Lone Star Book Blog Tour: Making It Home by Teddy Jones (Review and Giveaway)

MAKING IT HOME
By Teddy Jones
Publisher: MidTown Publishing
Pub Date: July 26, 2021
Series: Jackson’s Pond, Texas Series
Stand Alone: YES
Pages: 275
Categories: Family Fiction / Racism / Ku Klux Klan / Texas Women’s Fiction / Rural Fiction
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In this third novel in the Jackson’s Pond, Texas series, fifty-five-year-old Melanie Jackson Banks encounters racism, intolerance, and violence both in her family’s distant past and in current day Jackson’s Pond. She leads family and community efforts to create reconciliation for past wrongs and also to demonstrate strength and defiance in the face of vandalism, cross-burning, domestic violence, threats to Jackson Ranch’s operation, and kidnapping. In the midst of this stormy period, she finds allies in her mother’s long-time companion, Robert Stanley; her mother, Willa Jackson; her daughter Claire Havlicek; and many others.
Praise for Making It Home

“Making It Home could not be a more timely book… We live in an imperfect world, but it is still possible to think, imagine and make things better. The cast of characters in this strong family affirms this through their hope, decency, and tenacity!” —Eleanor Morse, author of Margreete’s Harbor

“Jones’ talent for creating indelible characters endures, as does her way with a compelling plot. … This is a timely page-turner.”  Robin Lippincott, author of Blue Territory: A Meditation on the Life and Art of Joan Mitchell

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“Life is full of trouble. The difference is that when it arrives, a good family turns toward one another to help instead of turning away.”

In Making It Home, Teddy Jones uses the power of fiction to highlight the hot-button topics of racism and the unfortunate continued prevalence of white supremacy and the Ku Klux Klan. Fiction is an excellent platform for this because it shows the hostility and violence and how good can triumph over evil when friends and families come together and form a united front. This work of fiction wraps all this up in a comprehensive story that refuses to whitewash the unsavory aspects and offers a healing overall view of the positive behaviors and actions that people can take to combat the unacceptable.

Family is at the heart of Making It Home and the entire Jackson’s Pond, Texas, series. In this book, two types of families are presented side by side: the loving and inclusive Jackson family and the hate-filled, racist Reese family, specifically Junior Reese and his son, Justin. Willa is the matriarch of the Jackson family and is as feisty as ever, painting masterpieces and guiding her family as best she can. While Making It Home can definitely stand alone, the characters are interesting enough that adding the full series to your to-read list is highly recommended. Getting to know the entire Jackson family from the start will be worth your while and a lot of fun to boot.

Justin Reese learned early on at his daddy’s knee how to hate others who are different and thus a threat to their idea of what America should look like – white and heterosexual only. This bigotry and intolerance rear up and demand the reader’s attention, sparking conversation about what to do when this hatred is unleashed. No one should live in fear in their own community or even in their own home, but that is exactly what is happening in Jackson’s Pond and Calverton, Texas. Through vandalism, animosity, violence, and pure evil, these communities are under attack, and all of it must stop before more than just graffiti appears and a few animals are killed. Willa and her family and close friends need all the courage and backbone they can muster to halt this violence before it goes any further. What’s it going to take?

The overall pace and tone of Making It Home is steady and compelling, with a layer of sorrow and a corresponding ray of hope throughout. In the 1920s, a young African-American man was murdered, and his body was covertly buried somewhere on the Jackson ranch. Decades later, when Willa’s daughter, Melanie, discovers details about this despicable crime in her grandmother’s diary and newspaper clippings, she feels compelled to unearth the truth and give Lincoln Berryhill a proper memorial. All this cannot erase any guilt or the past, but atonement is sometimes the only recourse to do the right thing. Nothing will never be enough, of course, but according to Melanie, “…we will do something, not nothing.”

Making It Home shows the importance of raising children to be respectful; industrious; and proud of home, family, friends, and community. The opposite breeds hate and violence, poisoning the mind, body, and soul and destroying families from the inside out. The author presents Making It Home, both the good and bad, with stellar characterization, a dynamic plot, and the clear declination toward the importance and value of honor, love, trust, and gentle acceptance and tolerance.

Making It Home may project a doleful tone at times because of the racism that seems to bleed from one generation to the next, but the good people definitely outshine the bad, providing hope that future generations can and will rise above the malevolence.

Enter the giveaway below on or before August 6, 2021, for a chance to win some fabulous prizes!


I received a free copy of this book from Lone Star Book Blog Tours in exchange for my honest review.


Teddy Jones is the author of three published novels, Halfwide, Jackson’s Pond, Texas, and Well Tended, as well as a collection of short stories, Nowhere Near. Her short fiction received the Gold Medal First Prize in the Faulkner-Wisdom competition in 2015. Jackson’s Pond, Texas was a finalist for the 2014 Willa Award in contemporary fiction from Women Writing the West. Her as yet unpublished novel, Making It Home, was a finalist in the Faulkner-Wisdom competition in 2017 and A Good Family was named finalist in that contest in 2018.
Although her fiction tends to be set in West Texas, her characters’ lives embody issues not bounded by geography of any particular region. Families and loners; communities in flux; people struggling, others successful; some folks satisfied in solitude and others yearning for connection populate her work. And they all have in common that they are more human than otherwise.
Jones grew up in a small Texas town, Iowa Park. Earlier she worked as a nurse, a nurse educator, a nursing college administrator, and as a nurse practitioner in Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico. For the past twenty years, she and her husband have lived in the rural West Texas Panhandle where he farms and she writes.

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GIVEAWAY! GIVEAWAY! GIVEAWAY!

TWO
WINNERS

1st: Set of all three novels in the Jackson’s Pond, Texas Series;

2nd: $25 Gift Card + Copy of Nowhere Near

(US only; ends midnight, CDT, 8/6/2021)


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7/27/21

Notable Quotable

7/27/21

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7/28/21

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7/28/21

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7/29/21

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7/30/21

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7/31/21

Scrapbook Page

8/1/21

Author Interview

8/2/21

Review

8/3/21

Series Spotlight

8/4/21

Review

8/5/21

Review

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2 Replies to “Lone Star Book Blog Tour: Making It Home by Teddy Jones (Review and Giveaway)”

  1. Great review to close the tour. I really liked how comprehensive your review is, Ruthie.