The Sleeping Night [Kindle Edition]

Barbara Samuel (Author)

Book Description

A triumphant tale of forbidden love that will delight Barbara Samuel’s many romance fans while tackling the serious issue of racism in our not-so-distant past.

An unforgettable romance in an unforgiving time.

They’ll need love and courage to see the dawn.

He's a hometown native, returning from the war, determined to change the world he'd fought to protect. She's the girl who's been his secret friend since childhood, now a beautiful woman.

Her war-time letters kept him alive. But he's black, and she's white.In 1946 in Gideon, Texas, their undeniable love might get them both killed.B

arbara Samuel is a multiple award-winning author with more than 38 books to her credit in a variety of genres. Her work has captured a plethora of awards, including six RITAs; the Colorado Center for the Book Award (twice); Favorite Book of the Year from Romance Writers of America, and the Library Journal’s list of Best Genre Fiction of the year, among many others.

Product Details

• File Size: 597 KB
• Print Length: 268 pages
• Publisher: Bell Bridge Books (June 21, 2012)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00887Q196
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #168,762 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 50 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Telling of Forbidden Romance June 23, 2012

By Kristin Anders

Format:Kindle Edition

How are the sex scenes?
Meaningful. A few leading up to scenes and some implied,
but nothing that would embarrass you at the next book club meeting.

How are the story lines?
Romantic and beautiful with heart wrenching realism about southern life during the 1940s.

This story is a beautiful telling of forbidden romance.

Angel is a stubborn, resilient character, quickly gaining the reader's respect (and in my case, awe) with her strong will and work ethic. This woman is not your damsel in distress and only relies on herself and God to change her circumstance.

Isiah is a courageous and intelligent man, accepting the things he cannot win and finding ways to help Angel despite the limitations put to him by the color of his skin. Well read, world traveled and utterly devoted, he is a practical hero, one every girl might be lucky enough to bring home to momma. Even with Angel's superwoman toughness, Isiah's bravery refuses to be overshadowed. He uses it, proving his love to Angel over and over again.

The supporting characters have great personalities and back stories of their own. When their names are mentioned, you immediately recall their life, purpose and relevance to the story.

This novel is further enhanced by Angel and Isiah's letters exchanged during the war and its accurate 1940s setting, giving a realistic view of what life was like for African Americans and people who befriended them.

"The Sleeping Night" is a refined, romantic tale. I imagine if Jane Austen wrote novels today, her stories would read a lot like Barbara Samuel's.

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Poignant story of forbidden love June 16, 2012

By Julie Kibler

Format:Paperback

Barbara Samuel's latest, The Sleeping Night, is a lovely sideline project, complementing her more recent foodie-themed novels written as Barbara O'Neal. It contains the right measure of Samuel's trademark references to baking, sensual detail, and bittersweet romance.

The Sleeping Night explores the story of a young white woman who sees beyond skin color to fall for her childhood playmate, and a young African-American man who returns from the battlefields of World War II, where decreased racism and letters from his childhood friend sustained him, to the unchanged battlefield of his hometown. You will laugh and cry and root for Angel and Isaiah as they face prejudice and violence in post World War II Texas. I love anything by Samuel (whether written as Samuel or O'Neal), and this was no exception.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Barbara Samuel at her best June 17, 2012

By Judith Arnold

Format:Paperback

The splendor of Barbara Samuel's writing--her lush, sensuous prose, her attention to the earthy details of life, her strong-willed, complex characters and their struggles to connect with one another--are all on radiant display in The Sleeping Night. This book adds another element to the mix: the overt racism of small-town Texas in the years before, during and after World War II. Despite that racism, Angel and Isaiah form a childhood friendship that ripens into love as Isaiah joins the allied forces in England and Angel tries, with less than stellar success, to become a proper white lady who fits into the stultifying and bigoted society in which she finds herself. Can Angel and Isaiah overcome the limitations of that society? More important, can they overcome their own deeply embedded fears? Can they allow their love to blossom, knowing that in that place, in that era, their love could cost them their property, their safety, even their lives? This book will make you weep, and it will make you cheer. It will make you believe in the fierce power of love.

More About the Author

When she was 15, Barbara Samuel wrote in her diary that she wanted to "write books, see the world, and be happy." She's delighted to be still working on all three.

The beloved romance and women's fiction writer has won the highly prestigious RITA award from Romance Writers of America 7 times and has been recently inducted into the RWA Hall of Fame. In the tradition of Kristin Hannah, Susan Wiggs, Maeve Binchy, and Barbara Freethy, she writes a highly emotional stories about families, food, dogs, and love. Many of her novels include recipes, and she has been known to cook in response to any stressful situation, learning that cooking is like life--sometimes things go wrong, but if you keep trying, eventually you'll get it right.

She also writes as Barbara O'Neal for Bantam books, where she has penned the award-winning The Lost Recipe For Happiness and How To Bake A Perfect Life, which was a Target Book Club Pick in 2011. She also wrote five titles of romantic women's fiction for Ballantine Books, including No Place Like Home, The Goddesses of Kitchen Avenue and Lady Luck's Map of Vegas. Her books have been translated into many languages and published widely around the world, including France, England, Poland, Australia, Italy, Germany, Brazil, and many others.

Barbara lives in the stunningly beautiful city of Colorado Springs with her beloved, a British endurance athlete who vows he'll never loose his accent, and a houseful of rescue animals, including a pair of tuxedo sibling cats, a muscular cross-eyed lilac-point Siamese (found wandering! Really!) and a chow-newfoundland mix who knows he is the most gloriously beautiful dog on earth, because he is told this is true many times a day. She loves gardening, even if gardens and mountain living are an uneasy mix, hiking, Zumba, reading and reading and reading, and loves travel partly because it gives her more time to stick her nose in a book. She's managed to make it to eight countries so far, and hundreds of cities, but hopes to get that number a LOT higher.

She loves to talk with readers. Find her around the web in these avenues:

Websites: http://barbarasamuel.com and http://barbaraoneal.com
Blog: http://awriterafoot.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BarbaraSamuelONeal
Twitter: https://twitter.com/barbaraoneal
The Goddess Blogs: http://thegoddessblogs.com