Spotlight & Giveaway: Riverbend Reunion by Carolyn Brown

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Carolyn Brown to HJ!

Hi Carolyn and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Riverbend Reunion!

 
Hey, everyone out there in reader land. Thanks so much for stopping by today!
 

Please summarize the book a la Twitter style for the readers here:

One old church. Four friends who decided to turn it into a bar. The town is split over the decision.
 

Please share the opening lines of this book:

“Uncle Elijah, why did you build a church out here in this Godforsaken place, and why didn’t you get rid of the empty eyesore before you died?” Jessica asked as she stood in the middle of the sanctuary and looked around at the mess she’d inherited.
Dust was as thick as thick gray fog on the floor, the pews and the blades of the ceiling fans.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• I found the inspiration for this book when I was a guest at the Bentonville Film Festival. I was treated to a drink at The Preacher’s Son, a restaurant and speakeasy that used to be an old church.
• Riverbend is a fictional town in a real area, but it was very real to me.
• The song, “My Church” was the theme song for this story, so thank you Marin Moore for that!
• Wade Granger, the hero, in the story stole my heart. I hope he does the same for you.
• My play list also included “Lead Me Home” and “Danny Boy.”

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

Wade had a crush on Jessica back in their high school years, and never got over it. Jessica liked him, too, but wouldn’t speak up about it because her friends would tease her about liking a nerd. Now it’s twenty years later, and they have a chance to be honest with each other.
 

Using just 5 words, how would you describe Hero and Heroine’s love affair?

Sweet, slow-moving, careful, steamy and forever.
 

The First Kiss…

Just a snippet:

“We’re adults,” she told him. “If a relationship didn’t work out, I think we could handle being friends, but if we never see where whatever this is between us might go, then we might be passing up on something wonderful.”
“Right!” he said as he turned into the high school parking lot and found an empty space. He turned off the engine and turned to face her. “So, can we call this a real date tonight?”
“Yes, we can.” Jessica was tired of fighting the battle between her heart and her mind.
“That means I get the last dance of the evening?” Wade leaned across the console and kissed her on the cheek.
Jessica’s heart threw in an extra beat and then raced ahead with a full head of steam. Her face suddenly felt hot enough to melt all her makeup off. Granted, it had been a while since she’d had a boyfriend, but she felt like a teenager out on a first date again.

Without revealing too much, what is your favorite scene in the book?

Daisy put the quarters into the jukebox and turned around. “Are y’all ready for this?”
“Don’t tease us,” Lily scolded her. “Just push the buttons.”
“This is my part of the show, so don’t rush me,” Daisy threw back at her sister. “I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I get three selections for my money. You might need tissues on the first one.”
She whipped out a box of tissues out of the tiki hut and carried them to the edge of the stage where she set them down between Jessica and Risa. “The second one and third ones just seemed to be fitting,” she said as she returned to the jukebox and pushed the buttons. “Here we go!”
Jessica knew that the song was “Danny Boy” within five seconds of the soft violin music lead-in to the lyrics. Tears rolled down her cheeks and dripped onto her shirt. She didn’t like for people to see her cry, but there was no controlling it, and then Wade buried his face in his hand and his shoulders shook as he wept. She wrapped him in her arms and raised his chin with her hand. Then, cheek-to-cheek, their salty tears blended together.
Mary Nell grabbed a fistful of tissues and wiped her eyes. “I hope Danny can hear this and is looking down on his tiki bar.”
Risa pulled the tissues over closer to her and Haley. “Dammit, Daisy, you’ve got us all weeping.”
“Me, too.” Daisy knelt in front of her mother and laid her head on Risa’s lap. “I couldn’t think of a better song to christen the jukebox with than this one. I didn’t know Danny, but I feel like I do. Lily and I have never even seen a picture of him.”
“He was a kindhearted guy when we knew him. He was more outgoing at that time of his life than Wade, but he had a big heart just like Wade does.” Jessica finally got control of her emotions. “Thank you, Daisy, for giving us this beautiful gift today.”
“You are welcome,” Daisy said. “Now get ready to raise your hands to heaven and shout hallelujah! ‘My Church’ is the next one on the list.”
Oscar put away his bandanna and shouted louder than any of them when the lyrics asked them to give her a hallelujah. He got up, grabbed Mary Nell by the hand and did some fancy swing dancing around the bar room floor. “We needed this after hearing ‘Danny Boy’ and remembering the man who gave his life for our freedom,” he said over the top of the music.
“Well, it is our church.” Jessica dried up the last of her tears and then wiped Wade’s face. “Are you all right?”
He hugged her tightly. “I am now, and I will be from now on. How about you? Regrets?”
“Not a single one. I’m home, and I’m happy,” she answered. “And you’ll think this is an insane time to get a message from the universe about where to bury my folks, but I just did. I’m going to put them between the church and the barn and put up a small stone to mark the place. They wanted me to be happy, and I am, and I do want a place to go talk to my mama every now and then.”

If your book was optioned for a movie, what scene would be absolutely crucial to include?

Car doors slammed. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
“Risa must have brought the twins with her,” Wade said.
“You’ve met them?” Jessica asked.
Wade nodded as he headed for the RV. “Did some work for her mother last week. Saw them there. Cute kids, but not a thing alike even if they are twins.”
Jessica stood up and finger combed a few stray hairs back into her blonde ponytail. When the four women met in a group hug, she towered above the other three, but then she’d always been the tallest kid in her class. Risa had always been the pretty one with her dish-water blonde hair and big brown eyes. Haley had been the short, curvy one of the group when the four of them had been the senior cheerleaders from the high school class twenty years before—the smart one who always seemed to make the right decisions. Her eyes were the color of a chocolate Yoohoo drink, and her hair was so black that it looked blue when the sunrays hit it. Then there was Mary Nell, the smallest of the four cheerleaders from that year, who had always taken the place at the top of the pyramid. Jessica had always envied her friend’s thick, curly red hair and light blue eyes—but even more, her Dolly Parton boobs. Jessica had wondered at the time if Mary Nell wasn’t jumping into a relationship that would end up breaking her heart—and she’d been right.
None of them had changed much. Mary Nell might have put on a few pounds and Risa had lost a few, but Haley was about the same. Jessica still felt like a giant among them, even though Mary Nell was the only one who’d be considered short.
Another song about always being seventeen in your hometown came to Jessica’s mind as the four of them took a step back from one another. She had put twenty years into serving her country and was now thirty-eight years old, and yet for a few moments she felt like she was a teenager again.
But they’d graduated, gone their separate ways, and reality hit them all like a class five tornado. Risa’s daughters were proof that none of them were still seventeen, and that they could never go back to those days even though they were meeting in the same place—a gravel parking lot—to have a beer and catch up.
“Hey, y’all, this is Wade Granger, home from a stint in the military just like me. His brother Danny graduated with us,” Jessica said.
“Hey, Wade.” Risa waved.
“I was sorry to hear about Danny,” Haley said.
“Me, too,” Mary Nell said with.a sad frown.
“Thanks.” Wade popped open the lawn chair a few feet from Jessica and sat down.
“Would you girls please get out the lawn chairs from the back of the truck, and set them up for us?” Risa nodded toward the older model pickup that she had shown up in that evening.
“Yes, ma’am. Do we get a beer for doing that?” Lily, the taller twin with blonde hair and big brown eyes, asked.
“Sure thing,” Risa said, “when you are twenty-one and can buy them with your own money.”
“I figured you’d say that.” Daisy giggled. “We won’t talk about the times Daddy let us have one.”
If Jessica hadn’t seen pictures of them from the day they were born, and then watched them grow up through the benefit of the Internet, she would have never believed they were sisters, much less twins. Daisy, the shorter one, was the spitting image of her mother, with her light brown hair and curvy figure. The only thing the girls had in common were Risa’s milk chocolate-colored eyes.
“Or about the times he showed us how to roll a joint,” Lily said as she reached over the bed of the truck and picked up all five chairs at once.
“I don’t believe either one of you, because if your Granny Martha found out he was doing that, she would disown him,” Risa said. “And his mama’s word was the law.”
“Amen!” Lily handed off two of the chairs to her sister.
“Mama has talked a lot about all y’all. The picture of y’all when you were cheerleaders is still on her dresser these days,” Daisy said. “We’ve already met Haley and Mary Nell, so it’s good to see you in person rather than just on Facetime. I’m jealous of your height. God could have been better to me and shared what he gave Lily.”
Lily set up all the chairs in a semi-circle. “Stop whining, Daisy. God gave you big boobs. You don’t get to have both height and Dolly Parton boobs.”

Readers should read this book …

Because it empowers women and reinforces the fact that love will come like a butterfly if you just wait for it.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have planned?

I’m working on a women’s fiction set out in Shamrock, Texas right now. Upcoming releases include:
Just in Time for Christmas, Oct. 11, a reissue of Cowboy Boots for Christmas.
The Sandcastle Hurricane, Nov. 8, Women’s fiction
Home of the Heart, Dec. 6, reissue of Wild Cowboy Ways
A Chance Inheritance novella, Jan. 10, 2023 anthology
The Wedding Gift, June 27, 2023, anthology
The Devine Doughnut Shop, spring, 2023

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: I’ll give away a signed copy of Riverbend Reunion.

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Excerpt from Riverbend Reunion:

“Uncle Elijah, why did you build a church out here in this Godforsaken place, and why didn’t you get rid of the empty eyesore before you died?” Jessica asked as she stood in the middle of the sanctuary and looked around at the mess she’d inherited.
Dust was as thick as thick gray fog on the floor, the pews and the blades of the ceiling fans.
A huge bunch of hair hung on the back of two pews that on closer look revealed millions of daddy longlegs huddled together.
Jessica sneezed and sent dust and spiders going seven ways to Sunday.
The only light in the huge room came through dirty windows from a setting sun and gave the whole place an eerie look. Jessica could imagine spooky music playing in the background as she turned around to be sure ghosts weren’t floating toward her.
Paint had peeled from the walls, and the place smelled like an old attic full of sweaty clothing with a little mold thrown in.
This was her life in a nutshell—her future was as foggy as the dust that coated the pews and the pulpit. Just like the dim light coming through the windows, nothing seemed clear to her. Ideas had filtered through her mind like all those baby spiders wiggling together, and yet nothing—not one blessed thing—seemed to take hold.
She looked up and noticed a wallpaper border around the room depicting angels with white wings and halos, but even that was hanging in long strips.
“Where’s my guardian angel when I need one?” she groaned. “What in the hell”—she glanced up at the ceiling fan with cobwebs hanging on every blade—“am I supposed to do with a decrepit old church building?”
Dust boiled up all the way up to the knees of her camouflage pants as she headed down the aisle, leaving footprints behind her.
“Do those impressions in the dust mean something? If so, I’d sure like someone to explain it to me.” She muttered when she reached the foyer and glanced over her shoulder.
She locked the door, brushed the dust from her pants, and made sure she didn’t have any spiders hanging on her anywhere. Gravel crunched under her feet as she walked from the porch to the motor home that had been her home for the past two weeks. She slung the door open, grabbed a washcloth, wet it with cold water from the sink and cleaned her face. Then she took a beer from the tiny refrigerator, twisted the top off and took a long drink.
Sweat still ran down her neck and into her bra, but the cold beer helped some. “My church,” she mumbled, and then a smile covered her angular face.
Thank goodness no one was near enough to hear Jessica Callaway belt out Marin Moore’s song, “My Church.” Jessica had shot the eyes out of a horned viper during her tours in the Middle East, but she couldn’t carry a tune in a galvanized milk bucket.
She carried her beer outside where a soft breeze ruffled the leaves of the pecan trees surrounding the parking lot of the old church. The song seemed appropriate as she stared at the white church in front of her and wondered again what she was going to do with it. That decision had to be made before she could move on to the next step—whatever that was—in her life.
“Why didn’t you just donate it and the land it’s sitting on to the city of Riverbend, Uncle Elijah?” Jessica wondered out loud. She had been talking to herself a lot since she finished her last enlistment in the Army a couple of weeks ago, but then she hadn’t had anyone to visit with on her travels from Maine to Texas.
When Jessica graduated from high school two decades before, the parking lot would have been filled with cars and trucks. Loud music would have filled the air, and some of the teenagers would have been dancing. Others would have been popping the tabs off cans of beer that they were too young to be drinking, and still others would have been making out in the back seats of vehicles. But that was usually on Friday and Saturday nights, and this was just Thursday.
Now the place looked as abandoned as the church itself. Most of the letters on the sign that once read Community Church had faded and chipped away. All but the Only the last one m and the y were still legible. The word Church below that was still intact. It seemed like an omen that she’d been singing a song with that title and now the sign declared it to be true.
“Yep, it’s definitely my church,” Jessica muttered with a sigh, “but what the hell do I do with it?”
According to her friend Mary Nell, there were already half a dozen struggling churches in Riverbend, so who would want to buy another one? Especially one three miles out of the small town. Jessica took a deep breath and inhaled the musky scent of the Lampasas River that was only a quarter of a mile down a path grown up with weeds.
Yes, she was home—at least until she figured out what do to with that ugly building full of dust and spiders. She went back inside the RV, reached into the refrigerator and bought out a six pack of long necks with one hand, and a lawn chair from beside the door with the other one and carried them outside. She set the beer on the ground, popped open the lawn chair, and then stretched to work the kinks out of her tall frame. Every bone in her nearly six-foot body whined from sitting in the driver’s seat for eighteen hours that day. She twisted the top off her second bottle of Coors, took a long drink and then eased down in the lawn chair.
“Nothing like a couple of cold beers and a Texas sunset.” She raised her bottle in a toast to the orange, yellow and purple streaks that filled the sky to the west.
Then she took another long look at the old community church her Uncle Elijah had built back in the day when he got sober for the seventh time—or was it the eighth or ninth?—and got religion.
The windows in the white frame building were dirty, but it was a miracle they were all intact. Scaling paint testified that no one had kept up the building since the day Elijah gave up trying to build a congregation and headed to the nearest liquor store down in Burnet, Texas. Seven posts held up the roof to a wide front porch. Jessica wondered if that number was significant.
She heard a noise to her left and glanced that way to see a squirrel fussing at her. The critter’s tail twitched as he barked out a warning.
“This is my church, and it looks like you’re sitting on my steeple, even if it is laying on the ground,” she argued with the animal.
She and her cheerleader friends—Risa, Haley and Mary Nell—had thought they were being so rebellious when they were in high school. Now, she wondered if drinking beer, dancing and making out with guys in a church parking lot had brought all of them bad luck. Risa was headed for a divorce. Mary Nell had given almost twenty years of her life to a boyfriend who recently kicked her out. Haley had lost her mother recently. And Jessica had inherited a church from her last living relative. There was also a lot of money involved in Uncle Elijah’s estate, but she had to deal with this church sitting there like a white elephant with a bad case of peeling skin before she could think about what to do with the rest of her life.
Risa had said that her mother Stella had had some roof damage to her house when a tornado or straight-line winds had hit Riverbend the year before. Evidently, that same storm had whipped the steeple from the roof and tossed it out onto the ground beside the building. She glanced over at the squirrel, and the sassy critter started barking at her again.
“You want to buy this?” she asked. “I’ll sell it to you for a reasonable price, and finance it for you, but I want payment in dollars, not pecans.”
The squirrel flicked its tail a couple more times and then ran away.
“See there, Uncle Elijah, I can’t even sell the place to a squirrel,” she groaned.
Since the pandemic, folks had gotten spoiled to watching Sunday morning services online more than going to an actual church. Jessica was surprised that the existing churches didn’t have FOR SALE signs out on the lawns. With a population of less than nine hundred people and six different denominations trying to stay afloat, a person or persons would be crazy to try to start up a new place to worship in Riverbend. Add that to the fact that it was so far out of town—the only reason the squirrels stuck around was for the pecans they could eat on the trees around the old church. Then it was down a dirt road—that got a car dirty every Sunday morning, and the nearest car wash was at least thirty minutes away down near Burnet. No one wanted to drive that far every week to remove all the dust from their vehicles, and everyone knew it was a sin to drive a messy car. Just a minor sin in the scheme of things—according to her mother before she was killed in the plane crash. Nowadays, according to what she heard from Risa, Stella carried that list of sins high in the air so everyone could read it.
Maybe she should just donate it to the town and keep driving until she found a place that felt like home. Her folks had moved to Washington State right after she graduated from high school and joined the Army, so other than the church, there was nothing for her in Riverbend except her besties—Mary Nell, Haley and Risa, who were all waiting for her call that evening—and who knew how long they’d stick around when the summer ended?
Haley might go back to her old job in Alabama. Risa could easily give her husband in Kentucky another chance. And Mary Nell could get homesick for Tennessee even if she didn’t go back to her boyfriend at the end of summer. Jessica just needed to find a place to put down roots as soon as the monstrosity in front of her was taken care of, and she didn’t have a clue where they would be.
Memories of a church, a lot like the one she was staring at, flashed through her mind. It had been a white building, but the stained-glass windows were shiny clean, and the paint wasn’t peeling. She’d had her folks’ memorial services there on Orcas Island when they’d been killed in a small plane crash. She’d read the report dozens of times, but all the technical legalese didn’t make much sense to her. Something with the fuel tank had gone wrong, and the plane had crashed, killing the pilot, her folks and two other passengers as they traveled from Orcas Island, where they lived, to the mainland.
The crematorium had asked her about an urn, but she couldn’t decide on one, so they’d given her the ashes in simple cardboard boxes. Afraid that the boxes would get wet and disintegrate, she had mingled both her parents’ ashes together in a red plastic coffee can, taped the lid shut and had carried them with her for the past five years.
Even after all this time had passed, her chest still tightened at the memory of how she’d felt when she got the news that they were gone, and tears hung on her eyelashes. The feeling of being so alone—except for an alcoholic uncle—that had hit her as she realized the finality of a memorial service five years before, wrapped itself around her again as she stared at the white clapboard church that was now hers. The building seemed to be trying to tell her something, but she couldn’t grab hold of whatever it was.
Her plan was that someday she would retire from the military and live on Orcas Island close to her folks. She would be there for them as they got older and needed her help. Then, like a puff of smoke, they and a place to put down roots were gone. The money they’d left for her brought little comfort, and she’d never touched a dime of it. Then her Uncle Elijah passed away and left her his estate that included more money and that church that she had to deal with.
Her father had told her that money was just dirty paper with dead presidents’ pictures on it, and that pennies didn’t buy happiness. A song that she’d heard that day got stuck in her mind as she continued to stare at the building in front of her. The lyrics said that money couldn’t buy happiness, but it could buy the singer a boat. She smiled as she hummed the snappy little tune to the song. Was the church trying to tell her that it could bring her happiness?
The damn thing didn’t make me happy. Elijah’s voice popped into her head. I don’t care what you do with it, but be happy no matter what you choose to do.
With a sigh, she fished her phone from the hip pocket of her jeans and sent a message to her three friends: I’m here. Beer is cold, but in this heat, it won’t be very long.

Excerpts. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

Back home is the best place to start over in a heart-stirring Texas romance about friendship, second chances, and small-town scandals by New York Times bestselling author Carolyn Brown.

Riverbend, Texas, doesn’t look like the crossroads of anywhere. But for four high school besties reuniting after twenty years, it’s a place to unpack a lot of baggage.

Risa’s headed for divorce, Mary Nell’s been kicked to the curb by her leech of a boyfriend, and Haley was just blindsided by a shocking family secret. But restless army veteran Jessica Callaway, looking to plant roots, has an idea: corral her fellow former cheerleaders and renovate an abandoned church smack-dab in the middle of three dry counties into a bar. Throw in a grill and Wade Granger—a onetime nerd turned surprisingly crush-worthy investor—and their lives are on tap for a turnaround. Amen to that.

Except for one hitch: the white-clapboard dream is causing a ruckus. With a renewed bond, hard work, and the promise of romance, Jessica and her friends aren’t backing down. For Riverbend, this is going to be a homecoming—and a scandal—to remember.
Book Links: Amazon | B&N | iTunes | Goodreads |
 
 

Meet the Author:

Carolyn Brown is a New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Publisher’s Weekly and #1 Amazon and #1 Washington Post bestselling author. She is the author of more than 100 novels and several novellas. She’s a recipient of the Bookseller’s Best Award, Montlake Romance’s prestigious Montlake Diamond Award, and also a three-time recipient of the National Reader’s Choice Award. Brown has been published for more than 20 years, and her books have been translated 21 foreign languages.
When she’s not writing, she likes to plot new stories in her backyard with her tom cat, Boots Randolph Terminator Outlaw, who protects the yard from all kinds of wicked varmints like crickets, locusts, and spiders. Visit her at www.carolynbrownbooks.com.
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