Redlined: A Novel of Boston by Richard W. Wise - Adult Fiction (18 +) - Guest Post

Join us for this tour from June 21 to July 2, 2021!

Redlined: A Novel of Boston 

by Richard W. Wise

Category: Adult Fiction (18 +),  (9 Hours 59 Minutes)
Genre: Thriller
Publisher:  Brunswick House Press
Release date:   May 2020
Content Rating:  PG-13 + M. cursing throughout and violence (murder) 

 

The year is 1974. Boston's Jamaica Plain is a neighborhood under siege, a community skating along the razor's edge of decline. The banks have REDLINED Jamaica Plain, causing the housing market to crash, wiping out local homeowner's lifetime investments and opening the neighborhood to blockbusters and slumlords. Now, someone has begun systematically torching those abandoned buildings and the charred body of Sandy Morgan, a dedicated young neighborhood organizer, has been found among the ashes. Why? Who stands to gain?

Community organizer and Marine combat veteran, Jedidiah Flynt and Alex Jordan, his beautiful Harvard educated researcher together with a group of local property owners are determined to stop the redlining and and bring the arsonists responsible for Sandy Morgan's death to justice. Their search will lead them through a labyrinth of corrupt politicians, Asian gangsters and bent churchmen.

Two interwoven plots work their way through the narrative, one is absolutely true, the other never happened, but very well might have.

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Guest post by Richard W. Wise
How my grandmother’s garden inspired certain scenes in my novels.

I grew up in eastern Oregon, but my parents both came from southern Idaho, where their parents had farms that’d been pioneered from the raw wilderness in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.  When I was a child, we’d spend a couple of weeks on these farms each summer (one week at each.)

While my maternal grandmother was a high school history teacher (and the inspiration for my interest in the Civil War), my paternal grandmother was the gardener! Though she maintained a bountiful vegetable garden which I greatly enjoyed browsing, the wonder of the farm was her flower garden.  It was more than an acre in size, and featured gigantic dahlias, which were her pride and joy. 

I am fortunate enough to have digital copies of several photos showing her with her dahlias both as a young woman in her twenties, and as the elderly grandma I remember. I also recall my Dad showing me a newspaper clipping with a photo of her and her dahlias, and remember it saying women would come from all over the county to see them. This fantastic flower garden served as the inspiration for Miss Abbey’s magnificent flower garden (featuring head-sized dahlias!) at Mountain Meadows Farm in the Road to the Breaking series. In the book it also says this flower garden was one women would come from far and wide just to see.

The amazing part of my grandmother’s farm, as opposed to that of the fictional Miss Abbey, is she maintained hers through her own hard physical labor (with a lot of help from my grandpa, I’m sure!)

 Meet the Author:

Richard Wise is the author of three books. His latest novel, REDLINED, A NOVEL OF BOSTON, was nominated for the National Book Award and the Benjamin Franklin Award in fiction. His first book: SECRETS OF THE GEM TRADE, THE CONNOISSEUR'S GUIDE TO PRECIOUS GEMSTONES was serialized in two magazines and became a critically acclaimed best seller. 

Wise has enjoyed a diverse career. He is a veteran of the U. S. Coast Guard. After receiving his B.A., teaching and doing graduate work at the University of Rhode Island, he spent most of the decade of the 70s as a professional community organizer, heading organizing projects in Massachusetts and Rhode island. In the late 1970s he left organizing to pursue other interests. He apprenticed as a goldsmith, studied gemology at the Gemological Institute of American and received his Graduate Gemologist diploma in 1985. He founded his retail company R. W. Wise, Goldsmiths, Inc. in the early 1980s and began traveling internationally, buying gems and writing about them in 1986. In 2012 he retired from business to pursue his writing. He lives with his wife and two cats in Charlottesville, Virginia.

connect with the author: website ~ facebook  ~ bookbub ~ goodreads

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Tour Schedule:

June 21 – Locks, Hooks and Books – audiobook review / giveaway
June 21 – wottaread – book spotlight / author interview
June 22 – Cover Lover Book Review – book spotlight
June 23 – The Book Review Crew – audiobook review / giveaway
June 24 – Literary Flits - book spotlight / giveaway
June 25 – Books for Books – book spotlight
June 28 –Dab of Darkness Audiobook Reviews - audiobook review / giveaway
June 29 – Leels Loves Books – book review
June 30 – Jazzy Book Reviews – book spotlight / author interview / giveaway
July 1 – JB's Bookworms with Brandy Mulder – book spotlight / guest post / giveaway
July 2 – Splashes of Joy – audiobook review / author interview / giveaway
 

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REDLINED (A Novel of Boston) Book Tour Giveaway