True family is a patchwork....of love's surprising shapes.
A story about a man, a dog, and the two lost children who help everyone find their way.
Famous author Merit Brown moved to a secluded cabin in the woods after suffering tragic loss. Susie is the collie who showed up on his porch, badly injured. His only companion, she contentedly wears the patch he made for her damaged eye as they walk the path to the creek every morning before Merit quietly settles down to write.
Until the morning they find two abandoned children - a girl huddled by the creek bank who won't speak, and a little boy hidden under bushes in the water and the mud, unconscious and nearly dead.
Suddenly Merit and Susie are back in the world of cruelties, and kindnesses. As they help Jonathan and Trish on a desperate search for home, the people of the southern mountain town of Wake Robin reach out, discovering within themselves the true meaning of family.
Burton paints powerful portraits of the good, and the bad, in a vivid novel that has the horror and suspense of a kidnapping, a rape, a murder, a suicide. But at its shining heart is a story of empowerment.
Patchwork Love radiates with warmth, hope, and what it means to find your brave. Courage - that's the most important thing.
Linda Lou Burton is a fearless explorer, always on the lookout for new adventures, new friends, and new stories. In her travels from the Arctic Circle to Antarctica, she photographed the Midnight Sun on the first day of summer at each end of the Earth - in the same year! She also crossed the Andes in a taxi, conversed eye-to-eye with penguins on their rocky turf, tracked polar bears (in a Hummer with a guide, of course), and had a quick breakfast at the northernmost McDonalds in the world.
In her two-year Journey Across America (2012-2013) with her traveling cats Alex the Crabby Tabby, and big black Jack, aka El Grande Lovebug, she lived in the capital cities in all 50 states, connecting with thousands as she gained an insider's perspective on how people feel about "home," wherever that might be.
Born in Jasper, Alabama and newly settled in Arkansas with blue-eyed Katy cat, Burton claims two more places as home.
"During twenty years of living alongside the Tennessee River in Chattanooga I raised three sons, earned a BS in Psychology from the University of Tennessee and taught there, owned a publications business, wrote a column for The Chattanooga Times, and authored Chattanooga Great Places and other travel guidebooks.
I lived in Seattle, with snow-capped Mt Rainier in view just to the south, for almost a quarter century, where I studied both Communications and History at the University of Washington and worked there, operated The Golden Apple B&B, and welcomed eleven amazing grandchildren into my life.
I came to Arkansas because my brother found a journal kept by our third great-grandfather William Irwin, who led a party on an ill-fated attempt to emigrate from Alabama to Texas in 1849. Their journey sadly ended here in wooded graves, but my new Arkansas home- a historic house smack dab between two universities -- feels to me like a good place to dig more deeply into history, to reflect, and spin the stories out."
Burton now chairs Capital Cities USA, a nonprofit dedicated to humanities education, and invites everyone interested in learning about the United States to visit the Capital Cities website. www.capitalcitiesusa.org
Patchwork Love is her first novel, to be followed by a fictionalized account of the Irwin journey that ended so tragically in Arkansas in 1849 with ten deaths. The focus will be on the survivors -- two pregnant women, a four-year-old girl, and a slave named Penny.
