June Howell Somervell

The Hills of Eden June Howell Somervell

The Hills of Eden is a novel of star-crossed lovers who try to make their dreams come true in a quaint hills area of western Tennessee. In the early nineteen hundreds, Lucas and Emma's romance is laced with tenderness and pathos--pathos because of her family's objection to her marrying a young man of sharecropping stock while her heritage is one of landowners.

Their love letters over a three-year period bring the story to life. These are actual letters written in that time period by a real-life couple--the author's paternal grandparents. The letters are presented with original errors in word usage, grammar, spelling, and punctuation which adds to their sense of authenticity.

There is much going on in the Eden Hills. Interesting and believable characters, some eccentric, some not, people the landscape. These residents of the Hills cope with crop failures due to boll weevil infestation and extreme weather, disease, death, romances of the young and old, strangers in the community, a devastating tornado, moonshiners, a deranged arsonist who burns barns, and many other events and human obstacles that make up the fabric of their lives.