Render Unto the Valley
Rose Senehi

In the third “stand alone” novel in Rose Senehi’s Blue Ridge series, Render Unto the Valley is set in the mountain farming community of Fairview, just outside Asheville. The author has a distinct talent for developing memorable characters and, in this newest book, creates people who reflect the independent nature of the early settlers of this mountain valley town—a quality they have passed on to future generations.

In the story, Karen has gone off to college where she reinvents herself and, in the process, begins to distance herself from her ancestral past. Now a streetwise curator for New York’s Metropolitan Museum, she returns home to North Carolina to face the ugly secret that drove her away. She finds the descendants of the area’s settlers still have a grip on the farmlands, but the ground is shifting beneath their feet.

As she wrestles her dangerously cunning brother for the family farm, Karen finds herself straddling the divide between the staunchly independent mountain culture from which she came and the vastly more sophisticated life of which she’s become a part.

Scattered throughout the story is the history of Fairview and the surrounding area. In fact, Rose has dedicated the novel to Bruce Whitaker, Fairview’s town historian (who, as Cousin Bruce, is a major character in the novel).

The first book in the series, In the Shadows of Chimney Rock, was nominated by the Southeast Independent Bookseller’s Association as the best book written about the South in 2009. The second novel, The Wind in the Woods, was nominated for the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Awar

Render Unto the Valley, fiction, 2012, softcover, $15.95, by Rose Senehi, is published by K.I.M. Publishing, LLC. For more information, visit rosesenehi.com.

Murder as a Call to Love
Judith Toy

In a most remarkable and revealing book, Black Mountain author Judith Toy traces her spiritual transformation that began when she survived the mass murder of several of her family members. This book, quite simply, will move you and, most likely, will cause you to reexamine events in your own life in a new and thoughtful manner.

A young man hid in a garage in an affluent neighborhood, waiting until his intended victims were asleep. Later, in the darkness, he bludgeoned and stabbed to death Judith’s sister-in-law and her two teenaged nephews. The 19-year-old murderer was no stranger. He was the boy from across the street, a family friend.

Judith says she felt emotionally battered by the tragic event, and then a friend introduced her to a Zen monk. “Seeking solace and protection … I set out on the path of meditation and mindfulness practice, calming my body and mind every day,” she explains.

Then—spontaneously—she forgave the boy, describing that experience as “striking a match to the straw of my grief. I did not set out to forgive him. But it happened …” She says it came in the form of what Christians call grace and Buddhists call prajnaparamita.

Judith went on to lead a mindfulness practice in a medium security prison where some of the men knew the killer. Judith was ordained by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and she and her husband, also ordained, have founded three Zen communities and together lead workshops around the world.

This is a gripping tale of loss, torment, forgiveness, and an awakening to deep peace.

Murder as a Call to Love, nonfi ction, 2011 , softcover, $18.00, by Judith Toy, is published by Cloud Cottage Editions. For more information, visit murderasacalltolove.com.