JOHN DANIEL & COMPANY Sunset at Rosalie NOVEL BASED ON FAMILY STORIES RELIVES THE FAST-FADING GLORY OF THE OLD SOUTH "Luminous evocations of the last days of Rosalie, a Mississippi plantation brought down by the collapse of 'King Cotton' in the early 1900s as observed by a young girl on the cusp of womanhood.A clear-eyed, loving but never sentimental look at the Old South as it tries to adjust to a new order." --Kirkus Reviews Novelist Ann L. McLaughlin has drawn on stories told by her mother about growing up on a plantation in Mississippi as the basis for her third novel, Sunset at Rosalie. Inspired by family history, McLaughlin has woven her mother's tales together into a continuous plot charting the decline and fall of one plantation as King Cotton and the Deep South succumb to the boll weevil, soil depletion, and the rapidly changing social order. Set in 1909­1912, Sunset at Rosalie recalls the seasons, the customs, and the people of the Deep South. At the center of the novel is Carlin McNair, a young girl on the brink of adolescence. Carlin has a crush on her dashing Uncle Will, who lives on a neighboring plantation. As Carlin grows through the seasons, she watches with alarm the sad decline of her beloved uncle as he battles with crippling depression and his failed dreams of agrarian reform. At the same time, she must learn to face the adult reality of hard economic times, seeing her parents adjust to poverty for the first time in their lives. Carlin also goes through the usual crises of early adolescence, as well the additional trauma of a bout with cholera that lasts almost a year. In spite of these troubles, though, Carlin has the rewards of an inquiring mind and a desire to understand and appreciate her surroundings and to put her thoughts on paper. By the end of the novel, the culture she grew up in has changed forever, her Uncle Will is dead from suicide, her family is living in town in reduced circumstances, and her home, Rosalie, is in ashes. But she, Carlin McNair, has become a wise young woman with a future-as a writer, as a reformer, and as a chronicler of times gone by. About the Author: Ann L. McLaughlin received her Ph.D. in Literary Studies from The American University in Washington, D.C., and has taught writing and literature there and at The Writer's Center in Bethesda, Maryland. She has published scholarly articles on Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, and Shakespeare and writes reviews for several local publications. Ms. McLaughlin grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland, with her husband, who also writes and teaches. Praise for the novels of Ann L. McLaughlin Lightning in July "This reader found the novel moving and full of the usable truth." --May Sarton "A splendid accomplishment, a novel written from the heart and shaped with a fine intelligence." --Maureen Howard "Ann McLaughlin has reached deep into her ragbag of old, often painful memories and transmuted them into a heart-warming novel." --Maxine Kumin "A lovely book-wry, warm, and engaging." --Susan Richards Shreve "McLaughlin's straightforward narration transforms the events of a prolonged hospital stay into a richly textured tale." --Publishers Weekly The Balancing Pole "The Balancing Pole treats a terrifying subject with wonderful lucidity in a narrative of spare and compelling elegance." --Jill Ker Conway "Truly a powerful book and in its truthfulness much more than fiction." --Janet Lewis "The Balancing Pole moves like a thriller."--The Radcliffe Quarterly "Make no mistake about it, Ann McLaughlin has written a deeply moving, adroitly embroidered novel." --James Sallis, The Washington Post Sunset at Rosalie A Novel Ann L. McLaughlin 272 pages, 51/2" x 81/2" paperback, $11.95 ISBN 1-880284-15-4 Fiction For ordering information, click here or phone (800) 662-8351