Friday Friend: Eleanor Tatum

Please welcome Eleanor Tatum, who is presenting her latest book, Swamp Home.

The Swamp welcomes home anyone who respects her dangers and loves her beauty.

After losing her husband, agriculturalist Garret Chase relocates to Lake Wheatley, North Carolina to heal her broken heart and escape her suffocating in-laws. The lake’s environmental issues with the hydrilla weed and farmland run-off is just the challenge Garret welcomes as a healing distraction to the emotional knot of widowhood. Can she make a difference? Can Lake Wheatley provide an appreciated distance from her in-laws’ strangling emotional hold?

AFT undercover agent Cain McIver searches for his brother’s murderer using the North Carolina Park Service at Lake Wheatley for his cover. Will revenge reduce its hold on Cain when his strongest witness needs him for her very survival?

Will their basic pursuit of justice, emotional healing, and a secure Home be satisfied in this beautiful but dangerous Swamp?

Swamp Home

Chapter One

Her survey of the shallow lake revealed clear iced tea waters and a smooth white sandy floor but bumping the bow of her bright orange kayak was a floating naked bottom; a human bottom.

Garret froze.

She had wedged her paddle in the body’s armpit.

She grasped at the rapid but random flashes of thought. Good grief! What now? Is he dead? Hustling her thoughts of escape, flight, and retreat into a reasonable reality, she remembered the shallowness of the lake. Walk to shore stupid. Get help! She lifted her left leg to jump overboard but the approaching snake changed her mind.

Garret scratched plan A.

Having no knowledge of reptiles other than to panic, she twisted her gaze from the snake, the body, and the paddle to search the shoreline for help. No one, she saw no one, just the swamp, lots of swamp.

A 180 degree turn of her head multiplied her fears as the large span of choppy waters of Lake Wheatley greeted her search, then she spotted a half dozen sails in the distance. The urge to scream churned into necessity. She checked on her company while taking a breath for a dose of air to feed her panicky screams. The body was still there, still stuck, and the curious snake gathered its slimy body in a greeting hug around her paddle, and the body’s arm and neck.

Garret formed plan B.