Walking Through Shadows

When Lloyd Cotton hears that Sheila Barnes is consistently beaten by her daddy, he offers her a room and a job cleaning up around his dairy farm. Despite physical deformity, poverty, and years of abuse, Sheila manages to see the silver lining in every cloud–and her bright spirit touches everyone in the Cotton family, including young Annette who finds an enchanting Best Friend. Stoney Barnes, the handsome boy who milks the cows, is especially taken with Sheila. And when they marry, it seems that God has finally given her the good graces she deserves.

But in a cruel twist of fate, Sheila’s body is found in the cornfields. Soon the little town of Zebulon, Mississippi, is awash in scandal. Who would want the innocent young woman dead? Her alcoholic father, her opinionated husband, or perhaps the faithfully married Lloyd Cotton, about whom unsavory rumors swirl?

Surprising secrets will crack open a rural community, and more than one family will suffer in the telling.

Bev Marshall grew up in McComb and Gulfport, Mississippi. She holds degrees from the University of Mississippi and Southeastern Louisiana University, where she taught in the English Department. Her short stories have appeared in?Xavier Review;?Potpourri;?Maryland Review;?Stories from the Blue Moon Cafe, Vol. 1; Acts of Discovery; and elsewhere. Her first novel,?Walking Through Shadows, was a Featured Alternate Selection of the Literary Guild and a finalist for the Florida Parishes Regional Arts Award for Literature, and was selected by The?Times-Picayune?as one of the best debut novels of 2002. She lives with her husband, a retired Air Force officer and Delta Air Lines Captain, in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, just down the road from the cage where a live alligator serves as the town’s main tourist attraction.