Dale Marie Taylor – författare

Part one of the Apple Hill Series, A Home for Easter is the story of a Cherokee family forced to go in different directions in an effort to survive the 1830s removal period for First Nations people. The major character, Easter, journeys through parts of Georgia and  middle Tennessee to find a new home for herself and her unborn child. However, along the way, she is hunted by a criminal who wants her ancestral lands. She and her companions -- her eight-year-old sister, Awinta and her love, Arter, brave a snow storm and the criminal who kidnaps her. Other family members must take different paths to survival. An important character in Easter's story is her half-sister, Awinta, who represents many First Nation African Americans who were either enslaved by the Cherokee or lived with them and other clans. The story offers an explanation for how groups of people survived and merged during stressful, genocide-like political, social and economic events. The story suggests the matrilineal nature of the Cherokee family during that time.

Hester's Journey features Cherokee Hester Beasley travelling through dangerous Confederate territory and Pennsylvania Amish communities from the multiracial community of Apple Hill, Tennessee during the United States' Civil War era. Her Uncle Wahali invites her to join him at Gettysburg to help with tending the war wounded. Little do they know that the Battle of Gettysburg will become one of the fiercest and bloodiest battles of the U.S. Civil War. Hester's love, Austin, an African American man who fights to help African Americans victimized by the Confederates, joins her as she encounters other brave women. The story also features characters from the last book in the Apple Hill Series, A Home for Easter. Awinta, Easter's African Cherokee half-sister, represents many other women who fought disguised as men during the Civil War. Easter herself finds that Arter is alive but does not remember her. All three women show their metal during one of the most challenging periods in the history of North America.

Minnie Buford, an African American woman, finds herself pulled between the need for respectability and her love for James, who is white. They live in the Apple Hill area of Tennessee near Pulaski during a time when the Ku Klux Klan is instilling terror in the populace. Minnie's relationship with Henry, a man of African descent, proves to be as complicated as her affair with James. The story provides a courageous example of life during the Jim Crow era of the United States or America.

Inspired by the true lives of Edward and Carrie Crawford Smith, The Music They Made is a richly woven historical novel of love, loss, and perseverance during one of the most turbulent periods in American history.Edward leaves Nashville in 1898 to serve during the Spanish-American War and disappears into a dangerous world of shifting loyalties, forgotten memories, and far-off conflicts. As Carrie waits, the life they planned slips further from reach — until fate offers them a second chance.Drawn into the Great Migration, Edward and Carrie journey north to Chicago, where African American families seek safety from Southern violence and Jim Crow oppression. In a growing Black community alive with culture, music, and hope, they build a family, face personal tragedy, and confront the harsh realities of racial injustice, labor struggles, and economic hardship.Through war, migration, and social change, Carrie becomes a tireless advocate for fair employment and education, while Edward's violin and Carrie's piano remain the quiet heartbeat of their home.The Music They Made is a moving portrait of two imperfect people who, despite separation and sorrow, never fully let go of the bond that first brought them together — and whose legacy is written not only in history, but in the lives they shaped.