Author Talk & Book Signing: Donna Everhart on The Saints of Swallow Hill

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ABOUT THE BOOK:

Where the Crawdads Sing meets The Four Winds as award-winning author Donna Everhart's latest novel, The Saints of Swallow Hill, immerses readers in a unique corner of Southern (and especially Northern Florida) history: the isolated turpentine camps where laborers in the 1930s lived, harvested pine gum, and processed it into turpentine for naval stores. Through the Great Depression, turpentining was Florida’s second largest industry after citrus, and Tallahassee’s nearby Wakulla State Forest and Apalachicola National Forest were where many of these camps were located.

Constructed in remote locations among the longleaf pines and cut off from the world, the power center of these camps was the commissary store where workers would rack huge debts they’d be forced to work off, creating an endless cycle of work and debt. It’s one such turpentine camp called Swallow Hill, run by a cruel woodsman, where a charming Georgian rogue named Del Reese and Rae Lynn, a young widow on the run from North Carolina disguised as a man, happen to cross paths in this captivating, immersive story.