Down Home by Gail Roughton

Everybody knows everybody else’s business in Turkey Creek. The town knows Maggie Kincaid hasn’t spoken to her father in twenty-five years. It knows Billy Brayton was killed in basic training after Big John Kincaid railroaded him out of town and into the army. Nobody was surprised. For sure, Big John wasn’t going to let his daughter keep time with the local bad boy. Not for long. But the town’s missing a few pieces of the puzzle. Billy Brayton’s not dead. He’s back. He’s home. And it’s payback time.

I don’t normally review two books in a row by the same author, but this book came out last week and the author just sent it to me, so I made an exception, and I’m glad I did.

I usually get to bed around two a.m., which is bad enough when I have to be at the veteran’s hospital in the morning for some sort of appointment.  It kills me when I fall asleep around four or five a.m. and I have to get up for an appointment—which happened twice this week.  Thanks, Ms. Roughton.  I kept telling myself I needed to put the book down and go to sleep, but I just couldn’t!  And I usually figure out who did it at least half-way through.  Not this time.  I didn’t figure out all the twists and turns until the very end.  Ms. Roughton actually surprised me.

Billy Brayton’s home and he’s no longer the bad boy.  In fact, he’s a lieutenant in the Sheriff’s Department with an impressive resumé as an MP in the Army, which includes K-9 duty and medals for bravery on the front lines in the Middle East.  He could probably have written his own ticket with any law enforcement agency in the country, but he chose to return to Turkey Creek.  That resumé never included a wife.  He never got over the girl whose wedding announcement he received four weeks into basic training.

Maggie Kinkaid has never married.  She adopted her college roommate’s son after his parents were killed in a car crash and has raised him, regaling him with stories of the man who would have been his adopted father, had he lived.  So while Jake is just as shocked as anyone when Billy comes home, he has no problem accepting the man as the father he never had—which is a good thing, since Maggie marries him the day after his return.

Turkey Creek appears to be a normal, quiet Southern town.  You know, the kind of place where you sneeze at one end of town and someone at the other end yells, “Bless you.”  Meanwhile, everyone in between debates whether you have a cold or if it’s just your allergies acting up again.  But there’s more to it than meets the eye.  It has a haunted cemetery that serves as a transfer point for drugs coming into the country from the Florida coast and making their way to destinations north.  Someone in town is a major drug dealer.  Billy Brayton isn’t just home to get revenge on Maggie’s father, he knows about the drug cartel and he’s determined to take it down.  He also believes the cartel is responsible for a few unsolved murders, and he plans to solve them.  Turkey Creek will not be the same when Billy gets through with it.

I highly recommend this book.  Just don’t read it at bedtime if you have to be anywhere in the morning.  I need a nap!

Length:  285 Pages

Price:  $5.95

Buy Link:  https://museituppublishing.com/bookstore2/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=568&category_id=231&manufacturer_id=194&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1

You’ll notice I always include the publisher’s buy link.  That’s because authors usually receive 40% of the book price from the publisher.  Editors and cover artists usually receive about 5%.  When you buy a book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or another third-party vendor, they take a hefty cut and the author, editors and cover artists receive their cuts from what is left.  So, if a book costs $5.99 at E-Book Publisher.com and you buy from there, the author will receive about $2.40.  If you buy the book at Amazon, the author will receive about $0.83.

Downloading the file from your computer to your Kindle is as easy as transferring any file from your computer to a USB flash drive.  Plug the USB end of your chord into a USB port on your computer and simply move the file from your “Downloads” box to your Kindle/Documents/Books directory.  I actually download my books using “Save As” to a “Books” file on my computer that’s sorted by my publisher, friends, and books “to review,” and then transfer them to my Kindle from there.  That way, if there’s a glitch with my Kindle, the books are on my computer.  Your author will be happy you did when he/she sees his/her royalty statement.