NewSouth

Charlotte Miller's debut novel, Behold, This Dreamer, was a regional success story in 2000-2001, selling out in hardcover in only six months. She continues now with the second installment of her trilogy exploring romance, culture, and place in the Depression-era Deep South. In the new book, Janson Sanders and his new bride, Elise, have been exiled by her wealthy father and have returned, penniless and landless, to his poor-but-proud relatives in Alabama. There, they struggle to build a life for themselves and to recover the family farm stolen from Janson by an unscrupulous local landowner.

Advance Praise for Through A Glass, Darkly:

"Through a Glass, Darkly has what most current novels sadly lack: a strong narrative line, surprisingly maintained through what appears at first to be digressive but in fact ends by contributing to an overall unity. The novel should please many readers, as well as reliably inform them about the deplorable economic conditions that, during the 1920's and 30's, prevailed in Alabama and other parts of the South."

--Madison Jones, member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, recipient of the T.S. Elliot Award
for Creative Writing and the Harper Lee Award for Distinguished Alabama Author, and author of
Nashville 1864: The Dying of the Light, A Cry of Absence, and other novels.

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"If you liked Behold, This Dreamer, you'll love Through A Glass, Darkly. Charlotte Miller has given us a story of how love and honor can wage a cruelly uneven battle against greed, arrogance, poverty, malevolent evil, and the unmerciful hand of fate -- and yet, somehow, prevail. The book is a triumph of storytelling. The story is a triumph of the human spirit."

--Robert Inman, author of Coming Home: Life, Love, and All Things Southern,
Dairy Queen Days, Home Fires Burning, and other novels.

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"In Through a Glass, Darkly, Charlotte Miller invokes the deep rural South, and a time, a place, and a people so accurately that one can almost hear the beat of a heart, the touch of a hand on a cheek. As a major chronicler of our near past, with both its darkness and light, Miller has penned a novel in which the lives of the characters soon become almost as real as our own. She is a true Southern author in the best sense of the word, and this book will leave her fans waiting for more."

--Rosemary Daniell, author of Fatal Flowers: On Sin, Sex and Suicide in the Deep South,
Confessions of a (Female) Chauvinist, and other books.

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"Engrossing continuation of the fictional account of Janson and Elise, newly married and faced with personal and community problems as hard times set in. The good in perfect counterpoint with evil. Absorbing blend of history and fiction."

----Helen Norris, Poet Laureate of Alabama, recipient of the Harper Lee Award for Distinguished Alabama Author, and author of One Day in the Life of a Born Again Loser and The Christmas Wife

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"Rarely is a sequel as successful as a first novel. This one is. Charlotte Miller knows her people, the poor white farmers of rural north Alabama. James Agee showed us their faces in Now Let Us Praise Famous Men. This writer reveals their hearts and their dreams.

"From the opening page, when in 1920 the half-Cherokee farm hand Janson Sanders brings his gently reared and pregnant sixteen year old wife Elise into his grandparents' cabin, we are absorbed in the day to day life of this family: the twelve hour shifts in the cotton mill, the brutality of the mill-owner's son, the hand to mouth struggle to survive the grim Depression days with their aftermath of joblessness and welfare.

"But through it all we see the unquenchable pride of this young couple, their moral courage, and their love for each other and their children. It is a page turner, an unforgettable read."

--Helen Blackshear, past Poet Laureate of Alabama (1995-1999), and author of
These I Would Keep, An Alabama Album, and other books.

September, 2001
Fiction
Hardcover, 6x9 inches, 512 pages
ISBN 1-58838-054-8
$27.95