'Stella by Starlight' set in 1932 in segregated town of Bumblebee, N.C.

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At first glance, "Stella by Starlight" is a whimsical-looking middle-grade novel with silhouettes of two black children near a frozen pond under starlight.

Wait! That's not a cozy bonfire across that pond where the children can roast marshmallows. There's a cross in the middle of that blaze.

Author Sharon M. Draper lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, and sets the  book in the fictional town of Bumblebee, N.C., modeled on the town where Draper's dad grew up.

It's "a place in the segregated South," where Stella, a fifth-grader, can go into some stores and not others. Where some folks are pleasant and others are not.
"To Stella, it sort of evens out, and heck, the Klan hasn't bothered them for years."                                                                                                                            

Draper is a New York Times bestselling author ("Out of My Mind") and she says on her web page that she used to visit her grandmother in this little town, "tucked in the rocky bottom of the Blue Ridge Mountains," near Spindale.

"Roosters crowed at dawn," Draper writes. "Our breakfast milk came warm from the cow, our eggs fresh from the chicken’s nests. I remember hot apple pie, cold watermelon slices, and sugar sweet tea. And the stories. After the sun faded into darkness, and fireflies blinked in the yard, everyone would gather on Grandma Estelle’s porch and listen to the old folks tell tales—funny memories, harsh realities, family treasures, and sometimes big fat whoppers."

Underline the words "harsh realities."

Bumblebee in 1932 is not only segregated, but the Klan still terrorizes black families.

Listen:

"Every Negro family in Bumblebee knew the unwritten rules -- they had to take care of their own problems and take care of one another. Help from the white community was neither expected nor considered. It was as it always had been."

The night the Klan shows up, Stella recognizes the white physician's horse as the one leading the pack.

Draper's grandmother, Estelle Twitty Mills Davis, died in 1983 and left Draper her only journal and became for her granddaughter both muse and spirit guide. "She is my Stella by Starlight," Draper says.

Kirkus Review says; "A tale of Jim Crow South that's  not sugar coated but effective, with a trustworthy narrator who opens her heart and reader's eyes."

Draper has received the Coretta Scott King Award for both "Copper Sun" and "Forged by Fire," and "Out of My Mind" has been a New York Times bestseller for more than a year.

SHARON DRAPER TO READ AT QUAIL RIDGE BOOKS

When: Wed., Jan. 21
Time: 7 p.m.
Where: Quail Ridge Books, 3522 Wade Avenue, Raleigh, N.C., 27607
Cost: Free and open to the public

Creech and Funderburk: Double-header at Queens University on Thursday

Two Queens University creative writing teachers -- Sarah Creech and Julie Funderburk -- will give a free public reading at 8 p.m., on Thursday in Ketner Auditorium on the Queens campus.

Creech is the author of  "Season of the Dragonflies," a rich, sensuous novel about generations of women who have made a fortune extracting the elixir of a magical flower that grows deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The scent has magical powers and imbues the wearer with good fortune. When the plant begins mysteriously to die, it's the younger daughter Lucia -- whose powers have been dormant for 33 years -- who comes into her own and saves the day.

Creech, who grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, lives with her husband, the poet Morrie Creech, and their two children in Charlotte.

Funderburk is the author of a new poetry collection, "Thoughts to Fold into Birds." Her poetry has appeared previously in such literary journals as Ploughshares, Best New Poets and The Cincinnati Review. She's won scholarships to Bread Loaf and Sewanee writers' conferences, and she serves as poetry editor of the online journal storySouth.

A former managing editor of the Greensboro Review, Funderburk was recently named a semi-finalist in the prestigious Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize.

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Dot Jackson's Debut Novel 'Refuge' released at last from captivity

Dot Jackson

Dot Jackson's debut novel, "Refuge," won the now-defunct Novello Festival Press Prize in 2005, sponsored by the Charlotte Mecklenburg Public Library. It's a lush, passionate novel, based on a family scandal, set in the variegated green of the Blue Ridge Mountains. When Jackson, who recently moved from Six Mile, S.C., to Newland, N.C., read at Park Road Books in 2008, after the release of the paperback edition by John Blair, she packed the house.
Then, suddenly, the only hard copies to be found were on Amazon or in used bookstores. Gone. Down the rabbit hole. Jackson gave readings at book clubs and conferences around the Carolinas, and fans harangued her for a copy. The former Novello staff members, now scattered, said they hadn't a clue what had happened to the remaining stock.
At last, success. The books have been found -- in the nether regions of the Main Library -- and the rights released back to the author. Jackson, a former Observer reporter and columnist, dispatched her daughter to Charlotte with a rental truck to buy the lot of them.
Want an autographed copy? Make checks payable to Dot Jackson and mail them to Jackson at P.O. Box 96, Montezuma, N.C. 28653. Hardbacks $24.95; paperbacks $16. Shipping: $2.50. If you want your book signed personally, email her at dotjackson6mile@aol.com.