"Indigo Field brims with multigenerational drama, earthy spirituality, and deeply imagined characters you are unlikely to forget." —Sue Monk Kidd, author of The Invention of Wings, The Book of Longings, and The Secret Life of Bees
In the rural South, a retired colonel in an upscale retirement community grieves the sudden death of his wife on the tennis court. On the other side of the highway, an elderly Black woman grieves the murder of her niece by a white man. Between them lies an abandoned field where three centuries of crimes are hidden, and only she knows the explosive secrets buried there. When the colonel runs into her car, causing a surprising amount of damage, it sparks a feud that sets loose the spirits in the Field, both benevolent and vengeful. In prose that’s been called “dazzling” and “mesmerizing,” in the animated voices of trees and birds and people, in Southern-voiced storytelling as deeply layered as that of Pat Conroy, Marjorie Hudson lays out the boundaries of a field that contains the soul of the South, and leads us to a day of reckoning.
Originally from Washington, D.C., Marjorie Hudson has served as features editor of National Parks Magazine and written for Garden & Gun, American Land Forum, Wildlife in North Carolina, Our State Magazine, and North Carolina Literary Review. She worked as copyediting chief for Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill and received an MFA from Warren Wilson College. Her short story collection, Accidental Birds of the Carolinas, first introduced Ambler County and some of the characters in Indigo Field. She lives with her husband, Sam, and feisty small terrier DJ, on a century farm in North Carolina, where she mentors writers and reads poetry to trees.
Susan Zurenda taught English for 33 years on the college level and at the high school level to AP students. Her debut novel, Bells for Eli (Mercer University Press, March 2020; paperback edition March 2021), has been selected the Gold Medal (first place) winner for Best First Book—Fiction in the 2021 IPPY (Independent Publisher Book Awards), a Foreword Indie Book Award finalist, a Winter 2020 Okra Pick by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance, a 2020 Notable Indie on Shelf Unbound, a 2020 finalist for American Book Fest Best Book Awards, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for 2021. She has won numerous regional awards for her short fiction. She lives in Spartanburg, SC.