Black Purse

While history waits for Exilee Sheffield to rise up strong from twentieth century oppression to grab the reins of her destiny’s purse, true love does not.

An adventurous trail ride binds Exilee to the man she loves and to another she has reason to hate. As Exilee stands over the quivering blood covered body of Jake Wilkes, with as much reason as others to want the man punished or dead and with the opportunity for revenge right in front of her pointed boot, she makes a choice that will lead to emancipation.

It's a choice carved into her like words carved into heart pine by underground runaway slaves; daunting. Words taught from one generation to the next by Native American Indians forced to forsake many customs, like wandering Mother Earth, just to survive. Words forged with spilled blood, pride and promise by Whites who marked generations with greed and betrayal. Together, these words form the psychohistory of Exilee Sheffield's Lumbee Indian blood.

Exilee shares this blood with her sister Glennie, who desperately desires the special inheritance only one of them will receive. The true gift of their childhood nanny’s black purse. Glennie knows exactly what’s inside and knows it has the power to make her famous. Glennie is a wealthy artist who paints replicas in a ritzy museum. Exilee just got fired from her college job as a horticulturalist. Now she’s a horse trainer and farm hand and has no idea of what’s inside their nanny’s black purse. All Exilee knows is the gravel in her gut and screams from her horses urges her to fight for righteousness and in the end, her life.

In the darkness, down a harrowing path, the sisters go places they never imagined, places they never wanted to return to and down into a dark timberline to a fall that cuts good from evil.

Black Purse is comparable to The Shack for message. To The Doctor’s Wife for understanding how the past, seemingly in the past, is triggered to consume sanity.