Kimberly Brock writes evocative fiction that brings to life not only her characters but the setting as well. In her newest novel, The Fabled Earth, the reader discovers the importance and impact of story. I am so excited that Kimberly will be joining us at the Turning A New Page Book Festival in January 2025 as a featured speaker. Find out about her book below.
Sometimes the truth is found in a folktale.
1932. Cumberland Island off the coast of Southern Georgia is a strange place to encounter the opulence of the Gilded Age, but the last vestiges of the famed philanthropic Carnegie family still take up brief seasonal residence in their grand mansions there. This year’s party at Plum Orchard is a lively group: young men from some of America’s finest families who come to experience the area’s hunting beside a local guide, a beautiful debutante expecting to be engaged by the week’s end, and a promising female artist who believes she has meaningful ties to her wealthy hosts. But when temptations arise and passions flare, an evening of revelry and storytelling goes horribly awry. Lives are both lost and ruined.
1959. Reclusive painter Cleo Woodbine has lived alone for decades on Kingdom Come, a tiny strip of land once occupied by the servants for the great houses on nearby Cumberland. When she is visited by the man who saved her life nearly thirty years earlier, a tempest is unleashed as the stories of the past gather and begin to regain their strength. Frances Flood is a folklorist come to Cumberland Island seeking the source of a legend—and also information about her mother, who was among the guests at a long-ago hunting party. Audrey Howell, briefly a newlywed and now newly widowed, is running a local inn. When she develops an eerie double exposure photograph, some believe she’s raised a ghost—someone who hasn’t been seen since that fateful night in 1932.
Southern mythology and personal reckoning collide in this sweeping story inspired by the little-known history of Cumberland Island when a once-in-a-century storm threatens the natural landscape. Faced with a changing world, two timelines and the perspectives of three women intersect where a folktale meets the truth to reveal what Cumberland Island has hidden all along.
Kimberly Brock is the award-winning author of The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare and The River Witch. She is the founder of Tinderbox Writers Workshop and has served as a guest lecturer for many regional and national writing workshops including at the Pat Conroy Literary Center. She lives near Atlanta with her husband and three children.
Visit her online at kimberlybrockbooks.com.
My Impressions:
Storytelling can be full of the fabulous mixed in with the real. That’s what Kimberly Brock explores in her historical/women’s fiction offering The Fabled Earth. Set among the wild and tamed elements of Cumberland Island, this novel tells the stories of 4 women and the island itself. There are 4 points of view: Cleo, Frances, and Audrey, real life women finding their place among the stories of their lives and Fable the truth behind the happenings of the 1932 events that shaped those women’s landscapes in a variety of ways. The three main characters are navigating cultural changes while finding their footing in a very personal reality. Their modern-day is 1959, a time of change for the country, the South, and Cumberland Island. All the storylines are intricately intertwined, but I have to say, Brock’s timeline of 1932 sets the tone and gives substance to the novel. Does this book sound complex? It is! But Brock handles the many storylines, viewpoints, and themes with ease. It did take me a little bit to get into it, but it wasn’t long before I was invested in each of the women’s lives and the island’s rich history.
If you are looking for an evocative novel rich in history and complex characterization and thematic elements, then The Fabled Earth is for you!
Recommended.
Audience: Adults.
(Thanks to the publisher for an ARC of the novel. All opinions expressed are mine alone.)
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