Jo Goodman is one of my top ten favorite authors. So when a new book is about to release, you can bet I’m right there getting my copy as early as possible.
Her characters come alive on the page and they’re the type of folks you’d like to have live next door. Their stories always pull the heartstrings and you rejoice when happily ever after arrives.
I’m happy to share this excerpt from A Touch of Forever, Book 3 in the Frost Falls series, with you. Enjoy!
Back in New York, they called him the black sheep. Not to his face. Or rarely to his face. But he’d heard it whispered in a pitying sort of way in the free-spirited Bohemian circles where his family was revered. Roen Shepard didn’t mind particularly. Depending on one’s view, he supposed it might even be true. It was certainly his family’s view; although the appellation was couched in humor, not pity. They were dreamers. He was not. He’d been stewed in creative juices since birth. Musicians. Painters. Poets. Novelists. Surrounded by so much talent and imaginative genius, something should have inspired him. Nothing had.
He’d never been afraid to try, and so, encouraged by his parents and grandparents, by his siblings and cousins, by his tutors and teachers, he tried his hand at every sort of artistic endeavor.
He was fair to middlin’ on the piano if there weren’t too many sharps or flats, and if he wasn’t required to sing at the same time. For a while, he thought painting might be his forte. He could put a still life on canvas that looked exactly like the bowl of fruit on the table in front of him. It was politely pointed out to him that he represented the fruit too accurately. A photograph would do just as well, his mother said, and that would not do at all. He wrote bad poetry and even worse prose. He’d once revised the first chapter of a proposed novel sixteen times before his father kindly took the pages and burned them.
The differences between him and his family were not only artistic ones. There were physical differences as well, so many of them, in fact, that his brother and sisters teased him mercilessly that he was a foundling adopted by their parents in one of the impulsive, magnanimous gestures they were known for.
Thinking about it now, Roen smiled to himself. He was still a fish out of water at family affairs, but as an adult, he’d come into his own. He could joke, before his family did, that he had physical stature if not an artistic one. He could also have pointed out that he was not possessed of the same fiery temperament as the rest of the Shepards, but they would have said he lacked their passion and wouldn’t have understood that he was thankful for it.
Roen studied the drawing he had made in his sketch pad, reviewed the calculations, checking and rechecking his work on the elevations, and, once satisfied, closed the book with a pleasant thump.
It was only then that he became aware that he was not alone, and he guessed that he hadn’t been for some time. Roen could acknowledge that upon occasion he had an extraordinary eye for detail while being oblivious to the whole. This was one of those occasions.
He looked up from his sketch pad and turned his head in the direction of his visitor. He merely raised an inquiring eyebrow.
A lesser man might have flinched at being caught out, perhaps even been unseated from his hunkered position on the rocky outcropping where he was perched like a bird of prey, but Clay Salt didn’t twitch. Roen estimated the boy was eleven, maybe twelve, so that explained both his curiosity and his lack of embarrassment.
“Are you done now, mister? Seems like you might be. Didn’t want to disturb you none while you was working, so I just settled down to watch. I never seen the like before, what you were doing. That much fascinated I was.”
Roen had no recollection of anyone ever being fascinated by what he did, and he looked for mischief in young Clay’s eyes. What he saw were a pair of dark brown eyes, earnest in their direct gaze and without a shred of guile.
“Did you follow me up here, Clay?”
Now Clay flinched. “You know who I am?”
“Uh-huh. Why does that surprise you?”
“Well, you’re new to town. You’ve hardly been here more than a minute.”
“Three weeks. People are friendly, and I’ve been to your church twice. Saw you there with your mother and your brother and sisters. Between the minister and Mrs. Springer, I believe I was introduced to every parishioner.”
“Yeah? Not us.”
“No, that’s true. I misspoke. I’m pleased to make your acquaintance now.”
“Are you? Ma said I should leave you be, that your work is too important to suffer the children.”
Roen’s cocked an eyebrow again, this time with a challenging curve. “Suffer the children? Did she say that?”
Clay shrugged, unabashed. “Something like that.”
“I see. So you are in defiance of your mother’s wishes right now.”
“Not really. You didn’t know I was here until you were done so you didn’t have to suffer me at all.”
