BENNETTSVILLE — Author Marti Healy of Aiken will return to Marlboro Area Arts Council in Bennettsville at 2 p.m. Sunday.
Healy came two years ago promoting her book, “The God-Dog Connection,” during the Writers Reading Series. Her new book, “The Secret Child” is a new direction for the award-winning writer.
“The Secret Child” is a “fantasy” set in the pre-Civil War South. It is best described as a timeless tale, written in a lyrical style, appealing to a wide range of ages.
This book has already been recognized as a 2010 “Okra Pick” by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance.
The central character is a 13-year-old girl, Marika — an Irish Traveller — running between her thribli (an Irish gypsy clan) in Boston and her arranged marriage to a Traveller named Jacko in the midlands of South Carolina. The year is 1855.
Marika’s 5-year-old brother Danny is with her, but dies shortly after their arrival at their destination. The young gypsy girl has been taught to keep herself unseen whenever in the world of the others, and does not readily admit her presence and relationship with the boy except to two locals: an insightful free black man, Joseph, and a sympathetic Quaker woman, Maggie.
The story touches on the issue of slavery, particularly the ownership of slaves by free blacks in the South. These, and other harsh realities of 19th-century South Carolina, are interwoven with a mystical, light-and-shadows world of the Fairies who inhabit a heavily forested Carolina Bay.
Healy, a frequent columnist for The Aiken Standard newspaper, once wrote about a small grave in the nearby town of Graniteville with the tiny headstone that reads: “The Little Boy, 1855.” She was intrigued with its legend of a little boy traveling by train apparently alone and found too ill to tell anyone his origin, his destination, even his name or age. He was taken from the train and treated for his illness, but he succumbed and was adopted by the town and buried in their cemetery. Since then, the grave has been visited by thousands, and is never without mysteriously delivered small gifts atop it.
“The Secret Child” is Healy’s third published book, her second novel.
Admission to today’s event is free. Copies of Healy’s books will be available for purchase and inscription.
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement