About the Book

Book: Fences Left Broken Author: Kristen Terrette Genre: YA Release Date: October 13, 2023

Mia’s father is dead, and her mother has left her in the rural Mississippi Delta town of Marigold with family she’s never known. Her two sets of grandparents are separated not only by a fence dividing their properties, but by skin color and a deep-seated hatred for each other which none of them will discuss. When Mia learns their mutual hatred concerns a long-ago murder, she and her new friends set out to uncover who was murdered and why. Their search leads them to unspoken secrets and buried tragedies, stretching from the years of the Great Depression to the Freedom Summer Movement of ‘64. Mia hopes to reconcile her grandparents by finding the truth. But can broken family fences be truly mended in the face of decades of unforgiving hate?

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About the Author

With a background in education and theology, Kristen served as a children’s ministry director and women’s leader for many years before returning to her first love—writing the stories playing out in her head. She dove into the publishing world writing numerous articles, devotionals, and novels in both the Romance and Young Adult genres. After managing an international blog and a publishing house’s social media feed, she found herself as an intern at the esteemed literary agency, Writers House, in the summer of 2022. This landed her a job with Martin Literary Management where she now takes on author clients of her own. Stories are her thing and authors are her people. When not on her computer writing, editing, or emailing, or with her nose in a book, you can find her getting a little too loud from the sidelines of a kids’ basketball or football game. She’s also a recent transplant to rural Georgia where she thrives on jogging her forty acres terribly, drinking coffee while birdwatching, and daydreaming of new book characters, plotlines, and making her client’s dreams come true (which are her dreams as well).

More from Kristen

All you need is a spark. When people find out I’m an author or have read one of my books, I’m often asked how I came up with the story. My answer is always the same. They all begin with a spark, a small idea, sometimes even taking root first in a remote corner of my mind, that says, “There’s a story there.” And that one spark lights, then it quadruples, over and over until it ends up a bright and thriving fire. The spark for Fences Left Broken was a documentary from 2016 called Dirt & Deeds in Mississippi which told of “the largely unknown and pivotal role played (in the Freedom Sumer Movement and the Voting Rights Act) by black landowning families in the deep South who controlled over a million acres in the 1960s.” This documentary was fascinating and linked generations who had no idea just how important they would end up being in a much-needed and changing time in history. Black sharecroppers who benefitted from an agricultural program during Roosevelt’s New Deal became landowners overnight. Skip ahead a few decades, and these same landowners, or their heirs, had the power to force change. In the sixties, Mississippi law said that if you were a landowner, you could vote, which opened doors for black families. But, also, these black landowners had leverage. Land was king. Land was also collateral. So when Freedom Summer came along and the wave of black Southerners tried to register to vote, these black landowners had a unique advantage. Blacks and whites who were volunteering for the Freedom Summer Movement were arrested, often on bogus charges like disrupting the peace and put in jail. But guess what? Black landowners put their land titles up as collateral and got these people out on bond. Even crazier, out of the hundreds of arrests and bail bonds issued that summer, not ONE failed to follow through and appear in court. Not ONE person charged with a bogus crime was found in default, their bail revoked, and the bond kept. This means not ONE black family who put their land up as collateral lost it. Historians have gone so far as to say the success of Freedom Summer and the result of the Voting Rights Act wouldn’t have been possible without these families risking it all for the sake of justice and equality. This documentary was my spark. I got to thinking about these families. They were real people, now generations of people, living in these intertwined communities. What would this have looked like through the years? What became of these families? Where are they now? And the rabbit trail of my mind began. That spark ignited, and I followed it, outlining potential events that could have happened to families in Mississippi before and after the 1960s, and it all led to my main character, Mia. And Fences Left Broken was born. I hope you enjoyed learning some little-known history, and a little tidbit of my writing inspiration. And I hope you are curious to find out more about Mia’s story!

Interview with the Author

Do you read books in this genre? If so, who do you like to read?

I do read in lots of genres, but the one I read the most is this one- YA! I’m currently into Adrienne Young, Rebecca Ross, Holly Jackson, Karen McManus, John Green, and Court Stevens.

If a reader were to ask you what author you are like, what would you answer?

Goodness, I don’t know! I’ve yet to find a Young Adult novel that does what I do by going back in a character’s family line for multiple generations and showing the history there. Many do this in adult fiction, but in YA, I’ve not found one that feels like “me.” Readers, please let me know if you’ve read one!

What helps you to write? Do you eat snacks, listen to music?

I always have the TV on. I need noise around me. When it’s too quiet, my creativity is too!

If you could travel back in time, what time period would you go to?

This is easy. The sixties. I would have loved to be a part of the civil rights movement. It would have been heartbreaking in many ways, but I would have loved to have volunteered at Freedom Summer or gone to the March for Jobs and Freedom. I would have loved to have heard Dr. King speak live. I can write about these things in my books, but I wish I had firsthand experience.

What is your favorite book and why?

This changes all the time! But, today, I’m going to go with Hidden Places by Lynn Austin.

What is your favorite hymn and why?

I have attended a very contemporary, non-denominational church my whole adult life. I love worship music and listen to it daily. That being said, I don’t remember too many names of hymns from my childhood, but I’ve always loved Amazing Grace. It’s just perfection in a song.

What is one thing readers would be surprised to learn about you?

I’ve had many careers before landing in the publishing world (my favorite one of all and where I’ll stay until I can’t physically type anymore!). I was an elementary school teacher, real estate agent, small business owner, and children’s pastor before I started writing full time.

What inspired you to write this book?

Watching a documentary started it all, revealing the little-known historical facts of the massive role Mississippi landowners played in the Civil Rights Movement and Freedom Summer. In the 1930s, sharecroppers became some of the first black landowners under Roosevelt’s New Deal and became essential to the civil rights movement. The documentary is called Dirt and Deeds in Mississippi (https/vimeo.com/ondemand/dirtanddeeds/). As I watched it, I couldn’t help but think, there’s a story here… And this thought led me to think about all the families before and after the 30s and 60s this would’ve affected. And so, the story of Mia was born.

Share with me a few of your favorite things.

Popcorn (all flavors), coffee (any and all!), icing, jogging, hiking my property, the beach, basketball games, & pajamas!

What is one question you would like readers to ask you? What would be your answer?

Maybe: Why is it important to write reviews?

My answer: Reviews help us to sell books. They help the algorithms feed the search engines when someone is looking for their next read. I never once thought about how important a book review was until I was an author. If you like a book, or even “sort-of” liked a book, one of the best things you can do to support that author is leave a review.