by Pat SpencerPublish: Oct 15, 2024Historical FictionLiterary FictionAfrican American Interest
Book Overview
Sticks in a Bundle is a trilogy that reveals a history of racial injustice many know little about, as experienced by a young woman trying to understand it herself. Eshile Mthembu, born of Xhosa, Zulu, and Dutch descent, grows up in a Soweto shanty in the heart of South Africa’s apartheid rule. She lives with fear and discrimination in a society that regulates her family’s every move and prevents achievement of their dreams. Despite cultural, religious, and linguistic differences, Eshile’s family bases their love and forgiveness on the African proverb: Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable.
The roads she travels lead to danger and loss, self-discovery and sacrifice as she navigates the risks of fighting apartheid. She craves to be a journalist, but publishing her thoughts and words is illegal. The penalty is years in prisons known for unexplained deaths. Thus, when Eshile’s Xhosa ancestors choose her as the family’s matriarch, she understands she can’t do both. She must decide which life to live.
When I settled in my seat for the dusty, bone-jarring bus ride from Johannesburg to Zimbabwe, the last thing I expected was for my seatmate to tell me stories from her life that forever changed mine. It is my honor to recount her story, to the best of my ability, in her own words.
Fans of novels such as “Demon Copperhead”; “Half of a Yellow Sun”; “Vera: The Novel”; and “The Color Purple” will gravitate to the tumultuous and inspiring life of Eshile Mthembu in the Sticks in a Bundle trilogy.
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BIOGRAPHY Dr. Pat Spencer has a lifetime of experience publishing fiction and nonfiction. Her historical fiction novel, Golden Boxty in the Frypan, inspired by her mother’s coming-of-age experiences during the 1930s, is published with Pen It Publications. Her textbook is published by Milady/Cengage Learning. Pat also indie-published A Baker’s Dozen For Writers: 13 Tips for Great Storytelling and Story of a Stolen Girl, an International thriller. Her literary fiction trilogy, Sticks in a Bundle, is contracted for a three-book debut.
Pat’s short story, A Healing Place, won the 2019 Oceanside Literary Festival. Other short stories and articles are published in journals such as the Literary Yard, Scarlet Leaf Review, Potato Soup Journal, Almost an Author, Vine Leaves Press, and Academy of the Heart and Mind, and in a California Writers Circle anthology. Pat authored a column in the Press-Enterprise newspaper and served as a columnist and contributing editor to Inland Empire Magazine.
She lived in three countries and seven states. Pat loves to travel and spent time in South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Spain, France, Croatia, New Zealand, Australia, Italy, Greece, Mexico, the Galapagos, and the Bahamas, as well as Alaska and the Hawaiian Islands and road-tripping across the continental United States several times. She enjoys getting to know people and learning about their culture.
Dr. Spencer, a retired professor and community college president, lives in Southern California with her husband. She speaks to service and community organizations on human trafficking, writing processes, and her books. When not writing, Pat golfs, reads, walks the beach, hangs out with family and friends, or frequents book clubs and writing critique groups.