A Kiss Withheld

In the first book in the Sugar Cane series, Carolina Sugar Cane, I began to relate Myrtie's story. Myrtle Luton Meads was my maternal grandmother. While she was really old enough to have been my great grandmother, being almost 62 years old when I was born, she was more of a mother to my siblings and me. As I've shared elsewhere, our own mother, Ernestine Meads Luton passed away when we were all quite young. Elaine, the oldest of Ernestine and John Elwood's four children was 12; Denise and Bill, our twins, were only 7 months old; I was just about to turn 5, when Mama died on May 8, 1963.

In addition to meeting all of our needs, Grandma Myrtie continually told us about her life growing up in the Sound Neck area of northeastern North Carolina. Her stories left us with the impression that we had actually known all of the people that she talked so much about and loved so dearly. One thing that left a particularly deep mark on me was the heartache that she and her family often endured during those difficult years and how she somehow managed to come through all of those hard times without becoming the least bit jaded or bitter. As I indicated in Carolina Sugar Cane, Myrtie was made of good stuff, like fine silver, and everything she had to go through just seemed to strengthen her, just as a fire purifies a precious metal.

A Kiss Withheld, Myrtie's continues Myrtie's story as she grows from a fatherless teenager to a young adult who dreams of starting her own family. This is also a story of how a family's love for one another can transcend the limits of time and space. Above all, this is a story of how the bonds of enduring love are so strong that not even death can break them.

Original cover art by Cheryl Ann Luton