Susan Szurek – författare

Viola Mitchell helped operate her family''s store, Mitchells Emporium and Dry Goods. While ordering new stock for the store''s shelves, she met traveling salesman, John Jasper. Viola was intrigued by John''s charm and charisma. Later, she discovered his cruelty and callousness.

Viola lived in Everstille, Indiana, a small, flourishing town where she struggled with decisions and actions which, she hoped, were socially acceptable. And moral.

Everstille, A Novel, is set in the early part of the twentieth century and recounts the lives of Viola, her family and friends, and her twin sons, Michael and Mitchell.  The novel divulges the joys, sorrows, and unexpected revelations of its characters.

Anne watched as the three went into the Emporium to shop. 

Terrence held the door and smiled at Ruth who smiled back.

He reached out to squeeze Tobias'' shoulder as they smiled at each other.

Anne thought it was a splendid thing that the three of them were finally getting along. 

Three pork chops instead of two. 

Three seats at the Bijou Theater for the Saturday night film. 

Three people seated close together in a church pew.

The three of them appeared happy. 

The three of them seemed an established alliance. 

The three of them...and then Anne began to wonder about the three of them.

Ruth and Tobias and Terrence were upright, hard-working citizens of the town, Everstille.

And they have secrets. 

Luckily, Anne is there to help keep them.

But even she does not know all of them.

The novel Everstille''s Librarian continues the stories of people from the town of Everstille.

Meet Olivia.

Olivia lived in a large Victorian house and was raised by her father, Tobias Pinkerton, her Uncle Terry, and her Aunt Anne...an unusual situation for a small town in the 1950''s. But the town of Everstille, Indiana appeared to accept the unusual situation. At least on the surface.

Olivia loved her childhood which was filled with friends, and activities, and adventures. The first ten years of her life were magical and joyous. And then one day everything she thought she knew changed. 

As Tomas watched his third child come into the world accompanied by screams and blood and puke, he wondered whether he should drown it in the same manner his father used to drown the kittens on the farm. 

For generations, the Allerton family men worked as carpenters and furniture makers. They made bookcases and tables and bed frames; they whittled and carved keepsake boxes and whirligigs and canes; they repaired door frames and replaced rotted crates. And they made caskets and helped in the burial of the inhabitants when it was required. The family had settled in Levett, Illinois, a farming community with a middling town containing a post office, a general store and a hardware store, a church, a schoolhouse. This was the spot Tomas grew up, where he learned his trade, where he lived an austere and harsh existence.

This was the life Tomas Allerton left to travel to unknown places, new circumstances, strange locales. 

She barely knew her brother who wandered in and out of her life, but when Janet received the old leather duffle bag containing what she believed were his only effects, she hesitated to search through it. She put it to the side thinking:

I knew I would need some time when I was able to be solitary, to open the box, to look through the duffle bag which I knew was inside, to view what remained of my brother''s life, and while secluded in my room, to confront my brother''s things.

When she did sort through the bag, she discovered:

A rogue''s gallery of curious items which were somehow important enough that he wrapped them and kept them... His secret cache. Perhaps the answer to who he was...

She examined her brother''s things.

She was unsure what to do with them.

Or what they signified.