conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Dorado, Arkansas, Louisiana with the genre: Children's Books, Growing Up & Facts of Life?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'Secret Keepers'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the first five paragraphs for this book
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Secret Keepers
  I'm grateful to my friend and former teacher Wilton Barnhardt for providing valuable feedback early on. Special thanks to my editor, George Witte, for his close reading and insight, and hats off to Terra Gerstner and all the talented folks at St. Martin's. Judith Weber, my agent extraordinaire, provided sure-footed guidance, tireless readings of many drafts, and powerful encouragement. Thanks also to Nat Sobel and all the readers at Sobel Weber. And love to Mike for his steadfast support and unfailing sense of humor.
  How hard it is to escape from places. However carefully one goes they hold you—you leave little bits of yourself fluttering on the fences—little rags and shreds of your very life.
  The town had moved the Confederate Monument from the square to the gates of Springforth Cemetery some twenty years after the War of Northern Aggression, and General Robert E. Lee—who stood atop the mossy marble with a scowl—had never quite recovered. The general was listing, slowly sinking in the boggy soil, his finger pointing no longer at the ghostly Union brigade ahead, but just down and to the left, toward the new Ideal Laundry Factory, as if to demand extra starch. The stony glare of the good general was the last thing Emma Hanley's grandfather saw as he sat at his mahogany desk in his office, pondering a lost factory—foreclosure by some outfit up North was imminent—and an astonishing sweep of bad investments. As he swallowed the muzzle of a Colt.45, William McCann peered at the general, who seemed to look back at him approvingly, a kinship that comes from being beaten down by Yankees.
  William McCann's self-inflicted gunshot on that brilliant spring day in 1908 made a mess of things. But then, he never did have a head for business. In those days, a man was born with his fortune, and occasionally he increased it, but he never lost it. And McCann, who'd never quite cottoned to the textile industry, had managed to lose everything, as his widow, Josephine, quickly discovered. The tree-lined estate in town went first, the family's seasonal residences next—the seaside place in Charleston, the summer bungalow in the Blue Ridge Mountains—everything inside them auctioned off, crated, and shipped down to the pickle forks and finger bowls, how could they?
  They could; they did. The wealthy in Palmetto had little sympathy for downfall brought about by a gentleman's folly. Travel lust, for example. Seduced by the lure of far-flung jungles, perilous crags, and shimmering deserts, McCann had, for some time, been obsessed by exotic botanicals. He fancied himself a plant hunter—ignoring his failing business and leaving behind his wife, Josephine, for months at a time, appeasing her with promises of civilized travel fit for a woman upon his return.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: three more paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: If Donny ever caught Kyle—well. He wouldn't have patience with that kind of behavior. Not one bit. Especially if he realized the Good Son had tricked him. He would send Kyle away to that military academy for high school boys in Camden, which would break Dora's heart, or else enroll him at Crossroads, which was getting a high school program started, and Kyle would hate that. He wouldn't do it, Kyle just wouldn't, and it scared her to death to think about such a confrontation. When it came to infractions and second chances, Donny was like a cop with a nightstick, wielding Proverbs without mercy. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.
  And if she brought up how he was too hard on Kyle, then he would remind her: Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him. It wouldn't help to point out that as a teenager, Dora herself had sneaked out of her bedroom a few times, before she realized her father snored like a troll and couldn't hear her even if she were to bound down the stairs with a pogo stick. Her mother had caught Dora once, tiptoeing down the hall past the kitchen, holding her shoes in her hands. And her mother, standing there in her nightgown like a specter with a cup of tea, sighed and said, "It's your life, Dora. You can make a mess of it or not. I'm going back to bed."
  If Donny even suspected that Kyle was lost in the wilderness of sin, as Dora had been, he would remind her of the wages of wickedness—Will was dead, Bobby had lost his mind, and worse... that always worked.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the last five paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: He nodded. She opened the envelope—there was Wanda's married name, her address, even some photocopied pictures from her family Christmas newsletter. Turned out the private eye that Ginger Welch jerked around was cheap, all right, but thorough enough. With the barest of details, the man had found Wanda Wilson's whereabouts.
  Wanda made her own choices, Jake wanted to say, but didn't. Wanda has moved on. You can't blame yourself anymore.
  Two weeks ago, Jake had made the hardest promise of his life. He'd sworn to leave Dora alone. He'd vowed not to interfere in her decision about changing her life. He couldn't bear to think what she'd decided, if she had decided. She was at a crossroads, all right, and he waited on down the path. He would wait for her to take the fork. He wouldn't beckon to her. He wasn't the type. She had to find her own way. All he could do was wait. And he was mighty good at that.
  The plane shuddered slightly, tilting, and Emma caught sight of the verdant green of Costa Rica below. She always got the window seat. He insisted. She sighed. "Oh, it's so lovely, isn't it?"
  The captain's greeting crackled now in the cabin, the flight attendants' strange pantomime began. How different the world looked from above, Emma thought. When they'd left Palmetto, the town had appeared parceled, more square and orderly than Emma ever thought possible. And now she was floating away again, tethered to nothing but Win's hand on the armrest beside her. Below them, the clouds, clots of spun silk, left shadows on the land. Somewhere on that shrinking skin of earth were Bobby and Dora, Kyle and Sandy. Emma had only to close her eyes to imagine them, to see their upturned faces.