Bella Fontaine has dreamed of witnessing the spectacle of a total eclipse of the sun for many years. In July of 2010, she has the opportunity to travel to Easter Island in the Polynesian triangle off the coast of Chile go there and fulfill her dream. While gazing into the heavens, she thinks how her life has been like the darkness of the sun during the eclipse, and her thoughts take her back. As a child she endured an abusive relationship with her mother. Her father, a prosperous doctor in McMinnville, Tennessee, leaves home and is never heard from. When her mother dies suddenly she feels all alone. As a young woman she is raped, and becomes pregnant. Unwilling to have an abortion, she heeds the advise of her dying grandmother and gives up her son for adoption. Encouraged and endowed by her Christian grandmother, she attends college in Knoxville and becomes a nurse to use her talents to help others. But the shadows of her abuse cover her like a dark quilt. Her fondest dream would be to find her estranged father. And what happened to her son? Read this amazing story of grit and resolve and discover Bella's destiny.

Beyond the Thistle Patch is a nostalgic visit to the rural Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina and Northeastern Georgia during the 1950s and '60s. It unveils the tender autobiographical story of the author's childhood and his journey through innocence to come to grips with the world into which he is being thrust A great book for young teens, and anyone who lived in that magical era.