What is Julie Kibler reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Julie Kibler, author of Calling Me Home.

Her entry begins:

The first book I finished reading in 2013 was an advance readers’ edition of The Promise, a novel by Ann Weisgarber, who wrote The Personal History of Rachel Dupree. I was sucked in from beginning to end of this harrowing tale of a woman who flees to Galveston to marry the man who worshipped her from afar when they were young. The historic 1900 Galveston storm—the worst natural disaster in 20th century American history—figures largely in...[read on]

About Calling Me Home, from the publisher:

Calling Me Home by Julie Kibler is a soaring debut interweaving the story of a heartbreaking, forbidden love in 1930s Kentucky with an unlikely modern-day friendship

Eighty-nine-year-old Isabelle McAllister has a favor to ask her hairdresser Dorrie Curtis. It's a big one. Isabelle wants Dorrie, a black single mom in her thirties, to drop everything to drive her from her home in Arlington, Texas, to a funeral in Cincinnati. With no clear explanation why. Tomorrow.

Dorrie, fleeing problems of her own and curious whether she can unlock the secrets of Isabelle's guarded past, scarcely hesitates before agreeing, not knowing it will be a journey that changes both their lives.

Over the years, Dorrie and Isabelle have developed more than just a business relationship. They are friends. But Dorrie, fretting over the new man in her life and her teenage son’s irresponsible choices, still wonders why Isabelle chose her.

Isabelle confesses that, as a willful teen in 1930s Kentucky, she fell deeply in love with Robert Prewitt, a would-be doctor and the black son of her family's housekeeper—in a town where blacks weren’t allowed after dark. The tale of their forbidden relationship and its tragic consequences makes it clear Dorrie and Isabelle are headed for a gathering of the utmost importance and that the history of Isabelle's first and greatest love just might help Dorrie find her own way.

Learn more about the book and author at Julie Kibler's website.

The Page 69 Test: Calling Me Home.

Writers Read: Julie Kibler.

--Marshal Zeringue