Loving Isabel

Welcome to Loving Isabel, Book 3 of the exciting series by Glenn Stewart.Chasing Sally, book 1 was released in 2022, with Raising Courageous, book 2 of the series published in 2023.The Chasing Sally-trilogy continues in Loving Isabel when the historic Brown vs the Board of Education ruling, and an emboldened Civil Rights movement lead by a 26-year-old, Black minister from Montgomery, threaten an end to the White-segregationists’ way of life. As Jim Crow begins to crumble, the diverse and growing Lucy H family is forced into a confrontation with the local school board, corrupt lawmen, the Black Codes, and the Ku Klux Klan ---with shocking results.  Annie’s determination to protect her blended family from social and political upheaval runs head-on into the idealism of a young reporter from the North, and her most formidable opponent so far---The New York Times.About the Trilogy'Bigotry isn’t an opinion, it’s a weapon in search of a target.'----Sally Anne, Loving IsabelThe Chasing Sally trilogy chronicles the life and times of an extended-’family’ from the year 1914 to 1954 in Jim Crow South Louisiana. The story begins with the Harrisons, a White family of 3 for whom the town ’Harrisonville’ is named. In Chasing Sally (Book One), the small family quickly grows to include Emma Williams, a young Black mother, who, until she met the protagonist, Sally Anne Harrison, was alone raising her 6 children in nearly impossible poverty. Together the Harrisons’ and the Williams’ build a secure, happy life on the sprawling Lucy H Thoroughbred horse ranch. Chasing Sally is in part a human-love-of-animals tale. The profound love of horses shared by the residents is an allegory for the love they share for one another.The harsh reality of second-class citizenship for non-white citizens, especially African Americans is on full-display in the Sally trilogy, but it is not the point of the story. The story is about a diverse-group of human beings who create a refuge where the color divide is not a factor in choosing who they love, and with whom they share a home.The Lucy H is no utopia and no fantasy, quite the contrary. The story rings-true, and is entirely believable precisely because there are in reality good people in the world. On the Lucy H, self-aware, but flawed human-beings try to do the right thing in a society determined to divide them by skin color, religion, and ancestral heritage. In book two, Raising Courageous, a Jewish man from New Jersey, Dr. Brian Gold, PhD joins the Lucy H family. Brian realizes that the Lucy H is precariously hidden, and an easy target for racial and religious bigots. He fears that the Lucy H community is in imminent danger of being ’discovered’ by the wider-world, and he vows to fight for his new-found family.Book Three, Loving Isabel, is set in the early 1950’s, when the old order is finally beginning to crumble. The Ku Klux Klan, local law-enforcement, and Russian mobsters target the Lucy H community, forcing the family to protect with their wit and their lives what they’ve built. They face inexplicable hatred, Russian machine guns, and white-hooded men bearing a giant, flaming Cross---When mortal danger arrives at the gates of their beloved Lucy H, the unlikely-family must prove that what they share is more powerful than the forces determined to destroy them.