Shadow Mountain

by Tess Collins PH.D.

Overview

At the peak of Shadow Mountain lives a woman who holds to the old ways of magic and conjuring. Delta Wade protects ancient mysteries for her son, Lafette, hoping he will grow up to wield those powers for the good of humankind. But the epoch of witch lore is giving way to an age of industrial titans greedy to control the mountains' resources for material gain. As one man seeks to destroy Delta, another offers his love as salvation. Mother and son struggle with an enigmatic past only to find that true magic shows its power in its own way and in its own time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781937356460
Publisher:	Bearcat Press
Publication date:	01/04/2017
Series:	Book One: Shadow Mountain Saga , #1
Pages:	436
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.13(d)

About the Author

A coal miner's granddaughter, Tess Collins was born and raised in a crater. Yes, really, a crater formed by the impact of an asteroid millions of years ago where her hometown, Middlesboro, Kentucky, was eventually built. Tess spent her younger years in a one room Carnegie Library reading around the room. She started at BLUEBERRIES FOR SAL and ended with WAR AND PEACE, at which time she thought, "I want to do this."

Tess is the author of six novels and a non-fiction book on theater management. She attended the University of Kentucky and has a Ph.D. from The Union Institute and University.

Visit her website at TessCollins.com

Editorial Reviews

09/04/2017
Collins’s latest (after The Hunter of Hertha) is a mystical story set in 1894 at the junction of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia, where those who don’t believe in magic either live to regret their cynicism or don’t live long at all. Lafette is the son of Arn Marlon, the Watcher who protects the sacred Shadow Mountain, but Arn has been away for five years. Lafette’s mother, Delta Wade, remains strong in her love for Arn until Henry Kingsley, son of Arn’s old foe King Kingsley, develops an attraction to her. Delta reciprocates Henry’s feelings, but her devotion to Lafette and his destiny as the new Watcher compels her more than her own needs. She’s threatened by King, who wishes to buy (or steal) the extraordinary trees on Shadow Mountain. Kate, the witch who helped raise Arn and who taught Delta some magic, is a more insidious threat due to her history with the family. As years pass, Delta and Lafette work together to protect and rejuvenate the mountain. Throughout the engrossing story, the author touches on issues such as greed, the power of wealth, and racism. Through a combination of narrative tension, vivid characters, and era-appropriate dialogue—along with some good old-fashioned storytelling—Collins starts her new series off strong. (BookLife)

Publishers Weekly

Shadow Mountain is a story of strange beauty and violent upheaval, of glimpsed mysteries and down-to-earth love and hate. A story of coming of age, of love for the land, and of the threads that link us to our ancestors and to the unknown future. Savage, tender, remorseless, bright and dark, Shadow Mountain is a story that will dip into your dreams and leave some part of itself behind. - Beth Tashery Shannon, author of Tanglevine

From the Publisher

2017-02-13
An Appalachian woman and her son struggle to protect their mountain home in Collins' (The Hunter of Hertha, 2015, etc.) historical-fantasy series starter. In 1894, Delta Wade lives on Shadow Mountain with her young son, Lafette. Arn Marlon, Delta's missing common-law husband, is a Watcher: a person who can wield the mountain's magic and protect its people from harm. Delta hopes that Arn, long rumored dead, will return to raise his son as the next Watcher and protect their home from the Kingsleys, a rich family that's bringing in industrialization and all the changes that come with it. The Kingsley family patriarch, King Kingsley, once tried to kill Arn and now harasses Delta in order to get harvesting rights to the magical Tyme trees covering Shadow Mountain. Kingsley's son, the kind and handsome Henry, is desperately in love with Delta and tries to protect her from his father, while Kate Huston, Delta's former mentor, seeks to take ownership of the mountain, claiming that only her stronger magic can keep it safe. Dueling economic and magical powers lead to a cataclysmic event that destroys multiple characters' lives. Years later, an isolated Delta and a grown Lafette get a slim opportunity to revive what's been lost. The fictional world of Shadow Mountain is complex and layered, with multiple characters all pursuing different, if sometimes-overlapping, goals. The result is a riotous, complex tale that still feels somber and elegiac as old ways conflict with new changes. Fittingly enough for a battle over a place, Collins' descriptions of the setting are particularly vivid; a stand of poplar trees, for example, are "so tall they seemed like strings dropping from the sky." The book's first part brims with narrative tension as the conflicting interests come to a head, but the second part feels slacker, with less clearly defined conflicts, greater reliance on magical events and mystical sightings, and an ending that borders on a deus ex machina. But Collins' well-defined, likable characters and colorful atmosphere are enjoyable throughout even when the plotting gets less coherent. A vivid first installment of a saga that will make readers look forward to the next.

Kirkus Reviews