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    Sugar Land
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    Sugar Land
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    Sugar Land
    Ebook384 pages6 hours

    Sugar Land

    By Tammy Lynne Stoner

    3.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Sugar Land is a southern fried novel about love, Lead Belly, and liberation. According to a starred Kirkus Review, Sugar Land "is a postcard of small-town Texas life from Prohibition through civil rights, tracing the treatment and awareness of gay people through these decades. The love child of Fannie Flagg and Rita Mae Brown… [a] ravishing debut.”

    It’s 1923 in Midland, Texas, and Miss Dara falls in love with her best friend―who also happens to be a girl. Terrified, Miss Dara takes a job at the Imperial State Prison Farm for men. Once there, she befriends inmate and soon-to-be legendary blues singer Lead Belly, who sings his way out (true story)―but only after he makes her promise to free herself from her own prison. Sugar Land is a triumphant, beautiful novel about the heart’s refusal to be denied what the heart wants.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRed Hen Press
    Release dateOct 23, 2018
    ISBN9781597096263
    Author

    Tammy Lynne Stoner

    Tammy Lynne Stoner’s work has been selected for more than a dozen anthologies and literary journals. She was nominated for a Million Writers Award and earned her MFA from Antioch University. Stemming from what her grandmother calls her “gypsy blood,” Tammy has lived in 15 cities, working as a biscuit maker, a medical experimentee, a forklift operator, a gas station attendant, and a college instructor, among other odd jobs. She is the creator of Dottie’s Magic Pockets and the publisher of Gertrude Press, based in in Portland, OR, where she lives with her lady-friend, Karena, and their three kids.

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    Reviews for Sugar Land

    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      In a small town in Texas in the summer of 1923, Miss Dara falls in love with a girl. Terrified of what that means and what her family and community would think, she flees to the safety of the kitchen of the farm prison at Sugarland, which isn't a safe place for a young woman, but she makes a place for herself nonetheless. Sugar Land follows the life of Miss Dara from a young woman falling in love, to a cook in a difficult environment who makes a few friends; an inmate with immense musical talent, another cook whose quiet decency protects her, and the prison warden, to a wife and step-mother and through to the end of her life. Despite the bleakness of Miss Dara's surroundings and her situation of always have to conceal who she really is, Tammy Lynne Stoner keeps the tone of the novel upbeat. Miss Dara is simply too pragmatic and too optimistic to allow herself to do anything other than to persevere and to take joy out of what she can, from a stray cat to the trailer she'll eventually call home.This is a novel about family, and about loving the family and friends that you are given. It's about learning to accept oneself and to accept others as they are and not as you'd wish them to be. Sugar Land is published by the very small Red Hen Press and it reminded me of how small presses are constantly publishing interesting and unusual novels, and how finding and reading books put out by small presses is always rewarding.
    • 4/5
      Stoner, Tammy Lynne. Sugar Land. 9 CDs. unabridged. Brilliance Audio. 2018. ISBN 9781978649071. $24.99. A southern coming of age story about learning to come to terms with life and what makes your heart ring true. Set in the twenties, a young woman named Dara escapes from Midland, Texas only to run straight into a prison. Dara works in the kitchen and tries to put her past and her great romance to bed. She fell hard for her best friend but is too concerned with what the consequences could be if anyone ever discovered her attraction to girls. Safely ensconced in a prison filled with men, Dara soon befriends Leadbelly, a blues singer destined for stardom, and learns that love is what you make it. Sugar Land follows Dara's journey over the decades as she learns to do more than accept the lot life has given her. Brilliantly executed by the talented Donna Postel who throws just the right amount of southern charm into this novel of acceptance and love. Courageous, captivating, and charming, filled with characters that readers won't be able to stop thinking about. For fans of LGBTQ+ romance, historical fiction, and southern charm. - Erin Cataldi, Johnson Co. Public Library, Franklin, IN