Product Description

The only possession Miss Amethyst Noble loves as much as the antique brooch she wears at her throat is Noble House-a symbol of freedom, faith, and a family history proudly and inextricably entwined with the history of a nation. For a hundred and forty years, Noble House has been a place of shelter, hope, and healing in Cambridge, Mississippi. A place of miracles.

When she discovers her dissolute son has designs to sell the ancestral home out from under her, Miss Amethyst-ninety-three years old and as sharp as eve- isnt about to let that legacy go. If her son is lost to her, theres still her granddaughter. Little Am, who had once held such sweet promise, but the gentle, good-natured child has mutated in her teenage years into something else altogether. But whatever it takes, Little Am is going to know that the Noble family heritage is worth fighting for.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1122471 in Books
• Published on: 2000-06-20
• Released on: 2000-06-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Stokes (The Blue Bottle Club) offers an earnest but predictable Christian novel chronicling six generations of the Noble family of Cambridge, Miss. At age 93, Amethyst Noble, fighting to save her family home from a greedy and shiftless son, recounts the family history for her great-granddaughter. Her story begins in the antebellum era, when Silas Noble, a young white doctor from Baltimore, comes to Mississippi fresh from medical school and is won over to the abolitionist cause. Befriending a slave called Booker, he helps the man and his family escape to freedom during the Civil War. Silas and his wife, Pearl, like their granddaughter Amethyst, are too good to be true, and their long, preachy speeches make the eyes glaze over. The narrative skirts historical melodrama: as Booker is planning his escape, Harriet Tubman materializes to guide his family to freedom, and when Amethyst fights her own "good fight" for civil rights nearly a century later, an adolescent Martin Luther King Jr. shows up at a local rally and solemnly announces, "This is my calling." Stokes orchestrates some touching moments, and Amethyst is a likable (though unrealistically pious) protagonist, but the excess of sentiment makes for a predictable denouement. (May)

Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Penelope Stokes holds a Ph.D. in Renaissance Literature and has taught literature and writing at the college level. Stokes has written 12 books and edited more than 150 CBA novels and nonfiction books. She now lives and works from her home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina.