Hazeline provided me a labor of love. For 16 years she enhanced my life as I researched local history and paced the story’s details — while also keeping a busy schedule leading writing groups and editing other folks’ manuscripts.
It’s 1937 and Hazeline Morrison is a grieving sharecropper’s widow on a cotton farm in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. She earns a bit of money as a seamstress, and does laundry for the landowner’s family in iron pots set over a fire. Other parts of the county have electric power but lines are just being run in this north end. The sharecroppers will not get electricity, but the landowner will, and she fears he will buy an electric washing machine and she will get her hand caught in the wringer.
Two years ago her beloved Joshua died. Now she lives with the fear that Mister Robbins will decide to move a family of workers into her little house. Then what would she do? Where could she go?
Hazeline is now available on Amazon!
Praise for Hazeline
I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed your book. Your character was so real, so compelling. I enjoyed it and was so sorry to get to the end.
Ann
Barbara Kidd Lawing’s Hazeline is a story of the past, the present and the future. The main character, Hazeline Morrison, is a poor black woman living the best she can in the 1930s. Spoken from her thoughts as she goes through her days and remembers her past, the tone of the story gently sways from peaceful & accepting to filled with emotional torment. At times, the thoughts are almost poetic. Often they are laced with the questions we all have about life and faith and purpose. One thought leads to another, as our own do. Hazeline will become, for the readers, as real and relatable as any person they know.
Carolyn
The book was a labor of love to history and it shows in the depth of the character and the attention to detail in the pages!
Brenda
Thank you for bringing her to all of us. She is a little bit you, a little bit me, and a lot of all of us women, isn’t she? I’m honored to get to know her!
Anne
Barbara’s rejoicing! . . . Her novel is done!!
What joy!—and joy to anticipate other folks getting to know Hazeline. The first two readers gave the manuscript top marks. Check back later for news of when the book’s on the market.
Barbara Kidd Lawing grew up on a farm in North Carolina north of Charlotte and spent as much time as possible reading—thanks to an understanding British mother who took her to the library when she was so young she had to hold to mother’s hand. Barbara still loves reading: a bit of fiction and a lot of philosophy, history, and poetry.
In the 1980s Barbara taught Creative Writing in Contd. Ed. at Central Piedmont Community College. Many students wanted her to review their work line by line (not in the job description) so eventually she grew her own business. She is a copyeditor.
Also since the 1990s she’s been leading weekend retreats and freewrite circles.
She wishes you “good writing” – for creativity is good for the soul…aids us in continuing to grow and mature to the human being we are capable of becoming.
Barbara Kidd Lawing704-998-8253
bklawing@earthlink.net
Update
The COVID threat has me staying close to home.
At home I work at my computer — so if you’re needing a review or assistance with writing — or ready for a full edit of your completed manuscript, be in touch by phone: 704-998-8253.
I am currently leading several writing sessions via Zoom.com, and will gladly lead others if there’s interest.
Best to all of you, my writer buddies — and to those of you I haven’t yet met.