New items are available at the Hancock County Public Library.
The following item is available at the Hancock County Public Library, 900 W. McKenzie Road. For more information on the library’s collection or to reserve a title, visit hcplibrary.org.
Adult Fiction
“Promise,” by Minrose Gwin
On Palm Sunday, 1936, a massive funnel cloud careened into the thriving cotton-mill town of Tupelo, Mississippi, killing more than 200 people — one-third of Tupelo’s population. When the tornado hit, Dovey, a local laundress, was flung by the winds into a nearby lake. Bruised and nearly drowned, she made her way across Tupelo to find her small family: her hardworking husband, her 16-year-old granddaughter, Dreama, and Promise, Dreama’s three-month-old son. Slowly navigating the broken streets of Tupelo, Dovey stopped at the house of the despised McNabb family. Inside, she discovered the tornado has spared no one, including Jo, the McNabbs’ dutiful teenage daughter, who suffered a terrible head wound. When Jo later discovered a baby in the wreckage, she is certain that she’s found her baby brother, Tommy, and vowed to protect him. During the days of the chaos that followed, Jo and Dovey struggled to maneuver through a landscape of disaster and to battle the history that links and haunts them. Drawing on historical events, Minrose Gwin imagines natural and human destruction in the deep South of the 1930s through the experiences of two women whose lives are connected by forces beyond their control.
