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Synopsis' of Novels | |
11/26/07 |
     
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The Danburg Diary By JP Nolan (pen name for TA Powell) and EM Hamilton (pen name for SM Huszagh) Copyright 2007 TAP Household Collaborations 750 Cleveland Road Bogart, Georgia 30622 706.714.6516
A horrendous act of violence known today as the last mass lynching in America was committed in the summer of 1946 against four African Americans in rural Monroe, Georgia. Eleven days later on the outskirts of a rural outpost 90 miles away, a second heinous act was committed to hide the truth. Five people died and no one knew why until 61 years later when a child’s diary was found in the belly of a charred grandfather clock. The Danburg Diary is an intriguing work of historical fiction based in part on the facts recorded about the Moores Ford Bridge incident which took place in the heated political atmosphere of the actual 1946 Georgia gubernatorial race. It is a story of fact and fiction woven so seamlessly that the reader is hard pressed not to believe it happened just this way. The backdrop is the Danburg Manor -- a once prosperous southern plantation and the captivating canvass for one of the most clandestine and inhumane crimes of racial intolerance ever committed in the state of Georgia. Speculation about the possible political motivation for the carnage made the headlines as recently as June of 2007. Such prominence gives the plotline of The Danburg Diary an even more relevant edge. In our tale, historical preservationist Caroline Horton is sent to the tiny town of Danburg, Georgia in 1946 to restore an architectural landmark donated to the state for rehabilitation. The year 1946 was significant for more than the citizens of Monroe; Danburg also suffered its share of trials. There was a terrible scandal, a mystifying death and a great fire that nearly destroyed one of its finest architectural jewels. When first we meet Caroline she too is in the
middle of structural restoration after her fifteen year marriage falls
apart. The manor needed her almost as much as she needed it. As
the story unfolds, a darker history than anyone could have imagined is
unveiled. Doing her best to flesh out rooms and family skeletons alike, she canvasses locally for both furnishings and anecdotes. Finding few of either, she encounters two of the town’s oldest citizens -- a cagey cousin of the founding family, Celine, and her younger sibling Cattalieu. After the structure’s transformation, Caroline focuses her attentions on the interior and so is grateful when these two members of the family come to call bearing a gift. Curious about the reconstruction of their childhood home, they come to appraise her work and return a family heirloom... the charred remains of a grandfather clock. Informed that it once graced the center hall of the Danburg Manor, Caroline appraises it as noteworthy but not functional. Delighted to have at least one piece original to the home, she sends the clock away for restoration. A brutal account begins to unwind when weeks later she receives a package of what was found hidden inside... a diary. With the project now only weeks from completion, Caroline’s unprecedented attachment to the structure soon transfers to the damaged diary and its maiden author. Although the diary contains no definitive ties to the Danburg Manor, she is drawn to the struggles of the mysterious narrator as if she were her own child. Echoes of her own tortured past bleed into her interpretations of the entries and blur the lines between their collective realities. As the content of the entries ages commiserate with its author, Caroline begins to suspect the maiden has suffered some form of sexual abuse from hints recorded within the pages. Her attachment soon becomes her obsession and she is driven to find out the truth and the young author’s true identity. In her catharsis, the troubled preservationist devours every word written and at the same time relives her own past. Just as she reaches the diary’s end, she is faced with the prospect that something even worse might have happened to the ghosts of the Danburg Manor. For there, sandwiched in between the final pages of the maiden’s journal is the cryptic description of a mass murder penned in another’s hand. Desperate for confirmation that the child’s life was saved from the same fate, she is dogged in her determination to ferret out every secret the diary may contain. The Danburg Diary leads her to Moores Ford Bridge and to events occurring just days before and days after. The diary poignantly reveals two people years apart in age, but whose worlds were the same. It is about a secret marriage... a newly wedded husband desperate to return to his bride, hitching a ride to hell in the passenger seat of the wrong vehicle. A vehicle that stops upon a rural bridge on a hot summer’s afternoon and puts him face to face with those who commit unspeakable crimes without fear of incrimination. It is about man’s inability to tolerate the differences between us that make us who we are and the combustible atmosphere of mass hysteria in the wake of southern justice. It is about a marriage certificate which spells certain death and provides a roadmap to where the last witness of the Moores Ford Bridge slaughter will risk his very life to go. It is about a grave that goes unfound for 61 years and the reason why it was relocated and by whom. It is about justice and revenge... love and regret... heartache and joy! The Danburg Diary takes what few facts are known about the actual events at Moores Ford Bridge and brilliantly backfills with rich and vivid imagery about what might have been. Follow the two young lovers and the murders at Moores Ford Bridge through the eyes of the preservationist who does her best to solve the mysteries of the secret afterlife of The Danburg Diary. Copyright 2007
Carved in Stone By JP Nolan (pen name for TA Powell)
TAP Household
Collaborations
750 Cleveland Road Bogart, Georgia 30622 www.curtaincallscripts.com At first blush, the story presents as a memoir of an affair between two women, Judith Parker and Dr. Eve Wendtship. When read more closely we begin to see the subtle manipulation of the plot by the author. Carved in Stone... is subliminally about a middle aged author who exploits the life and personality of a befriended alcoholic in order to write a titillating novel of forbidden love she is certain will escalate her out of literary mediocrity. The catch is, she has no idea the retired academic has cleverly outfoxed her and manipulated her into writing it.! Desperate to get her name into print before dying of cancer, the cunning Professor Wendtship is willing to trade absolutely everything including her soul to get a best seller. In a bizarre twist of events, the academic dies just as she had feared she would... unloved and unpublished! But true to its title, the final chapter isn't over until it is Carved In Stone...Find out who ends up on New York's best seller list in the surprise ending of JP Nolan's fifth novel... Carved In Stone!
The Blind Pigs
of Thibodaux… By JP Nolan (pen name for TA Powell)
TAP Household
Collaborations
750 Cleveland Road Bogart, Georgia 30622 www.curtaincallscripts.com
There is nothing so comforting as the sound of a
Louisiana rain as it gently strokes the rusted edges of
an old tin roof. Making it groan, like a five dollar
whore as it pools slightly in the curled and mildewed
pockets of its overhang. Anyone who has ever lived in
the south knows the blessings of an afternoon sweat from
the sky. The kind that lolls its way as an insolent
child would from farm to farm… slapping the blades of
each lazy wind mill that stands in its way. And just
like so many others before in the open fields of
Thibodaux … Windmills and trees alike, bow and bend in
both submission and exhaustion in response to its unruly
tantrums.
For folks here…energy is not a commodity; but an oddity to be pondered. Ambition, like the windmills stand reluctant and retired in the summer’s heat. Motion is initiated by sheer gravity alone. Dew volleys back and forth till it spills over and downward into the rutted depths of the tire tracks that cut way off to the right, through the open fields and into the back end of our barn. Yes sir; there is nothing so comforting as an afternoon rain…Unless of course, you add; a cigarette, a Vermouth and Coke and the smooth progression of those melancholy chords of early Rhythm and Blues.
Dem Bones…
Er Got Dem Bones!
By JP Nolan (pen name for TA Powell)
TAP Household
Collaborations
750 Cleveland Road Bogart, Georgia 30622 www.curtaincallscripts.com
FORWARD:
Life was a bitch…
Waiting at the living
room window for her cheating husband to come home!
Death was the mistress… keeping him from getting
there!
Kundra saw. Kundra
knew. Kundra was a darkened soul who cheated and
cheated big.
A darkened soul is a
thing to fear…
A white angel is a
thing to love…
A muse is a creative
spark to ponder…
An eternity was what
they would all suffer …
…at the hands of the
tiny soul who refused to forgive them their faults,
including her mother’s inability to bring her back!
Kiss of the
Yellow Bird…
By JP Nolan (pen name for TA Powell)
TAP Household
Collaborations
750 Cleveland Road Bogart, Georgia 30622 www.curtaincallscripts.com
Tess Powers, a
successful playwright and novelist waits cautiously
as her first book is being adapted for screen by a
film company in Los Angeles.
In an effort to
escape her new found fame, she becomes increasingly
steeped in the research for her final book in the
trilogy series about a particular Vodoun conjuring
spell! Bought with the only thing left of any value
to her… her soul, she is told that it will only work
if she believes in it the same way her husband once
believed in her. Not fully appreciative of the
bargain she has made and desperate for the black
magick to work, she is willing to do whatever it
takes to insure its success and does! Find out what
the final cost of bringing her children back to life
entails in the thrilling conclusion to the Blind
Pigs series in the third and final book... Kiss
of the Yellow Bird by JP Nolan.
The Reluctant War Bride
By JP Nolan (pen name for TA Powell)
TAP Household
Collaborations
750 Cleveland Road Bogart, Georgia 30622 www.curtaincallscripts.com
She was born in Brooklyn, New
York August 3, 1924. She played games with Theodore
Roosevelt’s grandson John on the Governor’s lawn.
Translated Spanish for a woman beside the swimming
pool of the Condado Beach Hotel and in return was
taught the Australian crawl by Gertrude Ederle who
swam the English Channel in 1926. She lived on a
hillside plantation in Puerto Rico four houses down
from Pablo Casals and her father was instrumental in
the meeting of the famous cellist and his youthful
bride Marta. She was Jewish, an only child, a wife,
a mother, an artist…In her younger years she was a
dead ringer for Rosemary Clooney, she could dance
the Merengue like nobody’s business and now she was
sitting one row in front of me.
Tears eroding the foundation of her make up as she huddled behind a mound of red clay over a folded flag being held at arms length by a uniformed soldier with white kid gloves, kind eyes and a stern face. She was the most fascinating woman I had ever met and she had been right underneath my nose for twenty three years and I had never known it before today.
Meet my mother in law… the
matron… the widow…
The Reluctant War Bride.
This site was last updated 11/26/07 |
