And the Day Came

“There is a phenomena that occurs when the truth is kept buried. It shows itself in pieces, a few clawing attempts to surface. When there is no one there to claim it and bring it into the light, it festers into something unknown and dark. Those seeking to uncover it are left with remnants to piece together into a plausible tale. When children seek the story of their parents, they tend to take responsibilities that were never meant to be theirs, and it plucks at the worried strings of their minds, until they are distracted by nothing else.”

Doris Marie Linney and her brothers called their mother Heart. “The kids called her that, shortening the name their father, Justin, gave Myrtle. He always called her “Sweetheart,” and Doris’s older brothers were calling their mother Heart before Doris was born. It might have been a forewarning, the moniker—a pet name for the role she would have. “Heart” is what her children would always have, but “mother” could not be there long—not nearly long enough. She would be their childhood memory, not their lifelong relation; therefore, they could create in their own minds the essence of Heart."

These passages are taken from And the Day Came, a novel, historical fiction to be released May, 2017. It is the true story of the childhood and coming of age of Doris Marie Linney Moore, threaded with the fiction, assumed based on the circumstances and outcomes. Many of the characters are true and the setting is true. It is the part of the story Doris Marie had trouble piecing together that is fiction. This is the story of four women, two mothers and two daughters, and the men who thought they were protecting them in the early years of the twentieth century.

It is the memories of the 1930’s through the 1980’s and a peek back at the history that brought two families together, the Linneys and the Johnsons. The Johnsons could trace their history to a Danish sea captain settling on St. Joseph’s Island of the Texas coast. The Moore girls would discover the Linneys could trace their ancestry to the Cuerbellos who came to Texas from the Canary Islands to settle San Antonio at the direction of the King of Spain. The legacy of both families would be married and concentrated in Refugio and Aransas counties on the Texas coast.

Nostalgic places visited as a child come to life on the Lamar peninsula, a place covered with magical oak trees bent at the insistence of the prevailing winds. There are still crumbling, shellcrete ruins dotting the peninsula, marking the places the Peter Johnson family must have sought shelter in during the Civil War. Captain Peter Johnson’s grandsons would mirror his determination to keep his family safe by circling their sister, Myrtle, in her time of need. Her six children, five boys and Doris Marie would retreat to their uncle Jamie’s bay house in the 1930’s following their mother’s death to discover their fates. And the day came. Available May, 2017.