Events

Southern mystery writer Patricia Sprinkle, best know for her Thoroughly Southern Mystery Series, jumps genres and gives us something different with her new book Hold Up the Sky.  The title comes from an old African proverb:  women hold up half the sky.  One summer, that saying proves true for four women in Solace, Georgia, who find the strength to lift one another high. 

In the book, Mamie Fountain believes that our lives are part of a rich and complex tapestry woven by God.  But when her retirement is put on hold by a secret she can’t bring herself to share, she can’t see a life pattern that makes any sense to her.  Margaret Baxter, Billie Waits, and Emerita Gomez are in similar situations.  One month ago, Margaret had the home and family she’d always wanted.  Now they’ve been taken away.  Billie managed to care for her severely handicapped daughter with a little help from her estranged husband-until he disappeared.  Emerita became an immigrant from Mexico when she was forced to choose between losing her husband and breaking the law. 

These four women were accustomed to taking care of themselves and those around them.  Suddenly, they’re overwhelmed by tough times.  When they band together on a drought-stricken farm, they must open their hearts and share their burdens before they can find the bounty that lies hidden in their changed circumstances…and see the glorious pattern in the tapestry that was there all along. 

Patricia Sprinkle grew up in North Carolina and northern Florida, graduated from Vassar College, and spent a winter writing in the Scottish Highlands before settling in Atlanta. Although as an adult she has also lived in Chicago and Miami, her mysteries and novels reflect her love for and the strength of her Southern roots. Sprinkle is a member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America.  Sprinkle writes novels drawn from her own Southern roots, chronicling the lives of women in the contemporary South.  In addition to writing, she is active in organizations that serve neglected, deprived, and abused children.  She and her husband have two grown sons and live in Smyrna, Georgia, where she enjoys reading, gardening, and doing nothing. 

Hold Up the Sky sprang from a seed planted in 1986 while the Sprinkle’s were eating at a Japanese steakhouse with three strangers whose conversation sparked the idea for the novel.  At the time, Sprinkle was just getting contracts signed for publication of her first two mystery novels.  The mystery genre took off, grew to twenty novels, and the seed for Hold Up the Sky languished.  Twenty years later, Sprinkle rekindled the idea for the novel she had germinated in 1986, and Hold Up the Sky was completed.