critical thinking and is actively supported by public and private schools as well as libraries throughout the state. Initially, only one Bluegrass Award was presented each year. But, over time, separate categories were created for books aimed at different age groups. The four current categories include kindergarden through second grade, grades three through five, grades six through eight, and high school. Any new or recently published book can be suggested as a nominee by any adult Kentucky resident - teacher, librarian, parent, or ordinary reader. Then, each spring, the KBA selection committee of teachers and librarians screens and narrows these suggestions down to a master list of official nominations for the coming academic year. Ten books, including Road to Pleasant Hill, have been selected for the KBA Grades 3-5 Master List for the 2010-11 academic year. Road is the only one of the ten entirely written and published in Kentucky by Kentucky authors and a Kentucky publisher. Although one other nominee was written by a Kentuckian, it was published out of state. "Simply having our book suggested as a nominee was flattering," said co-author Marie Mitchell. "To actually have it chosen as a finalist and placed on the Master List is absolutely wonderful. It's a real honor." Her sister, co-author Rebecca Mitchell Turney, echoed this sentiment. "This is a dream come true," she said. "We wrote our book to present Kentucky girls with strong role models and interesting stories. Now, as a Bluegrass Award nominee, our book is being publicly recommended for third through fifth grade readers by teachers and librarians all across the state." When schools open in the fall, Kentucky students in grades K-12 will begin reading and voting for their favorites among the KBA nominees. Balloting will continue until next spring when the KBA selection committee will tally the votes, announce the winners, and issue a Master List of new nominees for the following year. According to the KBA Web site, the process of selecting the winners is meant to involve the entire Commonwealth. Kentucky students in grades K-12 read and rate the books that Kentucky adults nominate, and a wide range of schools, libraries, bookstores, community groups and even individuals promote and support the program to get interesting new books into the hands of as many Kentucky children as possible. |