A Small Town Love Story: Colonial Beach, Virginia
MIRA Books
Non-Fiction, Biography / Memoir, Non-Fiction: History
November 14, 2017
ISBN-10: 0778360989
ISBN-13: 9780778360988
Available in: e-Book, Trade Size
Part memoir, part oral history, #1 New York Times bestselling author Sherryl Woods gives us a rare and intimate look at Colonial Beach, Virginia.
Rich in narrative history and local color, A Small Town Love Story: Colonial Beach, Virginia is a homage to the town of Sherryl Woods’s past summers, a place that stole her heart long ago and provided the basis for the many fictional small towns in her bestselling novels.
True to Woods’s signature style of focusing on characters who are at the center of their communities, here she has woven together the stories of the very real people who helped shaped this seaside Virginia town. She brings us back to the days of her own family dinners—relatives of all ages crowded onto benches around a long, banquet-length table, windows open to the hot breeze as they cracked open piles of Maryland blue crabs. She artfully captures the essence of Colonial Beach and makes us yearn for small-town life.
Woods’s own memories frame the dozens of other true stories she features—from the unique history of Colonial Beach itself, to some firsthand accounts of the Oyster Wars that once consumed the fishing community, to the stories of neighborhood merchants who made it a point to know just about every customer by name. In its early days, even a town as small as Colonial Beach had family-owned grocery stores in just about every neighborhood, each with its own personality—stores like Denson’s and Sullivan’s and Ethyl’s Emporium. From farmers and fishermen to restauranteurs and hoteliers to pastors, librarians and military folk, Woods’s research and interviews give life to the personalities of a very special place.
Author of some 100 romance and mystery novels, Sherryl Woods grew up in Virginia. She divides her time between Key Biscayne, Florida and Colonial Beach, Virginia, the small, river-front town where she spent her childhood summers and where she now owns a bookstore.
A graduate of Ohio State University School of Journalism, Sherryl spent more than ten years as a journalist, most of them as a television critic for newspapers in Ohio and Florida. For several years she also coordinated a motivational program for the more than 8,000 employees at the University of Miami-Jackson Memorial Medical Center.
Her first book, RESTORING LOVE, was published in 1982 by Dell Candlelight Ecstasy under the pseudonym of Suzanne Sherrill. Her second book, SAND CASTLES, under the pseudonym of Alexandra Kirk, was published later that same year by Bantam. She began using her own name when she moved to the Second Chance at Love line at Berkley Publishing. In 1986, she began writing full-time and also began her long career at Silhouette Books with the Desire title NOT AT EIGHT, DARLING, set in the world of television which she covered for so many years.
In addition to her more than 70 romances for Silhouette Desire and Special Edition, she has written thirteen mysteries --- nine in the Amanda Roberts series and four in the Molly DeWitt series. She has also written 11 mainstreams novels, with the 11th -- THE BACKUP PLAN -- due out from MIRA Books in March, 2005 .
When she's not writing, reading or selling books, Sherryl loves to garden, though she's not at her best on a riding lawn mower. She also loves tennis, theater, and ballet, even though her top spin has long since vanished, she's never set foot on a stage, and she's way too uncoordinated to dance. She also loves baseball and claims anyone who's ever seen Kevin Costner in "Bull Durham" can understand why.