How to Bury Your Dog by Eva Silverfine

 

If you love dogs and fighting to preserve rural areas, you'll relate to the main character in this book. Enjoy an excerpt from the literary fiction How to Bury Your Dog by Eva Silverfine and then follow the tour for more. Best of luck entering the giveaway!

Lizzy has largely retreated from the world: she tends her adopted strays and goes to work, but she has forsaken lifelong pastimes and declines invitations from old friends. On the day she buries Happy, the abandoned basset hound she adopted years before, she learns a real estate developer is threatening the heart of her rural community—a tranquil pond and a relict stand of hemlocks. For Lizzy this is a magical place, hidden from the modern world.

Coaxed by an old friend to join a group fighting the development, Lizzy is reluctant—she wants to avoid both hope and him. But she realizes she can no longer keep the outside world at bay. As the battle over the development unfolds, Lizzy opens herself to two young neighbors who share her love of the natural environment—an awkward sixteen-year-old and an inquisitive ten-year-old. And as Happy’s elements return to the earth, buried memories find their way to the surface in increasingly curious ways.

Read an excerpt:

Lizzy was so distracted by this latest sign of “progress” that she drove right past Possum Hollow Road. But its beckoning entry caught the corner of her eye, and she made a U-turn. The dark, narrow turnoff was framed in amethyst chicory. The road rapidly descended into a thick strip of forested darkness that was the conduit of Possum Creek, and for a fleeting moment she was transported into a lush green corridor of jewelweed and cardinal flower that promised precious, hidden sanctuaries—and chiggers. As the road came back up out of the protective moat, it curved around a massive sycamore before reemerging into a series of small farms.

Lizzy told herself she was taking a look at Carolyn’s mother’s house, but she knew that was an excuse. She was indulging a sudden urge to take a drive into her past. The road ambled past old houses, sheds, and barns, periodically dipping down toward the creek, which was shaded by sycamores and ash.

She pulled over when she saw a “for sale” sign near the road and looked at the old wood house with its broad front porch and large shade trees. She assumed it was Carolyn’s mother’s place. Hydrangea bushes laden with blossoms framed the wide front steps. The low summer sun glinted off the bright new white paint and curtained windows. A sagging barn that had been spruced up with a coat of brick red paint stood picturesque in a field that lay fallow. They couldn’t have painted the scene any more country, thought Lizzy.

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From living above her parents’ hardware store in Brooklyn, New York, to living a mile down a gravel road in semi-rural Texas with her husband, sons, and the local wildlife, Eva Silverfine has explored a variety of urban to rural landscapes. On that journey, she earned two degrees in the environmental sciences, worked in an entomological research lab, and eventually retooled as a copyeditor. She freelances for several academic presses and writes personal narrative and fiction in the in-between spaces. Her short fiction has appeared in a variety of online journals; she has published a collection of essays, Elastic Walls: From Brooklyn to Texas and Points in Between; and her novels, How to Bury Your Dog and Ephemeral Wings, have been published by Black Rose Writing. Find her at www.evasilverfine.com and on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.


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Eva Silverfine will be awarding a $15 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

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