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Springtime brings thoughts of love to people all over the world, and Creekites are no exception.  Although love to Creekites isn't necessarily romantic. Take, for example, how they feel about their pets.  Dogs, cats, birds, and fish take center stage as we once again see how the Southern half lives.  Your favorites are back and in just as much trouble as ever.  Amos and Ida are still circling each other's wagons.  Sandy Crane has a little Faith.  Jayne Reynolds emerges from widowhood to take a long lingering look at Mossy Creek's Bubba Rice.  Ed Bailey and his beloved dog Possum, Lil Ida Hamilton, Peggy Caldwell and others will make you laugh and cry at human and animal antics.  Cat heists.  Fish ponds.  Bird nappings.  Don't miss the fun with Critters of Mossy Creek!

Also featuring these authors:
Susan Goggins
Maureen Hardegree
Michele Hauf
Pam Mantovani
Carolyn McSparren
Kathleen Watson-Hodges
with recipes by:  Wayne Dixon & Hank Smith

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Reviews

"Mossy Creek is one of those hidden Southern towns where you wished you lived.  The townsfolk are quirky but lovable.  They don't need government bail-out because they take care of their own.  They aren't all nice, but they're all human.  If you thought you had heard it all in the first six books of the Mossy Creek series, you're in for a surprise because the Creekites' pets are even quirkier!  There are stolen cats, wandering parrots, mice running amok, and a dog named Possum who will break your heart.  I was so impressed by the collaborative voices of these marvelous Southern writers who have created the Mossy Creek universe that I went right out and ordered the other six books in the series!" -- Pam Headrick, A Thirsty Mind Bookseller

"A delightful collection of short stories about small-town living where everyone feels safe and secure." -- Fresh Fiction

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Excerpt

The Rabbit Stops Running

We never forget the moments that wise us up about life’s disappointments. The men who done us wrong. The great job that went to someone less deserving. The strapless prom dress that proved why prom dresses need straps.

Or, to use a more specific example, the bitter disappointment when Mother and Dad cut short my seventeenth birthday summer backpacking trip through Europe because my sister Ardaleen heard through informants that I’d gone wild in Paris and gotten a tiny peace symbol tattooed above my navel.

I should have known she’d rat me out. This was back in the Jurassic era of hippies and flower power, when only sailors and Hell’s Angels had tattoos. Mother sobbed. Dad said I was scarred for life. My friends from Mossy Creek High started a prayer chain for me.

Elderly Grandma Ida, my namesake and mentor, hooted and applauded. Cousin Ingrid thought it was “groovy.”

But Gran Ida and Ingrid were in the minority. At the Mossy Creek town pool I was asked by the Mossy Creek Parks and Rec supervisor, Boneeta Truman (mother of Dwight Truman, which explains a lot), to “cover that Communist symbol.” I stuck a giant Band-aid over the tattoo and my navel. I refused to give up my flower-print bikini with the little red bows on the hips. So I looked like a red-headed Barbie with a missing belly button.

A few years later, after coming home from college, I rescued Jeb Walker when his small plane crashed in our fields, and I fell in love with him instantly. In our first intimate encounter, he stripped off the Band-aid and kissed my tattoo. That’s one reason I loved him, and still do.

Rest in peace, my tattoo-kissing man.  

Back to the story. The tattoo bust was hardly the first time Ardaleen betrayed me.

In my clan, the Hamiltons, the sad truth we never forget the most is that even family can stick a knife in your back. Romeo and Juliet. Hatfields and McCoys. Godzilla versus Megatron. Appalachian Southerners feud with their kinfolk because that’s what we’ve always done, going back to the tribal Scots and Irish who battled each other for control of the mountains, the English, the French and the Cherokee Indians, before all of the above intermarried and began sharing bourbon recipes. Drinking together makes us forget our differences just long enough to load the shotgun for the next round.

Which brings me again to my sister, Ardaleen Hamilton Bigelow, and a moment in my life I will always rank among the Top Five Truths I’ll Never Forget.

Ardaleen, who was sixteen when I was five, wanted to kill me.

“Pokey likes to be petted,” Ardaleen insisted, grinning her fiendish, Maybelline-over-freckles grin as she pointed through the slatted boards of the stall at Hamilton Farm. Inside, blowing hot air softly through his huge nostrils, stood Pokey, the farm’s giant champion Guernsey bull. He was not called Pokey because he was slow or because his main job in life was to inseminate cows, but because he had a pair of ten-inch horns, which he often swung like calcified joisting sticks.

Ardaleen aimed her mood-ringed finger underneath Pokey’s thick, golden belly. “Pet him right there. On his . . . fire hose. Go in and give it a good hard slap, Ida. He really likes that.”

I looked up at her earnestly. I was still trusting of my big sister—I hadn’t yet realized that Ardaleen was a sociopath. “But Grandma Ida says that’s his wee wee. And she says it’s not polite to pat boys on their . . .”

“Bulls like being petted on their . . . I call it their tummy,” Ardaleen oozed. “You’re not a scaredy cat, are you? Little Miss Ida, the scaredy puss. Grandma Ida will be embarrassed. You’re a disgrace to her name if you don’t go in this stall and pet Pokey on his tummy. Baby. Chicken. Cluck cluck cluck. Why, oh why do I bother trying to teach you anything? Some days I am so ashamed to call you my baby sister.”

My eyes welled with tears. Being unwanted by my big sister seemed like the end of the world to me. “Don’t be ashamed! I’ll do it! I’m not scared.”

She smiled like a shark. “Good.”

The universe of children is defined by their innocent devotion to cold-hearted idols. At that age we want to believe in angels, but we learn quickly that life is filled with nasty little devils, many of which share our family name.

To make a long, turning-point story very short, I crept into Pokey’s stall, gave him a hearty smack on his euphemistic ‘tummy,’ and he horned me in the ass like a Spanish bull tossing a pint-sized matador. I hit the plank wall hard enough to stick splinters in my forehead.

For two weeks I limped around the farm with a welt on my head and a deep purple bruise on my right buttock. I was smart enough to tell Grandma Ida, Mama and Daddy that I fell on a tree stob.

Ardaleen threatened to smother me in my sleep if I confessed the truth to anyone. She even added insult to injury. “Baby Sister,” she drawled, “I was a honeymoon baby. Mama and Daddy wanted me. But you were just an accident of nature after Mama and Daddy got reckless in their old age. You aren’t supposed to be here.”

Ahah. Ardaleen hated me for taking away her Only Child status, for being doted on by Grandma Ida, for being pampered as the Miracle Menopause Baby of the Hamilton princess line.

No surprise, then, that Ardaleen felt disappointed by her reduced status in the Hamilton family. She grew up determined to reject and punish everything in our heritage, which included Mossy Creek. She moved to the fancy south-end of our mountain county, married a pompous, hated Bigelow and bore my nephew, Ham Bigelow, who at forty years of age is only ten years younger than me but is the governor of the great state of Georgia, God help the State.

Ham has long been a sharp thorn in my paw, along with Ardaleen. I don’t trust him, I don’t trust her and I admit that poison ivy grows on the dark side of my family tree.

Some truths are more painful than others.

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