2011 Laurel Award Winner
Tournament of Champions
LAUREL AWARD WINNER!
On June 16, 2011 Fairer Than Morning took home first prize for COTT's Best Protagonist Clash. The novel returned five months later for our Tournament of Champions. Over the course of a month, it competed against twenty-four Clash of the Titles champion novels. On November 12 Fairer Than Morning was voted by COTT readers as being worthiest to receive the 2011 Laurel Award.
About Fairer Than Morning:Ann dreams of a marriage proposal from her poetic suitor, Eli—until Will Hanby shows her that nobility is more than fine words.
On a small farm in 19th century Ohio, young Ann Miller is pursued by the gallant Eli Bowen, son of a prominent family. Eli is the suitor of Ann’s dreams. Like her, he enjoys poetry and beautiful things and soon, he will move to the city to become a doctor.
When Ann travels to Pittsburgh, accompanying her minister father on business, she meets Will Hanby, a saddle-maker’s apprentice. Will has spent years eking out an existence under a cruel master and his spirit is nearly broken. Anne’s compassion lights a long-dark part of his soul.
Through his encounters with Anne’s father, a master saddler, Will discovers new hope and courage even in the midst of tremendous adversity.
When the Millers must return to Ohio and their ministry there, Will resolves to find them, at any cost. If Will can make it back to Ann, will she be waiting?
The Saddler's Legacy series is inspired by a real family in American history--the Hanby family, who are to this day the most celebrated citizens of Westerville, Ohio.
The Saddler's Legacy series is inspired by a real family in American history--the Hanby family, who are to this day the most celebrated citizens of Westerville, Ohio.
Sweeter than Birdsong, the second book in the series, will release in February 2012, followed by the last novel in the trilogy, Lovelier than Daylight, in November 2012.
About Sweeter than Birdsong:
Music offers Kate sweet refuge from her troubles… But real freedom is sweeter.In Westerville, Ohio, 1855, Kate Winter’s dreams are almost within reach. As the first woman to graduate from Otterbein College, she’ll be guaranteed her deepest wish: escape from the dark secret haunting her family. But with her mother determined to marry her off to a wealthy man, Kate must face reality. She has to run. Now. And she has the perfect plan. Join the upcoming musical performance--and use it to mask her flight.
Ben Hanby, Otterbein College’s musical genius, sees Kate Winter as an enigmatic creature, notable for her beauty, yet painfully shy. Then he hears her sing—and the glory of her voice moves him as never before. He determines to cast her in his musical and uncover the mystery that is Kate. Still, he must keep his own secret to himself. Not even this intriguing woman can know that his passionate faith is driving him to aid fugitives on the Underground Railroad.
A terrifying accident brings Kate and Ben together, but threatens to shatter both their secrets and their dreams. Kate can no longer deny the need to find her courage—and her voice—if she is to sing a new song for their future.
Sweeter than Birdsong is a stirring novel of hope and faith inspired by real historical people and events.
Fairer Than Morning's original winning excerpt:
VIEW ACTUAL POST (excerpt B)
Will groaned. His eyes still would not focus, though the barn’s spinning was slowing.
The barn door rattled as Master Good left. Will raised his fingers to the side of his head, where he could feel a huge lump already forming. A sharp sting revealed a break in the skin. His fingers were slick and red when he held them up close enough to focus on them.
He would live. Tom’s head had bled worse than this, when the master hit him with the poker two weeks ago. He thought vaguely that he would have to wash the blood off before dinner, or he would get another thrashing.
But as the room slowed to a standstill, the ache grew and spread. He lay immobile on his side with his eyes closed, clutching his head in his hands as if to hold it together.
He thought he might like to die, then. There was only pain—no joy in this miserable, dishonest life. His brother would be ashamed of him, could he see him now. That was why he had not written Johnny for a year, and his brother’s letters had gradually ceased. Will did nothing of worth—he had no future, without a reputation to start a business. He did not even have honor, but had turned into a cringing shadow ready to do what was necessary to get by.
Part of him wanted to kill his master, even if he would hang for it. But there was a fear down deep inside him, ever since the first time the master had beaten him so badly. That was only a couple of weeks after his arrival in Pittsburgh. Will had sobbed and begged for mercy, his eyes swelling shut, his nose pouring blood, rib and fingers broken. It wasn’t the pain, but the degradation of begging, his own weakness—as if the master had reached a skeletal hand down into Will’s soul and closed on it like a vice, so it would never be his own again. The memory claimed him—it showed him who he really was, who the master had shown him he was—a spineless beggar and a slave. A cloud of nausea filled him and he wished for nothingness.
He heard the barn door open and close. Now he had to get up. Master Good had no mercy.
But instead of Good’s serpentine whisper, he heard a sharp intake of breath.
Light footsteps approached, and cool fingers grazed his forehead.
For a moment, he remembered his mother, and let himself fall back into a dream that she once again sat beside him. He could almost hear her soft humming, and smell the honeysuckle that bloomed outside the window that last summer she had been at home, when she would tell stories and then sing him to sleep, half-cradling him in her arms.
But the smell was not right—it was not honeysuckle, but instead the faintest fragrance of roses and warm skin.
About Rosslyn Elliot:
As the child of a career military man, Rosslyn Elliott lived in four states and two foreign countries before she graduated from high school. She attended Yale University, where she earned her BA in English and Theater Studies. After five years working first in corporate New York City, then as a schoolteacher, she entered the Ph.D. program in English at Emory University and finished her dissertation in 2006. Her study of American literature spurred her to pursue her lifelong dream of writing fiction. She lives in the southwest with her husband and homeschools their daughter.
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