About the event:

A last-minute change has made our March 3rd author’s night a virtual event. Join your friends, neighbors and fellow book-lovers at 6 pm on Thursday at the library. Maris Lawyer will be live and virtual on the big screen to discuss her book and answer your questions. Books will not be for sale, but one lucky attendee will win a signed copy, shipped to their door. Also come to hear our library director make a few exciting announcements concerning….

several forthcoming author visits,

a new grant secured by the library,

and a special recognition of our Friends of the Library organization.

Hope to see you there!

About the novel, The Blue Line Down:

 Jude Washer wants to run: away from the coal mines where he is destined to work, away from his father’s abuse of his little brother, away from the prison-like confines of his village. Whispers of unionizing ripple through the small West Virginia mining town. When the mines take Jude’s brother away from him, Jude takes matters into his own hands. With nowhere else to go, Jude joins the Baldwin-Felts Agency, a band of violent men dedicated to stamping out unionizers across the mountains. It is 1922, and the Baldwin-Felts are poised to raid a mining town in Virginia. When the coal miners fight back against the agents, Jude, now twenty-four, and Harvey, a new recruit, take an opportunity to flee amid the bloodshed. With the Baldwin-Felts on their tail, Jude and an injured Harvey make their way down the mountains, where they are intercepted in South Carolina by a ragtag gang of bootleggers who put them to work to pay off a debt. Jude is desperate for a place to call home, but can he find it in these hardscrabble hills among strangers?

About the author:

Maris Lawyer is a born and bred native of the South Carolina Upstate. She graduated with a degree in creative writing from Anderson University and has since gone to work as an HR generalist for an environmental consulting firm in Greenville, SC. Maris lives with her husband Benjamin and two cats, Merlin and Luna. Alongside reading and writing, Maris spends much of her time fussing over the vegetable garden in her back yard in Easley, SC.