Silence in the Garden

Nestled in the Ozarks, the Crescent Hotel looms over the town of Eureka Springs like a sentinel from its mountain perch, and Shari Wheatley's family has been tied to its history for generations. Shari has come at the request of her great-grandmother Millie, to return something taken eighty years earlier. "It's important," was all Millie told her. "I need you to promise me you'll get it back to the Crescent." Ever the dutiful granddaughter, Shari agrees, though she's still uncertain what exactly she's supposed to do or why she's supposed to do it. Shari quickly finds herself caught up in a twisted web of events that started almost a century ago, and is far from over. Back in the 1920s, when the music was roaring and legend intermingled with reality, Mildred Wheatley and two other students of what was then known as the Crescent College and Conservatory for Young Women, inadvertently set a terrible series of tragedies into motion. Through pettiness and arrogance, they opened a doorway to a dark and malevolent power that, acting through its human helpers, could bring about nothing short of hell on earth. Now, the seemingly innocent request of her great-grandmother puts Shari squarely in the path of the same beings who tore apart the lives of two families so long ago. In a riveting story linking past and present, she learns how a Guardian, a priest, and Granny Millie worked together to protect their friends and loved ones from the legion of horrors waiting to be unleashed from the pit. Will Shari have the strength to defeat this terror like those before her could not? Or will the Crescent's dark legacy simply prove too great to overcome?

About the Author

Some are born with a silver spoon, but award-winning author JC Crumpton came out of the womb with a pen and a notebook. A cancer survivor, when not writing, reading or working as an analyst, he will often be on the trails or in the gym training for an ultra-marathon or powerlifting-complete with grunts and screams in appropriate places-or volunteering for various charities. Growing up in a range of places from San Diego, California to Iceland and Germany, JC has a broad palette of experiences to utilize in his writing. He has held a myriad of jobs, including fry cook, telemarketer, soccer coach, substitute teacher, and sales analyst, making him a confused if well-rounded person. He received his undergraduate degree in English with a Creative Writing Emphasis from the University of Arkansas and worked seven years for a daily newspaper, compiling a list of over 1,000 bylines. Silence in the Garden is JC's first published novel. More of his work has appeared in Aiofe's Kiss, Beyond Centauri, The Penwood Review, and Saddlebag Dispatches, among others. He has several projects coming out with Pro Se Press and Oghma Creative Media. He is a proud member of Authors' Anonymous writing group, the Northwest Arkansas Writers' Workshop, Storytellers of America, Ozarks Writers' League, and Ozark Creative Writers. www.jc-crumpton.com

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