What do you do when your brand-new-in-laws are the
First Family, and they don't like you any more than
you like them? And what happens next when you find
yourself falling in love with the man they sent to
unearth all your secrets?
For Hush McGillen, image is everything.
And at forty she's proud of the Hush the world sees:
respected young widow, successful businesswoman, devoted
mother. She's turned her family's Georgia apple orchards
into a booming modern enterprise and even set her son,
Davis, to Harvard—while still managing to hide the painful
truth about her late husband and their tormented marriage.
But Hush's careful construct is about
to be put to the test, because Davis is soon going to turn
the eyes of the whole world on Hush and her family's closely
guarded private life. He arrives home mid-semester in a
cloud of dust, Secret Service in hot pursuit, to present
Hush with his new bride, Eddie Jacobs—the rebellious
daughter of the President of the United States.
Convinced that Davis has ulterior motives and
that their daughter's impetuous elopement was somehow
coerced, the President and First Lady send a trusted family
friend and deep-cover agent to rescue the stubborn First
Daughter. Nicholas Jakobek is a hardened, world-weary
operative who has retreated to the wilderness to escape the
memories of the secret battles he's fought to protect his
beloved family When keeping Eddie safe becomes his first
priority once again, he doesn't expect the mission to
include having his heart stolen by a red-headed firecracker
named Hush. And Hush, who is trying desperately to keep her
orchards running while protecting her son and new
daughter-in-law from the media hordes that invade the farm,
is not prepared to be shaken to the core by this unexpected
stranger's arrival. As Hush and Jakobek struggle to do
what's best for the young couple, both must deal with the
unfolding truths about their lives, their growing love for
each other, and the consequences of living with private
disgrace in a world that demands public sacrifices.
I adore Sweet Hush. It was so much fun to write.
I'm a political news junkie, and the fishbowl-lives of the
First Families have always intrigued me. I'm also an apple
junkie who pilgrimages to the north Georgia "apple barns"every fall. There I stock up on fresh, local apples,
deep-dish apple cobbler, apple jelly, applesauce, fried
apple pies, apple fritters, apple cider . . . you get the
idea!
Sweet Hush had a chance of becoming a movie a few
years ago. Debra Martin Chase, producer of hit films
including The Princess Diaries, bought the film
rights for Disney. It was my first personal phone call from
a big Hollywood producer. Debra was extremely nice and
extremely enthusiastic. Her people hired a well-known
scriptwriter for the project, and everything seemed to be
"Go."
Then Disney changed its top management people and, as
often happens with "orphaned"projects from the previous
regime, Sweet Hush was dropped from production.
But I remain hopeful that this big, romantic novel will
find a home on the screen one day. Just last summer a
big-time film agent inquired about the book.
Sweet
HushFollow-Up Free
Story!
Readers
often ask me "What happened next?" to their favorite
characters. Here's a short follow-up story for my novel,
Sweet Hush. The story can be found in the back of the
book's paperback edition, but you can read it
here—for free.
Another Bonus Story
Since I contribute short stories for the Mossy Creek
Hometown Series (published by
BelleBooks), I sometimes overlap characters
between the series and my regular novels. "Sweet Hope"
is a Mossy Creek story about an apple-growing cousin of
Hush McGillan's in Sweet Hush. You'll find
this story in A Day In Mossy Creek.
The Jacobs are loosely
modeled after some familiar First Couples. Who do you
think they most resemble?
Deborah Smith never
mentions the President's political party by name. Which
party do you think he belongs to, and why?
In Sweet Hush, Nick
Jacobek is a Lt. Colonel, and happens to be the
President's nephew. In real life, do you think a
prominent military officer could stay on active duty
after a close member of his family is elected President?
Hush embodies a
stand-by-your-man philosophy (regarding her late
husband, Davy) that is often portrayed in novels set in
the south. Can you think of other literary examples
of stoic southern wives?
The book's Georgia
mountain setting, with its apple farm, is described in
loving detail. Southern writers seem to put a lot of
importance on "place" as a vivid influence on the lives
and motives of their characters. Do you think this is
primarily a focus of southern writers, or do writers
from other regions display the same fondness for "Going
home, to Tara."
Hush's relationship with
her son, Davis, is both trusting and over-protective.
Discuss other notable examples of mother/son conflicts
in fiction.
Hush and First Lady
Edwina Jacobs have a deliciously wicked "friendship"
built on mutual antipathy, yet they are alike in being
strong, compassionate women. What makes you
uncomfortable about the portrayal of women's roles in
modern fiction? Do modern female characters often
seem too strong, or still not strong enough?
Hush and Nick's
romance is mature but also vibrantly reckless. What is
your idea of the perfect man? And what would he have to
do to win your devotion?
Do you believe in love in
first sight, which seems to happen to Hush and Nick?
If you suddenly became nationally — and even internationally
— famous — as Hush does after her son marries the
President's daughter — what do you think would be the worst
drawback to that fame? What would be the best thing about
it?
"Heartwarming . . . will find
readers laughing, crying and cheering for the entire cast of
characters."
--Times Record News,
Wichita Falls, TX
"A heartwarming tale of love,
loss, betrayal and hope." -- Romance Reader Connection
"This
novel deserves to be savored." -- The Romance Reader
"Reminds
me of LaVryle Spencer at her very best." -- Michelle Thorne,
RWA Bookseller of the Year
"Delightful" -- The Best
Reviews
"A bonafide keeper." -- A
Romance Review
"An
utterly winning combination of romance, drama, dark family
saga and humorous slice of life. A book that should be on
everyone=s
must-read list." -- RT BookClub
"A marvel. Stories like this
don't come along often." -- Oakland Press
"Truly
a bee charmer." -- Southern Scribe
"Enjoyable
. . . compelling . . ." -- The Roanoke Times
I'm the fifth Hush McGillen named after the Sweet Hush
apple, but the only one who has thrown a rotten Sweet Hush
at the First Lady of these United States. In my own defense,
I have to tell you the First Lady threw a rotten Sweet Hush
at me, too. The exchange, apples notwithstanding, was sad
and deadly serious.
"You've ruined my daughter. I want her back," she said.
"I'll trade you for my son," I answered. "And for Nick
Jakobek's soul."
After all, the fight wasn't really about her or me, but
about our sorely linked destinies and our respective
children and our respective men and our view of what we were
put in the world to accomplish with other people watching.
Whether those people were a whole country or a single,
stubborn family. There's a fine line between public fame and
private shame. For those of us who have something to hide,
holding that line takes more of our natural energy than we
want to admit.
So, standing in the White House that day with liquid,
festering apple flesh on my hands like blood, I realized a
basic truth: The world isn't kept in order by politics,
money, armies, or religion, but by the single-minded ability
of ordinary souls to defend all we hold dear and secret
about our personal legends, armed with the fruit of our
life's work. In my case, apples.
I walked wearily down one of the White House corridors
we've all seen in magazines and documentaries. For the
record, the mansion is smaller than it looks on television,
but the effect is more potent in person. My heels clicked
too loudly. My skin felt the weight of important air.
History whispered to me, Hush, go home and lick your
wounds and start over with your hands and your tears in the
good, solid earth. I followed a manicured sidewalk
outside into the winter sunshine, and then to the public
streets. The guard at the gate by the south lawn said, "Can
I help you, Mrs. Thackery?" as if I'd strolled by a thousand
times. Fame, no matter how indirect or unwanted, has its
benefits.
"I could use a tissue, please." I only wanted to wipe a
few bits of rotten apple off my jeans and red blazer, but he
gave me a whole pack. Hush McGillen Thackery of Chocinaw
County, Georgia, rated a whole pack of tissues at the White
House guard gate. I should have been impressed.
I put my mountaineer fingers between my lips and whistled
up a cab. I took that cab to the hospital in Bethesda,
Maryland where in the 1950's President Eisenhower's doctors
hid his heart trouble and in the 1980's President Reagan's
doctors hid the fact that our old-gentleman leader had gone
funny. It was a safe place to keep family troubles close to
the soul and away from the rest of the country. I slipped in
past a crowd of reporters with the help of the Secret
Service, who hadn't yet heard I'd splattered you-know-who
with an apple.
I went to the private room where Nick Jakobek lay
recuperating somewhere below the shore of normal sleep, his
stomach and chest bound with bandages that hid long rows of
stitches, his arm fitted with a slow drip of soothing
narcotics, which he would sure as hell jerk from his vein
when he woke up. I sat down beside Jakobek's bed and cupped
one of his big hands in mine.
People had sworn he was the kind of man who could do me
no good outside of bed. A suspect stranger, not a Good Old
Boy or a swank southern businessman, not One of Us. A man
who had never tilled the soil for a living or sold a bushel
of newly picked apples to an apple-hungry world or sat
around a campfire drinking bourbon under a hunter's moon. A
man who knew more about ways to die than ways to live. A man
so cloaked in rumors and mysteries that even the President
couldn't protect his reputation. Without a doubt, people
said, Hush McGillen Thackery would never stoop to love that
kind of man, after loving such a fine man as her husband.
I'm here to tell you I did, he wasn't, I wasn't supposed
to, but I do.
"This was never about you and me,"I whispered to Jakobek.
"People just have to grow where they're planted. That's the
last apple analogy I'll offer you until you decide to ask
for more. If and when. Just remember. Just believe me.
You have earned your blessings. "I kissed him and cried
a little. His mouth eased, but he couldn't wake up.
"I hear that you and my wife had an unhappy meeting,"
someone said. I turned and found the President gazing at me
from the room's doorway.
"I hit her with a rotten apple." Not something you really
like to tell a man who has his own army.
But the President only nodded. "She deserved it."
I tucked a small crucifix of apple wood inside Nick's
unfurled hand, bent my forehead to his for a long, hard
moment then left the room. It was time to go home to the
fertile, wild mountains of Georgia, where I and everyone I
loved—except Nick Jakobek and his Presidential
relatives—belonged.
We all make ourselves up as we go along, until the tall
tales of our lives grow around our weaknesses and
humiliations like the tough bark of an apple tree. Call it
public relations for the country's good or call it making
the best of a bad situation in a family or a marriage or a
love affair, but either way, we root our lives in other
people's ideas of who we are, both public and private, both
great and small.
But an apple, of course, never really falls far from its
tree.
