Janice Daugharty – författare

Meet the Scurvy family, an impoverished clan who are the scourge of their small white-trash community. Mother has died in childbirth, leaving behind her newborn and four uneducated children. Father, a toothless and slothful man, cannot muster the money for her funeral. Their 15-year-old daughter, the only girl among three brothers, realizes that the newborn infant is now hers to raise; something that will finally put meaning into her life. And the brothers find themselves enlisted by the town's corrupt bigwig to run moonshine -- a risky venture, but the only way they'll be able to earn the money to bury their mother.

Written in a powerful voice unique to Daugharty, Earl in the Yellow Shirt is narrated in alternating chapters by each of the main characters, their voices corning to the story with different nuances of hope and despair. It is a compelling work that solidifies Daugharty's versatile storytelling talents.

It is 1956, and thirteeen-year-old Sister must raise her three siblings on her own, as her mother, Marnie, has a new boyfriend who isn''t interested in kids.  Taking charge of her life, Sister befriends  a kindly neighbor named Willa, who appears to be everything a mother should be.  But when a respected and powerful man in town notices that Sister is blossoming -- unsupervised -- into quite a young woman, trouble starts to brew.  Willa soon steps in to intervene, and Sister thinks she may have found salvation. But within the pages of Like a Sister, things are never what they seem.

Depicting a vulnerable, heartbreaking, and richly Southern world, Like a Sister allows readers to gaze through the eyes of a young whom they will not soon forget.