For the people of rural Backbone Ridge, Virginia, in Southern Appalachia, endurance is a way of life. Coal mining put bread on the table and too many bodies in the ground. To lighten the load, some turned to moonshine. Others, like Laurel Victoria, turned to Celtic mountain religion for deliverance. Coloring for Dark is a tragic, interwoven story of Laurel, her sisters Georgiana Paige and Scarlet Jewel, and their mother Maggie. Shattered by the untimely death of her firstborn son, Maggie must somehow find the strength to survive her husband’s betrayal. His irresistible charm blinds her to Brady’s many flaws. After he is murdered in 1955, his daughters launch themselves on a quest to solve the crime. The girls learn of their father’s turbulent past, the secrets he forced their mother to keep, and how he got himself murdered. Maggie is a strong-willed, independent, and beautiful mother, a woman who had long ago survived a dual mystery of losing her natural life to the spiritual. The “gifts of the spirit,” as Maggie describes them, were given to her by God. Drawn home again in 1977, when a flood destroys her childhood home, Laurel must once again face the many demons of her past. She’s built a new life for herself in Tennessee, one she’s willing to protect. Can she avoid the traps of her past? Their story, filled with dark and light and all the shades in between, is one of determination, survival, secrets, love, and redemption.
