Briar S Patch

As a teenager, Roman "Bud" Marasek was shy and withdrawn, a farmer's kid who grew up to be a farmer himself. The first girl he loved was Briar Sankey, a popular girl with big, beautiful eyes and a wild clothing and makeup style. It took him years to work up the courage to ask her out, and their date was the best night of his life. But, when she never answered his calls after that and started dating the star athlete, he'd realized he'd only been wishing for the moon. Years passed, Bud fell in love with Evette, had a daughter, and his wife died unexpectedly. Raising Harper hasn't been easy alone, but at forty-seven he feels completely unprepared for being both father and mother to a moody teenage daughter with too many boyfriends and life-and-death meltdowns. He turns to Briar for help. Briar is running her mother's restaurant, has finally toned down her style, and, unbelievably, has never married and seems content to be alone. Looks are deceiving... Briar had spent her life confident she had all the time in the world to make a life for herself and any choice she wanted. At forty-seven, she no longer has the same choices. With both of her parents gone, she's the only one left to run the restaurant, her mother's legacy to the small town of Amethyst and what she considers her "patch" in the big, wide world. Additionally, the few eligible men in the area don't interest her. Letting slip an unintended faux pas, a friend of both Briar and Bud reveals to Briar that Bud has had a thirty year crush on her. Suddenly his reason for coming by the cafe nearly every day of his life takes on startling meaning. In truth, she'd barely noticed him most of the time. When he asks her for help with Harper, she can't refuse. And suddenly she's seeing Bud in a whole new light...and falling in love with the sweet, shy man who's been there all along.

Adam thought that when he and Lilly were adopted by Rachel they would never have to worry about being separated again. Now Rachel is missing and Adam finds he must go to the ends of another world to rescue her and keep whats left of his family.

This book is the story of the authors quest to understand her family history. She tries to untangle the briars of the past by tracing lines of cause and effect back to the early 1800s. As slaveholders, her South Carolina ancestors lived inside a psychological briar patch of American history. Through family documents and cultural studies, the author explores the likely results of slaveholding upon the family character as it passes from parents to children. History participates in shaping the moral psychology of a Southern family through five generations. Deep within the briar patch lies the will to survive. Belief in ones own goodness is necessary to survival. The author considers evidence of her familys self-professed virtuesphysical bravery, nurturing, and purityand locates their roots partly in slaveholding. Her family may have needed to intensify certain qualities as if they were extreme virtues, in order to reassure themselves of their own goodness while they were participating in slavery and Jim Crow. These unspoken depths of the briar patch may also have produced stories about blacks and whites that turn and twist so as to reassure whites that they were themselves good. Into the Briar Patch interrogates the roots of racism and the interplay of culture and soul. The psychological entanglements of slavery seem to have brought about both good and bad in family history, both fruit and thorns. The family tree becomes the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Each branch bends differently, and each family story sounds its own wistful, amusing, tragic, zealous, or ironic tone. Kirkus Discoveries praises the book as an expansive, accomplished memoir with succinct, rich language that rings in ones ear like a wind chime gently stirred by a slow breeze. Madelon Sprengnether, memoirist and Regents Professor of English at the University of Minnesota, writes that Into the Briar Patch is a profound meditation on the mixture of good and evil and praises the authors compelling . . . labor to achieve not only clear-eyed understanding of the past, but also compassion for all of the (living and dead) players involved. Further information about Into the Briar Patch is at http://www.mariannregan.com.

"The Briar Patch Philosopher" is a collection of wise sayings that are simple to remember. One of my favorites that I learned from my dad was, "Even the good will of a bad dog is worth something." We all face bad dogs in our work places, in our families and with our friends. By getting the good will of bad dogs on your side, you make the dog's biting you very difficult. Another of my favorite sayings from "The Briar Patch Philosopher" is, "Suffering leads to patience, patience leads to perseverance, perseverance leads to character, character leads to strength, strength leads to courage, and courage produces a happy life." We generally fail to understand why we suffer mentally, physically and/or emotionally. But once we learn what suffering is teaching us, then we can go through it and come out of it better than we've been. Life is a relatively simple game to play. All we have to do is to strive each day to be better than we've been the day before. You can use this philosophy to achieve almost any goal. In the briar patch of life, you'll encounter thorns, hurts, disappointments, various trials, danger and missteps all along the way. Also, in the briar patch of life, you'll find the true virtues that are necessary - courage, endurance, patience, faith and wisdom. If you're willing to run through the briar patch and the fires of everyday living, and you rely heavily on courage, endurance, patience, faith and wisdom, you can have a happy, successful, prosperous and meaningful life. I've always told my children, "You can learn from the lumps on my head, or you can put those same lumps on your head." The easiest way to get through the briar patch is to learn from the wisdom of others. The most-difficult way to get though the briar patch is to run through the storms, fall in the holes and get hurt, sick, disoriented and discouraged like many do. If you pay attention, the route to wisdom has the right answers for all questions before they're even asked. Wisdom can tell you which road to take, what type of employment to seek, and whether or not to test an idea or try a new business. Wisdom also can teach you when to keep your mouth shut, when to charge into danger with reckless abandon and how to be courageous. To become courageous, you must face and overcome any fear you have about anything. Once you obtain courage and face life unafraid is when you'll find true happiness. Like anyone else, I don't always do the right thing. However, these sayings help me to recognize my mistakes and often prevent me from making the same mistake again. I'm not the briar patch philosopher. I'm just the rabbit who's gone into the briar patch and tried to learn from all who have ventured into the briar patch and come out on the other side. Hopefully like me, you'll learn some wisdom to live by, gain some strength to endure and find the courage to put a smile on your face from "The Briar Patch Philosopher."

Relates how the wily Brer Rabbit outwits Brer Fox who has set out to trap him.

The strange phenomenon of 'Striking Back' is explained to a bewildered Emily Bottomsley when her newly born son is obviously not Caucasian, although both parents are.

“America's best storyteller.” —The New York Times Book Review From Edgar Award-winning author Ross Thomas comes Briarpatch, a thrilling mystery of one man’s personal mission to find justice for his family. Now the basis for the USA Network television series executive produced by Sam Esmail, creator of Mr. Robot. A long-distance call from his small Texas hometown on his birthday gives Benjamin Dill the news that his sister Felicity—born on the same day exactly ten years apart—has died in a car bomb explosion. She was a homicide detective who had perhaps made one enemy too many over the course of her career. Unwilling to let local law enforcement handle the investigation, Dill arrives in town that night to begin his dogged search for his sister’s killer. What he finds is no surprise to him as he begins to unravel town secrets, because Benjamin Dill is never surprised at what awful things people will do. Featuring an Introduction by New York Times bestselling author Lawrence Block Edgar Award Winner for Best Novel

Adam Ronoak would have lost his only relative Lilly in the foster care system if he hadn't been adopted into Rachel's family. Now his one and only legal guardian is missing, and Adam finds he must go to the end of another world to keep his family together.