Set in the 1930s, Taylor’s suspenseful and intricate follow-up to Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night tells the story of sisters Violet and Lily Morgan. When 16-year-old Lily becomes pregnant out of wedlock, Violet follows her to the Good Shepherd Infant Asylum in Philadelphia. The nuns promise good homes to all babies born under […]
A family legend inspired Taylor to shine a spotlight on her hometown of Scranton, Penn., in her debut novel, Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night. Your publisher informs us that the idea for this novel was inspired by a real-life incident that occurred in your family before you were born. On the day she […]
The title of Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night comes from a Welsh proverb about how joy is inevitably followed by sorrow. When Barbara Taylor’s touching first novel opens in September 1913, joy has vanished for the Morgan family of Scranton, Pa. Two months earlier, the family’s older daughter, Daisy, died of burns suffered […]
Taylor’s debut novel is set in her native city of Scranton, Penn., during the early part of the 20th century. When Daisy, the oldest daughter of miner Owen Morgan and his housemaid wife Grace, dies in a fireworks accident, her parents are devastated: Grace’s melancholy becomes so overwhelming that she conjures up the creepy, destructive […]
Nearly 100 years ago, a 7-year-old girl named Pearl was celebrating July 4 when a sparkler caught her dress on fire the day of her baptism. She survived three days, singing songs from Sunday school before succumbing to her injuries. Pocono Mountain West English teacher — and newly published author — Barbara J. Taylor heard […]
I adore scrappy Violet, the eight-year-old protagonist of this novel, who is blamed by just about everybody in Scranton, a hardscrabble, blue-collar town in Pennsylvania’s coal mining country, for causing her nine-year-old sister’s death. Even though the community sits in judgement of her and her family, Violet refuses to conform to others’ expectations of how […]
