Susan Mary Malone

Susan Mary Malone’s upcoming novel, set in a Texas vineyard and winery, finds that spot where spirit and matter meet. It speaks to the happiness and meaning of women’s lives, of those lost and found once more, in the starshine of our souls.

The warm Texas wind teasing your skin…

The glistening of grape clusters hanging oh-so-lusciously ripe on the vines.

Shining joyful and hot, the sun laughs over the land, promising no deluge of rains to cause bursting of grapes. Ah, the fruits of one’s labors literally begging to be plucked. It’s that wine-grape time of year!

Which of course occurs in the oven blast of Texas summer, when sane people stay tucked comfortably under air conditioners. But only in recent years have folks accused Gwyn or Ruth of even nominal normalcy…

Having babied the vineyard back from the throes of neglected death, Gwyn has kept her passions, her bliss, the heart of her purpose effectively stuffed. She’s had a failing business to resurrect and an adopted son to keep from getting the local girls in the family way (the tar pit her natural-born son had tumbled into before falling into the fundamentalist fold), the headaches of the mundane squashing that passion like an over-ripe grape. Now, as a beautiful troubled stranger (who Ruth and Gwyn know sees tomorrow) takes residence with them, threatening their precarious equilibrium, and mother-in-law Lila schemes to sell the vineyard out from under her, Gwyn valiantly struggles to keep her own knowing at bay.

But of course, it bursts forth on the wisp of the wind. And with it, Pandora’s Box gets ripped wide open. Out Chaos springs, accompanied by the delicious tendrils of passion’s tales. Which brings with it of course, as all the old storytellers know and Gwyn once did, that elusive quality in the heart of a woman—the happiness that purpose brings.