From the TBR Pile: Blog Tour: Excerpt of By the Light of Embers by Shaylin Gandhi

Author: Shaylin Gandhi

Publisher: Briar Rose Publishing

Pages: 382

Genre: Historical Women’s Fiction

It's 1954, and twenty-two-year-old Lucia Lafleur has always dreamed of following in her father’s footsteps. While sock hops and poodle skirts occupy her classmates, she dreams of bacteria and broken bones—and the day she’ll finally fix them.

After graduation, a letter arrives, and Lucia reads the words she’s labored a lifetime to earn—"we are pleased to offer you a position at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine." But in the midst of her triumph, her fiancé delivers a crushing ultimatum: forego medical school, or forego marriage.

With fractured hopes, she returns home to Louisiana, expecting nothing of the summer of '54 but sweet tea and gumbo while she agonizes over her impending choice. There, she unexpectedly befriends Nicholas, a dark-skinned poet whose dignity and intellect are a salve to her aching heart. Their bond, initially forged from a shared love of literature, soon blossoms into something as bewitching as it is forbidden.

Yet her predicament deepens when a trivial misunderstanding between a local white woman and a black man results in a brutal lynching, and the peril of love across the color lines becomes chillingly real. Now, fulfilling her lifelong dream means relinquishing her heart—and escaping Louisiana alive.

Praise for By the Light of Embers!

"Gandhi's passion and creativity spill forth onto every page of this book, creating a truly magnificent and brave narrative." -- Entrada Publishing

“I genuinely don't know any other way to describe this book than to say it's beautiful.” – Lacie, Amazon Reviewer

“There are also books that you want to keep reading no matter how painful or heartbreaking or just downright unfair the endings are…because life’s got those moments and Shaylin Gandhi brings them out so well in her characters that you cannot help but grab that box of tissues and still smile in between scenes.” – Dora, Amazon Reviewer

“Beautifully atmospheric, you’ll cry your heart out…” – Kay Smillie, Amazon Reviewer

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Book Excerpt:

Bellefontaine, Louisiana, 1945

It was the first dead body I’d ever seen.

Thick July heat pressed in, sticking my dress to my skin, while steam rose from waters as dark as motor oil. Cypresses held the sky aloft, and there—in my little haven in the bayou, where the marshy ground turned firm and the old fallen blackgum slowly fell to pieces—lay a man with skin like molasses. Black eyes stared upward, fixed on eternity.

He shouldn’t be here. That was my first thought. Nobody else knew the way into the secret heart of the swamp, through the sucking mud and tangled underbrush. Yet here he was.

Something squirmed in the shadows of his mouth, and I pressed my hands to my stomach. If I threw up, Mother would be angry. I already had mud on my dress, which was bad enough.

Lured by horrified fascination, I stepped closer. What happened? Was he murdered? I couldn’t tell. The dead man lay so still that he gave the impression of something missing, rather than something there, as if he were nothing but a yawning void or a cicada’s left-behind skin. Empty.

I knelt. Up close, his flesh was ruined, his body swollen, his right hand chewed to shreds. Faint rustling drifted from his mouth—worms definitely wriggled inside. I leaned in and studied the wreckage of his face. Something familiar...

I jerked backward, sprawling to the ground. More mud on my dress. But it didn’t matter—no, because this dead man was no stranger. This was Tom Fletcher.

And I hated Tom Fletcher.

True fear fluttered in my belly. I couldn’t be alone with him, not even if he was dead. I had to get away, across town to the big house, and tell Etta.

Scrambling back like a spider, I made it halfway to the edge of the clearing before my panic subsided enough for me to think. Tom was bad, yes. But Etta was good, with her warm cookies and warmer words. I didn’t want her to see his vacant face, those eyes full of nothing.

I straightened up, brushed myself off, and tried hard to be brave. Even so, I stood there a long time. Closing Tom’s eyes seemed impossible, but for Etta’s sake, I had to. She shouldn’t remember her husband like this.

I forced my feet to move.

When I got close, Tom's cold obsidian skin stole the warmth from my fingers. One eye had retreated into his skull and his lids didn’t fit together right, but when I finished, the blank stare was gone. He looked more peaceful, somehow.

Then I wiped my hands on my dress, went to the water’s edge, and threw up in the bushes.

* * *

“Lucia, child, what’ve you gotten into? The pigpen?” Etta Fletcher put big hands on big hips and laughed, her teeth flashing white in her round, dark face. “I’ll hear your mama cryin’ from here when she sees that dress.” She clucked her tongue and turned away.

The plantation’s kitchen was the same as ever, with its crackling hearth and billows of sweet steam. Etta stood at the stove, frying something in a dark iron pan. Oil popped and sizzled.

“Cinnamon rolls,” she said.

My stomach soured. For once, I didn’t want sweets. I just wanted Etta to turn around and listen, and I wanted to be brave enough to tell her. While I gathered my courage, the kitchen door opened, and Etta’s son strode in, setting a dirty, tool-filled bucket on the spotless floor.

I shrank back. Nicholas terrified me, just like his father. He straightened, fixing me with creepy yellow eyes. At nineteen, he was six years my senior, but might’ve been a hundred for his size. He was as black as his papa and larger than any grown-up I’d ever seen.

“Ma,” he said. “What’s she doing here?”

Etta glanced over her shoulder. “She’s come for a treat. An’ since she’s mudded her dress, I might take pity and give her two.”

With a wink, she offered a fragrant roll. It coiled in her hand like a snake, oozing vanilla cream. From the doorway, Nicholas gave me a look like he’d found a cockroach in his gumbo.

Vomit still coated the back of my throat. I stared at the pastry as a sticky glob of icing plopped to the floor. “Tom’s dead,” I said.

Etta’s grin slowly died and her brows drew together. “What? My Tom?”

I nodded, wishing Nicholas would disappear instead of staring at me like that. He made me want to crawl in a hole somewhere. “I found him in the swamp. He’s dead.”

Though Nicholas’s expression didn’t change, he quit looking, at least. His terrible yellow eyes shifted toward his mother. Etta’s cinnamon roll fell in slow motion, landing topside down and squirting cream across the weathered floorboards.

Silence. Nicholas caught at his mother’s elbow, but she shook him off.

I wondered why she didn’t cry. My mother cried over nothing—stained dresses, rain flattening her hair. But Etta stood straight and wiped her hands on her apron.

“You show us, child,” she said. “You gone show us.”

About the Author

SHAYLIN GANDHI secretly stole her mother’s copy of Clan of the Cave Bear at age ten, and fell madly in love with love stories. Now, as an author, she still can't get enough, and the tales she spins all center around affairs of the heart. To her, that's what makes a story truly worth telling.

Besides writing, she tries to stamp her passport at every opportunity. Traveling has been a lifelong passion, and she’s lucky to have done it a lot. Shaylin and her husband once spent an entire summer living in their van while touring the Pacific Northwest, British Columbia, and Alaska. Her most memorable trips often tie in with writing: her books are usually inspired by majestic places that stole her breath.

In addition, Shaylin practices medicine, scuba dives, plays the piano, and once rode her bicycle from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic. She now lives in Denver with her incredible husband, their identical twin daughters, and two adorable rescue dogs. They can usually be found in the mountains, either hiking up or skiing down.

You can find Shaylin online at www.shaylingandhi.com or on Twitter @shaylingandhi. Please get in touch—she would love to hear from you!