The Boardinghouse: A Return To Ivy Log

Paula Jennings considers herself the epitome of Southern aristocracy as she lords over the residents of Ivy Log, a small Appalachian hamlet high in the Georgia mountains. In Paula’s eyes, only she has the wisdom--and the authority--to decide the replacement for the venerable Reverend Cobb, who passed away unexpectedly after ministering to the community for decades.

The Reverend William Johnson possesses a doctorate from the Harvard Divinity School, along with outstanding references. A phone interview, in which Paula finds his perfect elocution and the power in his voice a joy to behold, makes her decision easy. Great fanfare attends the day of the new pastor’s arrival, orchestrated of course by Paula. And when William Johnson walks through the doorway of Pyune Murphy’s family restaurant--The Boardinghouse--the one spot in Ivy Log where anyone who is anybody eats and whiles away the time in this almost all-white town--there is just one problem: William Johnson is black as midnight.

The Boardinghouse, with its romantic underpinnings, extends beyond race and small-minded prejudice. The down-home, warm narrative takes the reader into the heart and soul of the mixed-race owner of The Boardinghouse and her simple but elegant representation of life as not black nor white but somewhere in-between. Along the way, Ivy Log’s truths are revealed; some good and some bad, but always unexpected, not the least being that the “thought-to-be-perfect” deceased preacher had a lover.

The characters in The Boardinghouse will send you on a wild ride down the snow-covered mountains to the New York headquarters of Bakers' World Magazine and on to the campus of Harvard University before ultimately returning to the hot fires of The Boardinghouse kitchen -- as one way or another peace returns to Ivy Log . . . or does it?