Books by Laraine Herring

How far would you go to protect someone you love? Nothing is black or white in the murky town of Alderman, North Carolina, no matter how much the human and ghostly residents of Idyllic Grove Rice Plantation would like it to be. In 1949, fourteen-year-old Lillian Green witnesses the unthinkable. Her choice to remain silent about what she saw ripples into the swamp water surrounding her family's home, awakening the ghost of Roberta du Bois, former rice plantation mistress, who drowned herself in the swamp in 1859. Roberta and Lillian forge a bond based on shame, silence, and an impenetrable loneliness. When Lillian's daughter Hannah is born into the maze of haunted hallways, Lillian has no interest in raising her. Left alone, Hannah discovers Roberta as well as her own exceptional singing voice. The tangled storylines of the three women rooted to this Southern landscape pull the reader into the layers of racism, family loyalties, and hidden relationships that intertwine as naturally as the kudzu that covers the trees where the Swamp Sirens sing. When the truth about what Lillian saw surfaces, no one, living or dead, can prevent what must come next.

What if writer's block became your most precious teacher? An empowering new process for writers who struggle with the seemingly insurmountable middle of a project, from the author of Writing Begins with the Breath. Writer's block. If you are a writer, you know it can be a haunting, terrifying force-a wolf at the door, a vast conspiracy, something that keeps you up at night, spinning your wheels, going nowhere. But what if we've been thinking about writer's block all wrong? What if, by paying attention to its qualities and inquiring into its hidden gifts, we can release that power?On Being Stuck is an empowering guide to working with your blocks and finding the friend within the beast. Using deep inquiry, writing prompts, body and breath exercises, and a range of interdisciplinary approaches,On Being Stuck will help you uncover the gifts hidden within your creative blocks, while also deepening your relationship to your work and reawakening your creative process.