Song of the Yukon
LaVerne’s dream is to follow in Robert Service’s footsteps to the wilds of Alaska. At sixteen she is already writing her own music and believes that her talent can only flourish on the back trails of the Yukon.
In 1921 and at the tender age of seventeen, she runs away from her family farm in Tumwater, Washington. She disguises herself as a boy, and works aboard a freighter, destination Alaska. She rides the Yukon Railway and finally arrives in Fairbanks where she is hired as a clerk at the E.T. Barnette Trading post. Saving every penny she earns she explores the area on her time off and homesteads a parcel of land in the Tanana Valley.
It soon becomes apparent to the reader, that LaVerne has a strong attraction to ‘Charlie’, a rugged pioneer woman and neighbor. Confused by her feelings, LaVerne only knows one thing for certain; that she is nothing like her other four sisters.
This is the story of two women, in tune with the wild nature of Alaska and with each other. We follow the harsh life of living in Alaska in the nineteen twenties. A life that has changed very little in today’s world. This is based on a true family story and LaVerne’s sheet music will be published in the back of the book.
Review from Midwest Book Review: http://www.midwestbookreview.com/mbw/jul_13.htm#donovan
Women Outside the Walls
PRISON. LOVE. HOSTAGES. FRIENDSHIP.
Alma, Kitty and Hattie have one thing in common. The men they love and married are in prison.
Women who marry regular guys, who have children and work jobs. Then their men make a bad decision that leads their women to serving ‘hard time’ on the outside. Wives visit their men behind bars every day wondering how their lives brought them to this place. Alma is an exotic dancer. Hattie is a hard working African American with four children. And Kitty, a wealthy socialite, who in spite of the shame of going to a prison where her husband refuses to see her, doggedly visits every week. In a series of flash backs we explore the lives of these women before their men were incarcerated; when they lived normal lives with their husbands and children. The plot explodes when one of their daughters disappears and an inmate makes a desperate move toward freedom.
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Wild Violets
We meet Violet Guyer again….a woman grown and on her first adventure outside the tiny town of Tumwater, Washington. She has been invited to San Francisco to play women’s semi-professional basketball. Not so unusual you say? Not today, but this is the 1920’s.
The roaring 20’s come roaring back in Sugarek’s second novel. Located in San Francisco, Violet, one of the sisters from “The Guyer Girls,” has grown into a beautiful woman with children of her own. In the intervening years she has had a successful athletic career and has since bought her own bar and grill.
She is a ‘flapper’ in every sense of the word; working all day and playing all night. While her teenage daughter raises her seven year old son, Violet is out on the town! Usually with her man de’jour. Her second marriage is a stone around her neck and she is about to get rid of her loser husband who is a compulsive gambler. She has the next husband all lined up.
In a series of flashbacks the reader gets to know Violet in a more innocent time and place.
“Wild Violets”. Violet leaves a small timber town in Washington state for the bright lights of San Francisco during the roaring 20’s. Her ticket out of Tumwater is as a point forward on a semi-professional basketball team. But her sights are set much higher than that and in just a few short years she is the owner and operator of a speakeasy. Two children later she is working on husband number two and when she isn’t working, she’s out on the town. Purchase here
The World of Murder Mystery Series **
In the World of Murder series, Detectives Jack O’Roarke and Stella Garcia, stars at NYPD with their careful forensic investigative skills and solid cop work, seek out killers on the streets of New York City. These two murder cops investigate from the sleazy world of strip joints to Manhattan’s swanky, upper Eastside. Poor and rich alike, no one is exempt from murder. This series of mysteries also follows Jack and Stella’s personal life ‘deftly woven amongst the blood and guts in the hard streets of New York…’
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