Sara wants this baby more than she has ever wanted anything.
Sara has worked her entire life to overcome the name Barefield. To be a Barefield in the rural Appalachian county where she grew up means that you are the poorest of the poor, that you are shiftless and untrustworthy, lazy and stupid. Sara has succeeded in proving that she is none of those things. At the age of forty she has a nice apartment, a decent car, and a good job as a school secretary.
Tully Rutland, a Vietnam War veteran who is the father of her baby and the only man Sara has ever loved, dies before she tells him that she’s pregnant. The Rutlands have never approved of Sara. She feels that her only choice is to move away so she can make a new life for herself and her baby.
Sara has practically no savings and no one to support her. She knows she will have to go on welfare, but she escaped poverty once and believes she can do it again. But the poverty Sara plunges into after she gives birth is beyond anything she had expected. She never imagined she’d be facing eviction and the possibility of living on the street. Nearly overwhelmed by her situation, she must find a way out.
“First and foremost, get a box of tissues because you are going to cry and get angry and be dumbfounded all at the same time. When you are done you will want to tell everyone about this book! I highly recommend it.” Andrea L. Stoekel
“Sara isn’t a quitter. She does what is necessary to survive, and the reader goes on this incredible journey with her, accompanying a decent, determined woman as she wends her way through the underside of American life, fighting to achieve her dreams. You’ll cheer her on as she tells you her compelling story.” The Midwest Book Review
Keywords: Women’s Contemporary fiction, poor and pregnant, hand to mouth, eviction, Appalachia, white trash, getting off welfare, welfare mother, single mother by choice, single mother stories, poverty, social class
About the author
Marian D. Schwartz was born in Buffalo, New York. Books were her escape from the legendary Buffalo winters and probably contributed to her becoming a writer. Now she lives in Central Virginia near the Blue Ridge Mountains, where she enjoys gardening with the exception of fighting deer, who also enjoy her garden by browsing there regularly. Her books include The Last Season, The Story of a Marriage, Harry Danced Divinely, War on Giffort Street, The Writers’ Conference, and Realities, which was a selection of the Swedish Book-of-the-Month Club.
