Embedded Files
by Brenda Sparks Prescott
by Brenda Sparks Prescott
It’s 1962. Betty Ann Johnson is an African American military spouse on an Air Force base outside Washington, DC. Sisters Lola, Chita, and Rosita are the proud keepers of the Montero name in Matanzas, Cuba.
Betty Ann gets wind that military preparations are ramping up for something more than just practice drills. Fearing that the Soviet presence in Cuba has become a tangible threat, she and a small band of military spouses, without telling their husbands, put together an evacuation plan for their children. At the same time in Cuba, Lola is asked to cook for the Soviet soldiers amassing there and accidentally witnesses a Soviet missile installation. She tells her sisters, and they devise a way to send their children to Florida on a boat, while keeping this plan from their husbands.
Betty Ann Johnson and the Montero sisters may be on opposite sides of a life-threatening conflict, but they share the same heart when it comes to protecting their children.
"Prescott’s descriptions of daily life around the U.S. airbase and in dilapidated Cuba all feel true. Her prose and plotting are spare but effective, and the storylines, character development, and settings never bog down. Home Front Lines is an unusual rendering of a dangerous time and will engage readers from its first page to the 'thriller' ending." — Historical Novels Review
“Through psychologically complex characters facing a charged, historical moment, Brenda Sparks Prescott vividly exposes our competing allegiances to country, family, truth, desire, and our evolving visions of ourselves.” — Helen Elaine Lee, author of Water Marked and The Serpent’s Gift and Director of MIT’s Program in Women’s and Gender Studies
“Through an ingenious layering of episodes, Home Front Lines unfolds a rich fabric of characters. Prescott’s deceptively simple presentation creates a vivid and timeless story, woven out of a masterful fascination for detail, relationships, and the dynamics of power.” — Laura Nash, author and expert on women’s leadership
"I really liked the way this book was told. The writing was well done, the characters were well developed and the world building was amazingly well done. The story itself grips you at the beginning and doesn’t let go until the end." — PottheButterfly Reads
Details
Details
Bink Books
236 pp. ● 6×9
$16.95 (pb) ● $9.99 (eb)
ISBN 978-1-949290-53-0 (pb)
FICTION / African American / Historical
FICTION / War & Military
FICTION / Historical / General
Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962
Publication date: March 2020
“Battle Lines Redrawn: On gender and race in Brenda Sparks Prescott’s debut novel, Home Front Lines” — by Andy Shi, Bloom
“Q&A with Brenda Sparks Prescott, Author of Home Front Lines” — Let Them Read Books
“Brenda Sparks Prescott Interview – Home Front Lines” — JeanBookNerd
“PageTurners: Finding Historical Perspective In Literary Work” — The Root
"Interview with Brenda Sparks Prescott about her debut novel Home Front Lines" — Solstice Magazine
"Spotlight Sunday: Brenda Prescott Talks The Feelings of Uncertainty That Led To Her Novel" — We Are Entertainment News
Brenda Sparks Prescott lives and writes in eastern Massachusetts and southern Vermont. A graduate of both Harvard University and the Stonecoast MFA in creative writing program, Brenda’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in publications such as The Louisville Review, Crab Orchard Review, Portland Magazine, and the anthology Soap Opera Confidential.
Brenda has worked at major institutions in higher education and in fundraising for three decades, most recently in donor relations at Harvard University. The founder of Brenda Prescott Coordinates, an artist management company, she is also co-chief editor of Solstice Literary Magazine, an advisory board member for the Solstice MFA in creative writing program, and a founding member of Simply Not Done, a women’s writing collaborative. Brenda’s family has a long history of military service, with records stretching back to the Civil War.
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