About the Book

Book: The Awakening of Miss Adelaide

Author: Linda Brooks Davis

Genre: Historical

Release Date: July, 2019

Orphaned as an infant, Oklahoma heiress Adelaide Fitzgerald has enjoyed every advantage. She possesses a unique gift for music and has excelled on the opera stage in Italy. As a philanthropist, she’s adored from America to Europe.

But Miss Adelaide is about to awaken in a 1918 nightmare. The Great War—and the Great Influenza—knock, and Adelaide finds her uninvited guests more than unwelcome. They threaten her life and alter her identity and purpose.

Snatched from a quiet life in an Italian villa, Miss Adelaide is thrust into conflicts others have created. What battle scars will she sustain? And where will love lead her?

In The Awakening of Miss Adelaide, war and peace, laughter and heartache, love and loss come together to ignite a fresh fire that reveals one woman’s hidden needs and potentials.

What will gaining a fresh understanding of herself require of the Angel of the Opera?

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About the Author

Linda Brooks Davis was born and reared, educated, and married in Texas. Her children and six grandchildren were born in Texas. She devoted the bulk of her 40 years as a special educator in Texas schools. But her mother and grandmother hailed from Oklahoma, the setting for Linda’s 2015 debut novel, The Calling of Ella McFarland, which won the 2014 Jerry Jenkins Operation First Novel Award and the 2016 American Christian Fiction Writers Carol Award. Linda continues to write from her home in San Antonio, Texas. She and her beloved husband Al worship and minister at Oak Hills Church. Linda enjoys chatting with readers through her website www.lindabrooksdavis.com

More from Linda

Awakening Miss Adelaide begins with my mother’s cedar chest, which bore an unwritten warning: Hands off! Priceless treasures resided in its depths. My parents’ wedding suits. An old tattered quilt. Mother’s felt hat with a jaunty feather at the rolled-up grim. Bible notes. A stained tablecloth. Equally stained ladies’ handkerchiefs. And old, crocheted, scorched pot holders.

My paternal great-grandmother wrote letters and created intricate, painstaking handwork while she was committed to an asylum in Terrell, Texas. They represent the dearest items in the cedar chest.

Incalculable are the times over the years when a family member would comment Great-granny didn’t appear insane at all. I often wondered how it was she resided at a state mental hospital from 1900 until her death in 1948. How could an insane person write coherent letters and create such handwork?

Mystery shrouds those answers as surely as Great-grandmother herself.

Family legend developed around her. Stories varied from “She wasn’t crazy. Her husband wanted to get rid of her” to “She was an Indian who chose the name McFarland to avoid White bias against the indigenous people.” The truth hides somewhere amid the deadfall of her tragic life.

Sometimes research for a novel can feel like digging up bones. In a way, it is.

One such “bone” I got my teeth around and refused to let go was an article in a 1913 edition of Fort Worth Star-Telegram. It described a murder committed in the lobby of the Metropolitan Hotel. This violent act occurred in connection with an adulterous affair.

Consequently, heightened emotions, lowered common sense, and the control males exerted over females resulted in one man’s murder and the murderer’s acquittal. The “offending” woman’s husband dragged her home kicking and screaming and committed her to a mental asylum for “emotional insanity.”

I wondered if the “offending” man had been treated in like manner. Hardly.

How could I NOT include this morass in a novel?

Someone ought to write a book about that was often said around our family reunions. My interest in doing just that developed little by little over the years. The Women of Rock Creek series deals with some of the ways in which women were denied equal rights when they were denied the vote. Such realities presented an ideal platform for illustrating some women’s plight in the hands of unscrupulous men–inequality in education, the courtroom, and even in mental health care.

With an abundance of love and respect for my great-grandmother; her daughter, my grandmother; and her grandson, my father, I offer this imaginary story. It contrasts two different women: one with a voice heard around the world and the other with no voice at all.

I offer The Awakening of Miss Adelaide to the Lord to do with it as He sees fit. May this story inspired by the agony experienced by my great-grandmother serve to lighten someone else’s load.

Blog Stops

Bettimace, August 10

Godly Book Reviews, August 10

Reflections From my Bookshelves, August 10

Connect in Fiction, August 11

Mary Hake, August 11

Genesis 5020, August 12

Through the Fire Blogs, August 12

For Him and My Family, August 13

Just Your Average reviews, August 13

Life of a traveling wife, August 14

Connie’s History Classroom, August 14

Bigreadersite , August 15

Abba’s Prayer Warrior Princess, August 15

Blessed & Bookish, August 16

Emily Yager, August 16

CarpeDiem, August 17

Library Lady’s Kid Lit, August 17

Daysong Reflections, August 18

Stephanie’s Life of Determination, August 18

Truth and Grace Homeschool Academy, August 19

Locks, Hooks and Books, August 19

Pause for Tales, August 20

For The Love of Books , August 20

Debbie’s Dusty Deliberations, August 21

Texas Book-aholic, August 21

janicesbookreviews, August 22

A Reader’s Brain, August 22

Inklings and notions, August 23

Simple Harvest Reads, August 23 (Spotlight)

Giveaway

To celebrate her tour, Linda is giving away the grand prize of an eBook copy of her book and a $50 Amazon gift card!!

Be sure to comment on the blog stops for nine extra entries into the giveaway! Click the link below to enter.

https://promosimple.com/ps/e682/the-awakening-of-miss-adelaide-celebration-tour-giveaway

My Thoughts:

This was a new to me author so I wasn't sure what to expect, but I'm always up for a WWI story so I jumped at the chance to request a review copy!

Honestly, I have mixed feelings about this book. I really liked that the story began in Tuscany! The author's descriptions of the different settings in the novel were beautifully done, and made me feel as though I were really there. I also liked that this story is written in first person POV!

This story has a good pace and there was always something happening.

I found it fascinating that the author's own family history served as inspiration for the story.

I liked the characters, but I never connected with them the way I had hoped to.

There was quite a bit of repetitiveness in this story, which bothered me because most of the time it felt unnecessary.

One thing that really bothered me was at one point in the story, when the heroine Adelaide was in Washington D.C. on the day of the winter solstice. Right after they finish their noonday meal a suffragist invites Adelaide to visit the home for women and children that she runs, saying "This is the winter solstice, you know, so we'll have light longer than usual." This along with the fact that a page later it is referenced as being the longest day of 1918 seems to me to be implying that there were more hours of daylight that day than any other. I don't know if that is what the author meant to say, but if it is then I'm afraid that's incorrect because it is a well known fact that the winter solstice is actually the shortest day of the year, with the fewest hours of daylight not the most.

Overall, I liked this book but didn't love it. However, I know lots of other people are loving this book, so if it interests you I recommend you give it a try as it might be the perfect fit for you.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher which did not influence my review in any way. All thoughts and opinions are one hundred percent my own.