Billie Waits and Margaret Baxter are sisters who grew up on their father’s diary farm in Solace, Georgia. But as they became adults, their lives each took decidedly different turns. Margaret married well, moved to nearby Marietta and lived the upper middle class life she dreamed of. Billie stayed home, got married, had a child and never left Solace.
But one summer, the two women’s lives would once again converge, and the bonds of sisterhood would slowly begin to intertwine them back together again. It wouldn’t be easy, and it was surely bound to be painful, but when it’s family, love always softens the way back home.
In Patricia Sprinkle’s new novel, “Hold Up The Sky,” she tells the story of redemption and reconnection in a warm, heartfelt tale that will leave the reader smiling through their tears when they are not weeping with laughter.
When Margaret Baxter’s husband leaves her and her two sons, she packs up the car and heads home to Solace, the last place on earth she wants to be but the only place on earth where she needs to be. Moving in with her widowed father, Maggie would soon relearn the country ways of her childhood but not without a few hard lessons in the process.
Although she never left, Margaret’s sister Billie had more than a few trials of her own. Her husband left her right after the birth of their disabled daughter, and has come up missing lately. As Billie struggles to get by, Luke, a childhood friend returns to lend a helping hand and Billie soon learns to open her heart to new possibilities.
As the sisters learn to readjust to living near one another again, their much-loved elderly housekeeper Mamie does her best to teach them life skills that would see them through the rest of their days. The ladies would be joined by Emerita, a Mexican immigrant stranded near the farm, and the foursome began relationships forged by the heat of a summer kitchen and solidified in places of the heart that only women can know so well.
“Hold Up The Sky” is a novel filled with humor, inspiration, love and romance. Patricia Sprinkle reaches her readers through her timeless storytelling skills, securing her place as a favorite and beloved author among women fiction writers today.
"If you don't understand how a woman could both love her sister dearly and want to wring her neck at the same time, then you were probably an only child."
~Linda Sunshine
