The books we read, can't put down, and stay with us forever.
Running Out of Night
by Sharon Lovejoy
Review by Vicki Leon
- A heartfelt tale from a local author
Founder of a treasured Cambria landmark called Heart's EaseHerb Shop & Gardens, naturalist Sharon Lovejoy shared her love of gardening and her herbal expertise with community and visitors alike for 15 years. An irrepressible "people person" and educator, she did more than run a business. Lovejoy also taught classes in traditional crafts and ethnobotany on site and held festivals. As a docent naturalist at Morro Bay's Museum of Natural History, she likewise motivated thousands of kids with her enthusiasm and knowledge about the secret lives of sea otters and other critters in local ecosystems.
A multi-faceted journalist, author, and illustrator, in the 1990s she wrote and illustrated a "Heart's Ease" column for Country Living GARDENER magazine, which became a widely syndicated feature. Lovejoy, an art graduate of San Diego State, has used her glowing watercolors and informal language to create a number of books for Workman and other presses, all of them aimed at inspiring children (and their elders) about the wonders of nature through gardening and bird-watching.
This fall, the indefatigable Lovejoy is enjoying another sort of "heart's ease" with the publication of her debut work of fiction.
Called Running out of Night, her 300-page book draws on riveting "Heartfelt story from a local author" primary source material, much of it from her ancestral roots, the Quaker families who lived in antebellum Virginia on Catoctin Creek, a tributary of the Potomac River. It's a gritty, engrossing tale of two 12-year-old girls: one a runaway slave, the other a motherless, friendless, nameless child whose father and brothers treat her as savagely as they would a slave. The dangers and unflinching cruelties that the girls endure, along with their ingenuity as they flee slavers and navigate the wilderness in search of freedom, make this book a page-turner -- and not just for middle-school readers.
The wryly wise protagonist of the book not only outwits her pursuers, she supplies readers with fascinating knowledge about country life in the mid-1800s, from homely home remedies to reading the language of birdsongs as distant early warning systems.
Author Lovejoy has the gumption (and the keen ear) to let her young narrator speak in the rough poetry of the rural south, which adds a rich flavor to her saga, as authentic as a slow-cooked pit barbecue.
Sharon takes delight in explaining why her latest book represents such a change of direction. As she puts it, "To those familiar with my other books, which are mostly nonfiction and science oriented, an Underground Railroad-era novel will come as a surprise. This material, however, is very close to my heart--and my deepest passions. My ancestors were abolitionists, Quakers who believed in peace and equality. My own Quaker grandmother, Abigail Lovejoy, was a botanist as well. She schooled me in the natural world, and her elder Quaker cousin Margaret Macdonald steeped me in the folklore of rural Virginia."
Available locally offline and online as a hardcover and an ebook, Running Out of Night is published by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Sharon who with husband Jeff now lives in San Luis Obispo, has donated the proceeds from her book launch party to The Dallidet Adobe and Garden restoration project. You can read more about her literary work, artwork, and speaking engagements at her website, sharonlovejoy.com and blog: .
Jacket art copyright (copyright c in circle) 2014 by Meagan Bennet. Permission by Delacorte Press 2014
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