Arkansas Books Winter’s Reckoning

By Erin Wood

Debut central Arkansas novelist Dr. Adele Holmes was a practicing pediatrician before retiring to write Winter’s Reckoning, released this fall. 

In pre-publication, it won honorable mention in the William Faulkner Literary Competition and first place in the Chanticleer International Book Awards—Goethe Award. 

Her book’s protagonist, Madeline Fairbanks, is an early 1900s herbalist healer in the American South whose progressive views about race, education, and women’s rights are not well-received, leaving her struggling against an increasingly conservative, and at times malevolently dangerous, community. 

When a charismatic and power-hungry new reverend blows into town in 1917 and begins to preach about the importance of racial segregation, the long-idle local KKK chapter fires back into action, placing Maddie and her friends in Jamesville’s Black community squarely in their sights, and setting the stage for Maddie to decide whether she’ll bow and walk away or protect the future of those she loves. 

Travel to all seven continents is what Holmes credits for her drive to make a difference in the world through writing. She feels especially drawn to causes involving children, racial discrimination, and women’s rights. 

Signed copies of Winter’s Reckoning are available at Wordsworth Books and Galleries and Books at Library Square in Little Rock, and unsigned copies are available through major online retailers

Hot Springs native, Erin Wood is a writer, editor, and publisher in Little Rock. She owns and runs (www.etaliapress.com). Wood is author of “Women Make Arkansas: Conversations With 50 Creatives” (April 2019) and editor of and a contributor to “Scars: An Anthology” (2015).