The Liberty Guild

It's April in fictional Liberty, Georgia, and a dozen artists are working toward the event of the year, the Liberty Artists Guild Midsummer Art Show. Lucy Bloom, an overwhelmed young mother with an inconvenient passion for painting, joins the Guild and finds herself, like Alice of looking-glass fame, amid a motley group of characters quirky, soulful, and sinister: Aylin, the mysterious squatter hippie; Eli, the handsome, brilliant loner; Cordelia, the wheelchair prophet; and James, the hapless farmer with a jealous mule on his hands, to name a few. The lives of these and other Liberty folk intersect in startling ways on the road to a Midsummer climax. Ultimately, The Liberty Guild is a mosaic portrait of a small southern town where the residue of history clings in shadowy corners, where the characters seek freedom from a haunting past, and where art-whether fine or grotesque-is breaking loose from dark souls, bright souls, and souls undecided. Book club discussion questions are included at the end of the novel. Readers can visit a companion website with ongoing illustrations showing artwork of and by the fictional artists in The Liberty Guild.