My name is Smoky Trudeau (Zeidel), and I’m the author of five books: Redeeming Grace and The Cabin; a photo-essay and poetry collection, Observations of an Earth Mage; and two books written specifically for fiction writers. I’ve been an avid reader all my life, and have written book reviews for newspapers such as the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette and magazines like SageWoman and Pan Gaia. When I’m not writing my own books, I work as a freelance book editor, and have edited hundreds of books, both fiction and nonfiction.
When I’m not writing or reading, I like to camp, hike, and explore the great outdoors with my husband Scott. I find I myself in a constant battle, fighting the urge to speak in haiku.
Smoky’s Books:
Redeeming Grace
The tragic deaths of her mother and two younger siblings have left Grace Harmon responsible for raising her sister Miriam and protecting her from their abusive father, Luther, a zealot preacher with a penchant for speaking in Biblical verse who is on a downward spiral toward insanity.
Otto Singer charms Grace with his gentle courtship and devotion to his brother, Henry. But after their marriage, Otto is unable to share with Grace the terrible secret he has kept more than twenty years. Otto believes he is responsible for a tragic accident that claimed the life of a young woman and left Henry severely brain damaged.
Luther’s insane ravings and increasingly violent behavior force Grace to question and reassess the patriarchal religious beliefs of her childhood. Then tragedy strikes just when Otto’s secret is uncovered, unleashing demons that threaten to destroy the entire family. Can Grace find the strength to save them, and in the process find her own redemption?
Redeeming Grace is set on Maryland’s eastern shore in the late 1920′s. The book will appeal to lovers of literary fiction who enjoy theological debate and who understand happy endings, in novels as in life, sometimes come at a heavy price.
The Cabin
James-Cyrus Hoffmann has just inherited his grandfather’s farm, and with it a mysterious cabin deep in the woods on Hoffmann mountain; a cabin he has dreamed about since childhood. When James-Cyrus enters the cabin, he is vaulted back through time to the Civil War era, where he meets Elizabeth, the brave young woman who lives in the cabin, and Malachi, a runaway slave. James-Cyrus realizes his dreams of the cabin were visions of the past, and that Elizabeth is his great-great aunt—a woman who vanished without a trace from the family tree. He also learns of his ancestors’ pivotal role in the lives of dozens of runaway slaves who were offered a safe haven at the cabin, a station on the underground railroad.
Cora Spellmacher, James-Cyrus’s elderly friend and neighbor, begins to unravel the secret of how he is able to make his fantastic leaps back and forth through time. In doing so, Cora begins to hope a tragic wrong from her own past can be righted, and that she can regain something precious that was lost to her many years earlier.
The dreams continue, and James-Cyrus realizes Elizabeth and Malachi are in terrible danger. With Cora’s help, James-Cyrus undertakes a daring plan of rescue that promises to rewrite his family history and change all of their lives forever.
Observations of an Earth Mage
Observations of an Earth Mage is Smoky’s tribute to our planet. Come with her to hike the forest trails of Great Smoky Mountains and Yosemite National Parks, to splash in a California tidepool, to howl at the moon with the coyotes, and to celebrate this beautiful planet we call home.
Filled with thirty-eight essays and poems and fifty-five full-color photographs, it is Smoky’s hope that Observations of an Earth Mage will entice readers to turn off their TVs and computers, put on their hiking boots or gardening shoes, and get outdoors and explore our great planet. But most of all, she hopes readers will begin to see the natural world with the eyes of someone who is a part of it, a participant, rather than as a spectator.
