#BookSpotlight – “Who Can Find A Virtuous Woman?” by Michal Scott

Who Can Find A Virtuous Woman? by Michal Scott, one of seven steamy stories in Falling Hard

Blurb:

Losing her virginity is free-born Eve Richardson’s only hope of escape from marriage to an insufferable fundamentalist preacher. In need of a knight in shining armor she finds a potential candidate in straightlaced Madison Dugger, the first of his family born outside of slavery. Madison does find Eve desirable. He has wanted her for as long as he’s known her. But what she’s asking him to do runs too close to his family’s painful history with slavery. To her dismay, he refuses. She must overcome his objections and soon. Otherwise she’s doomed to a life as a virtuous woman. 

Buylink: https://books2read.com/u/mdDP7O

Excerpt:

Brilliant oranges, reds and yellows decorated Eve Richardson’s neighborhood with the wondrous beauty of Fall. The welcome warmth of Indian summer arrived with the last week in October. Unfortunately, so had Reverend Hiram Quansah. He’d come on Monday for the upcoming weekend’s All Saints commemoration. By Friday, the ache caused by his company was worse than a migraine.

Currently, the minister sat in a wicker chair on her parents’ front porch. He perched there as if seated on a throne and held court. The evils of ice cream sodas his latest cause for pontification.

“These soda fountain contraptions have become a sinful pleasure not fit for consumption on the Lord’s day. We clergy are working hard to get them banned.”

“Banned?” Eve’s mother asked. “Forever?”

“I wish,” Quansah replied. “No. But a number of municipalities have succeeded in forbidding them on Sundays.”

He snorted disdainfully through nostrils that could have been found on a buffalo. Despite his light-skinned complexion, Quansah’s broad head and bearded face leant him the appearance of one of the woolly behemoths.

What rock had this man crawled out from under? He was thirty, but in mentality he was old as Methuselah. Eve massaged her temples. Didn’t he know it was 1898? For gosh sakes, the achievements of African-descended people spanned the decade. Six years ago Sissieretta Jones had performed in Carnegie Hall. The year before that Dr. Daniel Hale had established his own hospital. By 1893 he had successfully performed open-heart surgery. Then only two years later  W.E.B. DuBois became the first man of color to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University. If entertainment, medicine and education could be so progressive, why did religion remain so backward?

Reverend Quansah pursed his lips and scowled.

“There’s only one reason to add soda water and syrup to ice cream.” He filled the air with a dramatic pause. “To create unwholesome thoughts in those who imbibe them.”

Could anything be more insufferable than listening to this man’s fundamentalist rantings? 

About Author: 

Michal Scott is the erotic romance pen name of Anna Taylor Sweringen, a retired United Church of Christ and Presbyterian Church USA minister. Inspired by the love mystics of Begijn, Audre Lourde and Bell Hooks, Rev. Anna writes erotica and erotic romance with a faith arc, hoping to build a bridge between the sacred and secular, spirituality and sexuality, erotica and Christ, you and a well-written spiritually-stimulating and erotically-arousing story. She uses story settings to give insight into the African American experience in the US. 

Website: https://michalscott.webs.com

Twitter: @mscottauthor1

Amazon Author Page: https://amzn.to/2TSHzRn