Temper the Winds by Wilma Hamill

In a small town southern setting in 1943, “Temper the Winds” is a storyabout a widow swept up by the whirlwinds of fate. When Maggie Clay’s husband dies in a TB sanitarium, she is left with Jenny and Josey, and two dollars and thirty-four cents. Financially and emotionally set-back, she is taken by her father, Claude, to a farm life she despises, a site where she is unloved by her mother, Leona, and shielded by her father, both harboring a long kept secret about Maggie’s conception. Joseph Jameson has no intention after finishing medical school to do his father’s bidding by working by his side, practicing medicine in the one-horse town of Enfield. Nor does he plan to stayunder his father’s thumb. Could literally bumping into a young and beautiful Maggie change his mind? Sara Windley, the sixteen year old daughter of millionaire Emmitt Windley, is hidden away in a shack in the woods for several months. Is it any wonder that sheemerges phobic and a border line psychotic? “Temper the Winds” has a strong cast of colorful characters with conflicts of their own, bringing mystery, and a violent hatred, strangling Maggie’s hope for success, independence, and dreams of a new love. With almost audible southern accents, the characters come alive with touching realism…real smiles and heart rending tears, bringing Maggie to life in yet another story of powerful winds in the south.