Welcome to the blog tour & giveaway for The Ornament Keeper by Eva Marie Everson, hosted by JustRead Publicity Tours!
ABOUT THE BOOK
Title: The Ornament KeeperAuthor: Eva Marie Everson
Publisher: New Hope Publishers
Release Date: September 24, 2018
Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Holiday
Award-winning author Eva Marie Everson wraps up a Christmas story of hope, love, and forgiveness just in time for the holidays.
The Ornament Keeper, a contemporary Christmas novella, features Felicia and Jackson Morgan who are spending their first Christmas apart after twenty years of marriage. But a lifetime of gifted ornaments helps Felicia piece together the story of their marriage and the one mistake of unforgiveness she made before they said, “I do.”
Can these memory-filled ornaments reunite this family before Christmas? Only time will tell.
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EXCERPT
On the Sunday after the children brought the tree home, and during our ritual lunch, I shared with Dad my concern over whether readying the house for Christmas was a good idea or not.
“Why wouldn’t it be?” he asked.
I stabbed at fried okra piled high in a small bowl next to a plate of chicken and dumplings—Sunday being the one day I threw my diet to the wind. I’d somehow managed—even after giving birth to three children and the last one being “later in life”—to stay close to the same weight as when Jackson and I married. Giving myself one day to eat as I pleased kept me from binging and putting on more of the middle-age spread than giving birth to three children had caused.
“I don’t know, Dad,” I said. “I don’t want them to get too hopeful . . .”
Dad bit into a fat, glistening fried chicken thigh, chewed, and swallowed. “Too hopeful? About what?”
I rested my fork on the edge of the plate and shook my head. “I don’t know. A Christmas miracle maybe?”
“Are you planning on putting out more than the tree?” Dad asked, ignoring my quip.
“I wasn’t,” I said with a smile. “But then I saw all those decorations . . . the Nativity set . . . Mary.”
Dad laughed as he wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “Goodness, I’ll never forget that Christmas. The way Jackson surprised you with it.”
Oh, yes. Jackson had put his foot down firmly in the antique mart, saying “absolutely not,” even as I begged and pouted prettily for it. He wasn’t spending that much money—money we didn’t have—he said, on something we’d only look at a few days a year.
He dealt with my sulking all the way home. The cold supper I prepared later and the cold shoulder I gave him that night when he reached for me beneath the covers. And all the while, unbeknownst to me, he’d called my father while I slapped mayo on bread and asked him to swing by the mart on his way home from work and purchase the crèche. “I’ll bring you the money tomorrow,” he told him.
And then he did.
That Christmas Day in 1999, as we unwrapped the gifts from under the tree at Dad’s, Jackson made me save the “big one for last,” then watched my face light up brighter than the eastern star as I realized what crinkled sheets of newspaper protected within the box. “Oh, Jackson,” I said, throwing myself into his arms and kissing him more amorously than I usually did, which seemed to both thrill and shock him. “I can’t believe you did this. I really can’t believe it.”
The nativity set hadn’t been his only gift that year. There’d been two others—the first, our daughter Sara, who slept bundled in her grandfather’s arms, and a “Baby’s First Christmas” ornament I found tucked into the toe of my stocking, just as I’d found the “Our First Christmas” ornament a year before. Jackson had her name—Sara Joy Morgan—engraved on the back along with her date of birth—July 31, 1999.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eva Marie Everson is a multiple-award winning author and speaker who hails from the picturesque Southern town of Sylvania, Georgia. She is president of Word Weavers International, director of Florida Christian Writers Conference, Managing Editor at Firefly Southern Fiction, and enjoys coaching new authors through her company, Pen in Hand. She is an avid photographer who enjoys turning her photos into inspiring memes for you to share (with proper attribution). Eva Marie and her husband make their home in Central Florida. They are the parents of three fabulous children who have blessed them with the world's greatest grandchildren.
CONTACT: website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest
TOUR GIVEAWAY
(1) winner will receive:
- a print copy of The Ornament Keeper, and
- an ornament handpicked by the author
Giveaway is subject to the policies found here.
Follow along at JustReadTours for a full schedule of stops!
thanks, Alysha!
ReplyDeleteThank you! Thank you! This book means so much to me! I hope your readers will not only enjoy it, but also be moved by the message.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful cover, Eva. I look forward to reading it.
ReplyDeleteI just love the cover of this book! I'm looking forward to reading it!
ReplyDeleteThe cover of the book is very pretty. Looking forward to reading the book.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Alysha!
ReplyDelete