A lively Southern retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion , featuring Lucy Crawford, who is thrown back into the path of her first love while on a quest to save her beloved family home. Lucy Crawford is part of a wealthy, well-respected Southern family with a long local history. But since Lucy’s mother passed away, the family home, a gorgeous antebellum mansion, has fallen into disrepair and the depth of her father’s debts is only starting to be understood. Selling the family home may be the only option—until her Aunt Olympia floats the idea of using Crawford house to hold the local free medical clinic, which has just lost its space. As if turning the plantation home into a clinic isn’t bad enough, Lucy is shocked and dismayed to see that the doctor who will be manning the clinic is none other than Jeremiah Chevy—her first love. Lucy and Jeremiah were high school sweethearts, but Jeremiah was from the wrong side of the tracks. His family was redneck and proud, and Lucy was persuaded to dump him. He eventually left town on a scholarship, and now, ten years later, he’s returned as part of the rural physician program. And suddenly, their paths cross once again. While Lucy’s family still sees Jeremiah as trash, she sees something else in him—as do several of the other eligible ladies in town. Will he be able to forgive the past? Can she be persuaded to give love a chance this time around? “I love this excellent retelling of Jane Austen's Persuasion . I may even love it more than Persuasion . . . It was refreshing to see romantic references that weren't contrived. They were touching and believable and the characters were likeable--or hateable!” ― Hope In Every Season Mary Jane Hathaway is the pen name of an award-nominated inspirational fiction writer who spends the majority of her literary energy on subjects un-related to Jane Austen. A homeschooling mother of six young children who rarely wear shoes, she's madly in love with a man who has never read Pride and Prejudice. She holds degrees in religious studies and theoretical linguistics, and has a Jane Austen quote on the back of her van. She can be reached on facebook at Pride, Prejudice and Cheese Grits or her regular author page of Virginia Carmichael. Persuasion, Captain Wentworth and Cracklin' Cornbread No: the years which had destroyed her youth and bloom had only given him a more glowing, manly, open look, in no respect lessening his personal advantages. She had seen the same Frederick Wentworth. —ANNE ELLIOT Chapter One “?This is an effort to collect a debt. Any information obtained will be used for that purpose.” Lucy Crawford leaned her forehead against the wall and closed her eyes. The mechanical voice droned on, rattling through an 800 number and requesting a call back. The time stamp was an hour ago. There was a brief pause and the next message began: “This call is for William Crawford. I am a debt collector and this is an effort to collect a debt. Any information—” Lucy reached out and punched the skip button. The message machine flashed three more calls in the queue. She didn’t know if she could listen to them all at one time. It was too depressing, like watching the recap, over and over, of the Bulldogs falling to Alabama by thirty points. Except that there was always next year for her favorite football team, and there wasn’t any end in sight to her daddy’s financial issues. Skip. Skip. Skip. Maybe all the calls were from the same creditor, but probably not. Lucy heaved herself upright and trudged into the foyer. She might as well get the mail now while she was already feeling low. The black-and-white tile expanse of the entrance area gleamed dully in the summer light shining through the leaded panes of the double doors. In all of her twenty-eight years she had never seen them so scuffed. Old Zeke polished the floors of every room in the house once a week and always spent extra time on the entrance. He was proud of his job and being part of keeping up the historic Crawford House. Or at least he had been, until Lucy had fired him. She paused in front of the side table, where a five-inch stack of bills waited neatly. The conversation with Zeke flashed through her mind and she felt the unfamiliar burn of tears. She wasn’t a crier. When she’d sat Zeke down, she had done well, speaking clearly and confidently until he had bowed his head. The defeat in his posture was like a stab of hot iron in her heart. Zeke had always seemed larger than his five-foot-five frame, probably because Lucy remembered being very little, pulling on his pant leg and looking far, far up at the Crawford House handyman. He was like family, and she was telling him he wasn’t going to be part of their daily lives any longer. Then he had glanced up, black eyes still bright despite his seventy-­five years. “Miss Lucy, I know’d this time be coming. I’s not as strong as I once was.” She had wanted to drop to her knees, wrap her arms around his fragile