Sweet Southern Boys -- Excerpt

Sweet Southern Boys is the sequel to Southern Man. The manuscript is about fifty percent complete. Here's  the blurb and an excerpt, the opener. Enjoy! And e-mail me your comments!

Shelby and the Other-Brothers ....

Shelby Kincaid, Randy Stevenson and John Mark Jordan have been best friends since grade school. Growing up in a small town in south Georgia, they have watched out for Shelby's little sister, Ainsley, and butted heads with Shelby's rival, Wesley Bratcher, a Northern-transplant. They've hunted and fished, played football, studied and learned, worked and worshipped -- together. The sons of close-knit families, they have been raised to be responsible, to revere God, and to love.

But when they are seniors in high school, they are charged with unspeakable crimes. Branded as criminals in headlines from coast to coast, persecuted by the justice system, abandoned by their community, their lives shattered and their futures jeopardized, they have nowhere to turn but themselves, their families and their faith.

Sweet Southern Boys is a tale of what happens when societal watchdogs run amok and political correctness carries more weight than truth.

___________________________

Sweet Southern Boys

by

Connie Chastain

Excerpt

Prologue

Verona, Georgia

January 15, 1993

The vehicle streaked westward on a dirt road through sparse woodlands, kicking up dust in its wake. Behind the wheel, Randy Stevenson, soon to turn eighteen, monitored the road ahead. Tall and broad shouldered, he was a gracefully muscled athlete. Shaggy black hair framed his face -- a sensitive, enigmatic face that captivated girls at Verona High School.

Only people who knew him well--and the two boys with him knew him as well as anyone in the world-- would know how agitated he was behind his stony expression. His nostrils flared, his respiration was rapid and shallow. His hands were not trembling only because they held the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip.

A last quarter moon hung in the sky ahead, glowing through a hazy cloud cover. It was eight o'clock. The temperature hovered around forty degrees and the three boys wore lightweight jackets over their jeans and shirts.

Randy's eyes darted to the rear view mirror. In the distance, a dusk-to-dawn light cast a circular glow in the misty darkness and shone down on the riverside cabin the boys had hastily departed moments before. The cabin and the half dozen vehicles parked around it disappeared as trees closed in behind the speeding car.

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