From the #1 Amazon Bestselling Author Joy Jordan-Lake and winner of The Christy Award for Best First Novel, BLUE HOLE BACK HOME.
Nov 30-Dec 7, 2020
Amazon Kindle
Hot Deal $.99
Inspired by actual events from her own teenage years, Blue Hole Back Home explores the tensions and eventual violence that erupts in a small, all-white Appalachian town when a Sri Lankan family moves in.
Ultimately, Blue Hole Back Home is a story not only of the devastating effects of racial hatred and cowardice, but more centrally, a celebration of courage, confrontation, and healing.
A timely novel in our today's world of unrest and social injustices—Blue Hole Back Home continues to be selected as critical classroom and summer reading at various public and private high schools, middle schools, colleges, and universities, including Baylor University.
“Sacred's not a word I've ever much liked. But maybe some things, and some places, just are. And maybe the Blue Hole was one of those things."
About the Book
In a time when it thought cross burnings and men in white hoods were a thing of the past, a small town confronts a kind of hate it thought had long since died out….
Shelby Lenoir Maynard, nicknamed Turtle, has never much trusted girls her own age, spending her days instead with her brother and his pack of friends.
But when a mysterious Sri Lankan girl of Moorish descent moves to town in the summer of 1979, Turtle invites her to their secret haven: the Blue Hole.
Turtle could not have imagined how much that simple gesture would affect the rest of her life or the lives of those she loved.
As tensions rise, it becomes clear there are those in Pisgah Ridge who reject the presence of anyone different--and those who would welcome the new refugee family.
In just one summer—in a collision of love, hate, jealousy, beauty, and a muddy swimming hole—everything changes.
Book Trailer
A Conversation with Author Joy Jordan-Lake
Q. Blue Hole Back Home is inspired by a true story. How does this novel represent your own story, and what ultimately motivated you to write about it years later?
JJL: Honestly, I've felt haunted by this story. All the characters in Blue Hole Back Home are purely fictional, as is the town of Pisgah Ridge, North Carolina, but the story has its roots in several incidents during my own teen years. One of the incidents involved a family from Sri Lanka moved to our all-white town in the mountains of East Tennessee. I grew up on Signal Mountain, a small town on the top of Walden's Ridge just outside Chattanooga. The Sir Lankan family's older daughter was about my age, a year behind me in our high school down in the valley, and we became friends. She was beautiful, small-statured, and had the thickest black hair and a smile that knocked you clear off your feet. Read More
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