We’re thrilled to have here today Reed Jackson from Holly Bush’s new book, Reconstructing Jackson. Reed is a 32-year-old lawyer from Fenton, Missouri.
It is a pleasure to have Reed with us today at Beyond the Books!
Thank you so for this interview, Reed. Now that the book has been written, do you feel you were fairly portrayed or would you like to set anything straight with your readers?
This author was unduly critical of my mood early on in the book. I’d lost a leg in battle, lost my plantation and heritage to younger brother and my fiancé to boot. I was well within my rights to be cantankerous!
Do you feel the author did a good job colorizing your personality? If not, how would you like to have been portrayed differently?
She did not give me near the credit I deserved for traveling by train hundreds of miles with complete strangers and having to rely on their kindness to navigate any uneven landscape or building at our inevitable stops and delays. I was the image of humbleness.
What do you believe is your strongest trait?
My intelligence and good looks.
Worse trait?
Pride and stubbornness.
If you could choose someone in the television or movie industry to play your part if your book was made into a movie, who would that be (and you can’t say yourself!)?
Why, Val Kilmer in his Doc Holiday days, of course. He looks a fair bit like me, although not as manly.
Do you have a love interest in the book?
I do. Belle Richards.
At what point of the book did you start getting nervous about the way it was going to turn out?
When outlaws started shooting at me and at those nearest and dearest to me.
If you could trade places with one of the other characters in the book, which character would you really not want to be and why?
Beulah Freeman. Let’s just say that Beulah got mixed up with something unpleasant.
How do you feel about the ending of the book without giving too much away?
I very much like the end of the book. It is an update to my dear, sainted Mama, whom I miss most desperately.
What words of wisdom would you give your author if she decided to write another book with you in it?
I would wish she would make sure to explain to our readers that my bride is the reason for my continued success and the very heart and soul of our family. I am nothing, was nothing, without her.
Thank you for this interview, Reed. Will we be seeing more of you in the future?
I certainly hope not. As a southern gentleman, my privacy and the privacy of my family, trumps the rights of usurpers telling our very personal intimacies. Good day to you!
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Holly Bush was born in western Pennsylvania to two avid readers. There was not a room in her home that did not hold a full bookcase. She worked in the hospitality industry, owning a restaurant for twenty years and recently worked as the sales and marketing director in the hospitality/tourism industry and is credited with building traffic to capacity for a local farm tour, bringing guests from twenty-two states, booked two years out. Holly has been a marketing consultant to start-up businesses and has done public speaking on the subject.
Holly has been writing all of her life and is a voracious reader of a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction, particularly political and historical works. She has written four romance novels, all set in the U.S. West in the mid 1800’s. She frequently attends writing conferences, and has always been a member of a writer’s group.
Holly is a gardener, a news junkie, and was the vice-president of her local library board for years. She loves to spend time near the ocean and is the proud mother of two daughters and the wife of a man more than a few years her junior.
Her latest book is the historical fiction, Reconstructing Jackson.
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1867 . . . Southern lawyer and Civil War veteran, Reed Jackson, returns to his family’s plantation in a wheelchair. His father deems him unfit, and deeds the Jackson holdings, including his intended bride, to a younger brother. Angry and bitter, Reed moves west to Fenton, Missouri, home to a cousin with a successful business, intending to start over.
Belle Richards, a dirt poor farm girl aching to learn how to read, cleans, cooks and holds together her family’s meager property. A violent brother and a drunken father plot to marry her off, and gain a new horse in the bargain. But Belle’s got other plans, and risks her life to reach them.
Reed is captivated by Belle from their first meeting, but wheelchair bound, is unable to protect her from violence. Bleak times will challenge Reed and Belle’s courage and dreams as they forge a new beginning from the ashes of war and ignorance.
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