In “Coloring for Dark,” Virginia native Linda Powers-Daniel tells a story of bootlegging, adultery and the proud resilient women who won’t yield to betrayal or hardscrabble lives. It’s a tale of three sisters who launch themselves on a quest to solve their father’s murder. In the second book of the trilogy, “Coloring for Dawn,” Gee is happily married and Laurel and Scarlet were part of the “divorce generation,” becoming accomplished career women. They live in historic Abingdon, Virginia and travel the maize of equal pay, token woman status and sexual harassment in the ’80s. Laurel is a serious executive, “climbing the corporate ladder,” hiding her femininity behind her tailored wardrobe. Scarlet is a meticulously accurate manager, using her femininity like a badge of courage; at the same time smiling in a petulant, reckless manner, guaranteed to garner attention. It was engrained in Laurel and her sisters that they could do anything they set their mind to and they totally believed it. With careers and motherhood filling their lives the sisters search out chosen encounters, feeling a pull within their soul, to find the man who would fulfill the spiritual and erotic hole left by failures in love. Little did they know that within six years they both are destined to find love’s many sides and death’s beckoning call, changing their lives forever. Scarlet is a true romantic and will never give up on love and Laurel buries that desire deep down inside, and puts a lid on it and smiles as she was taught, until she meets the handsome Captain Daniel C. Bastian with his quiet alluring charm.
