1999 Surrey Writers Conference!
1st place winner in the fiction category!
As Brown As I Want
The Indianhead Diaries
by Janelle Meraz Hooper
(Back cover)
The summer of 1952, Lawton, Oklahoma Eight-year-old Glory has a father who's taken out a $50,000 accidental death insurance policy on her--now he's spending the summer trying to collect!
In his first attempt, he throws Glory to the snakes, but a giant alligator snapping turtle scares the snakes away (turtles really exist!).
Glory writes in her diary: Well, Powwow Pete drove us home to talk to Mom, but we didn't get very far. Mom thinks I just have a wild imagination. At least Powwow Pete believes me. I think it was the turtle that killed it for Mom.
"How could there be a turtle that big?" she scoffed. They talked some more and Powwow Pete got kind of mad and got up to leave.
This was one of those times when a kid thinks they're talking about a turtle, but the grown-ups are really talking about something else entirely. In this case, I think Powwow Pete was accusing Mom of still loving my dad, but he never said that, he just kept talking about the turtle. Mom was doing the same thing: talking about the turtle but meaning that she didn't want to get messed up with some guy who was a pathologgy liar (Glory can't spell).
As Brown As I Want is the second book in the Turtle Trilogy.
Comparisons:
Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man by Fannie Flagg, published in 1992, eleven-year-old Daisy Fay Harper tells all about growing up in Florida. As Brown As I Want is just as funny but with a murderous twist and a Southwest setting.
Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons, published in 1990, a little girl in the South describes her father as "A mess of a man." As Brown As I Want is just as poignant and much funnier!
World of Pie by Karen Stolz, published in 2001, a twelve-year-old girl has a complicated life in a small Texas town when her mother announces she is pregnant and her father sponsors a pie-eating contest. World of Pie covers a span of time beyond Roxie's childhood. As Brown As I Want begins and ends during the summer before Glory's third grade.
As Brown As I Want
The Indianhead Diaries
by Janelle Meraz Hooper
166 pages, 6x9, Price: $13.95
Book sellers discount: 25%
ISBN # : 0-595-29408-1
Also available in Adobe e-Book
Published by iUniverse
Distributed by Ingram Books
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Janelle Meraz Hooper is a writer with a Hispanic (Latino) background. Originally from Oklahoma, she now lives south of Seattle. A Three-Turtle Summer, the first of the trilogy, is available on the iUniverse bookstore, Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, and Borders Stores across the nation. A novel and short story writer, she has four short stories and a poem in the new Muddy Puddle Press anthology titled:
Dream Makers
Stories That Won't Put You To Sleep.