What is Pamela Steele reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Pamela Steele, author of In The Fields of Fatherless Children: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I haven't been finding a great deal of time to read for pleasure due to my novel release. My days are filled with last minute emails from my publisher or prospective hosts for festivals, readings, and signings. That said, I've just listened to an amazing audiobook and am glad to have a chance to recommend it, just as it was recommended to me by a writer friend: A Place Called Winter, by Patrick Gale (2016).

The novel, set in Edwardian England and Canada, is a lovely, bittersweet period piece. Harry Cane, the main character, is a quiet, routine-centered man who is self-conscious of his anxiety-induced stutter. He conscientiously follows the expectations of his family and proper society. It is only after he marries and fathers a child that he finds himself attracted to another man and is able to precariously acknowledge his sexuality. The men enter into a passionate, disastrous affair. When a family member discovers what society considers and illicit relationship, Harry is forced to...[read on]

About In The Fields of Fatherless Children, from the publisher:

For readers of Jeannette Walls and Barbara Kingsolver, in this love story set in rural Appalachia during the Vietnam War, a young couple is torn apart by both global conflict and their families’ ancient feud

In late 1960s Appalachia, many things loom darkly over June Branham: the Vietnam War is dividing the country, and a strip mine is eating away the mountain at the head of the holler where she lives, threatening the natural landscape and the only way of life she has ever known. While still in high school, June has fallen in love. She is pregnant, and the father may be Ellis Akers. Ellis is the son of Solomon, a mortal enemy of June’s stepfather, Isom. The feud is so old it fuels two vengeful men with the power of long animosity between rival families.

June’s brother, Tom, leaves to enlist in the war, and so does Ellis. Suddenly, June is on her own, at sixteen with a newborn, and is a mother unable to protect her daughter from the wrath of Isom. Without warning, her baby is kidnapped. Guided by her love for the generations of women before her, but now desperately alone, June must carefully navigate the search for her child alongside family and strangers in a wild and disappearing landscape.

In the Fields of the Fatherless Children is a powerful story of love and perseverance, masterfully told by a writer of exquisite care who knows intimately the rural people of this time and place.

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My Book, The Movie: In The Fields of Fatherless Children.

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--Marshal Zeringue