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About Julia Park Tracey
Author Julia Park Tracey’s ancestors and their stories have given her a trail to follow from New York and New England to the deep south and the Pacific Coast. The Bereaved: A Novel, the story of her great great grandmother’s loss of her children to the Orphan Train was named in the top 100 indie books published in 2023 by Kirkus Reviews. Christian Kiefer, author of the newly released The Heart of it All, said: “In The Bereaved, Julia Park Tracey reopens America’s wounds in prose that is propulsive and resonant. Theodore Dreiser comes to mind, but so, too, the fine contemporary novels of Jo Baker and Maggie O’Farrell.”
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HISTORICAL FICTION | $18
Trade Paper | 5.315” x 8.465”
ISBN: 9781736795491
Pub Date: 9/24/2024
Silence: A Novel
by Julia Park Tracey
Get it wherever great books are sold
“I am no witch, nor adulteress, thief, nor murderer. They say I have lost my reason, but I know only that my heart is shattered, and in crying it aloud, now I must pay the cost....”
After three grievous losses, Puritan woman Silence Marsh dares to question God aloud in the church, and that blasphemy lands her in trouble—she is silenced for a year by the powers that govern. Broken in heart and spirit, Silence learns to mime and sign, but it isn’t until a new Boston doctor, the dashing Daniel Greenleaf, comes to her backward Cape Cod village that she begins to hope again. Rather than treating Silence with bleeding or leeches, Dr. Greenleaf prescribes fresh air, St. John’s Wort, long walks—and reading.
Silence has half a hope of getting through her year of punishment when the cry of witchcraft poisons the village. Colonial Massachusetts is still reeling from the Salem Witch Trials just 20 years before. Now, after they’ve demanded her silence, she is called to witness at a witchcraft trial—or be accused herself.
A whiff of sulfur and witchcraft shadows this literary Puritan tale of loss and redemption, based on the author’s own ancestor, her seventh great-grandmother.
Here's what Jean Hegland, author of Into the Forest had to say about Silence: Novel
Julia Park Tracey’s Silence is a powerful, lyrical marvel of a novel. The challenges that Silence Marsh faces and the questions that she struggles with after she has been sentenced to a year of silence by her Separatist community not only create a vivid and authentic picture of Puritan New England, but also resonate in meaningful ways with our own times. Silence’s story is both haunting and inspiring, and I am grateful to Julia Park Tracey for having given her such a captivating voice.
HISTORICAL FICTION | $18
Trade Paper | 5.315” x 8.465”
ISBN: 978-1-7367954-2-2
Pub Date: 8/08/2023
The Bereaved
by Julia Park Tracey
Get it wherever great books are sold
A Historical Novel about the Orphan Train and the Mothers Left Behind
Based on her research into her grandfather’s past as an adopted child, Julia Park Tracey has created a mesmerizing work of historical fiction illuminating the darkest side of the Orphan Train.
In 1859, women have few rights, even to their own children. When her husband dies and her children become wards of a predator, Martha—bereaved and scared—flees their beloved country home taking the children with her to the squalor of New York City. But as a naive woman alone, preyed on by male employers, she soon finds herself nearly destitute. The Home for the Friendless offers free food, clothing, and schooling to New York’s street kids and Martha secures a place temporarily for her children there.When she returns for them, she discovers that the Society has indentured her two eldest out to work via
the Orphan Train, and has placed her two youngest for adoption. The Society refusing to help and with the Civil War erupting around her, Martha sets out to reclaim each of them.
Here's what Lynn Cullen, author of Mrs. Poe and The Woman with the Cure had to say about The Bereaved:
“I worried about, admired, and grieved with the indominable Martha Lozier, the heroine of Julia Park Tracey’s exquisite novel. With a sharp eye for just the right details, Tracey brings Martha’s harrowing, astonishing, and ultimately heartrending journey to life. This “everyday” mid-19th century American woman is anything but. How right for her story to be told."
Christian Kiefer, author of Phantoms and the newly released The Heart of it All, said:
"In The Bereaved, Julia Park Tracey reopens America’s wounds in prose that is propulsive and resonant. Martha’s struggles are the stuff of classic literature. Theodore Dreiser comes to mind, but so, too, the fine contemporary novels of Jo Baker and Maggie O’Farrell."