My Mistress' Eyes Are Raven Black

Ellis Island, 1920.   

New York Harbor's immigration and public health authorities are slowly recovering from the war years when a young, pregnant Irish woman disappears from the Isolation Hospital on Ellis Island.

Stephen Robbins, a specialist in finding missing persons, is assigned the case. Yet when he arrives at the isolation hospital, he discovers an inexplicable string of deaths and disappearances among immigrant patients...and a staff that seems to be hiding a chilling secret. Stephen finds an ally in Lucy Paul, an undercover nurse who is also investigating the mysterious incidents. Together, they begin to unearth a horrifying conspiracy masked beneath the hospital's charitable exterior. As Stephen and Lucy get closer to the truth and each other, they are swept directly into the danger haunting Ellis Island and become the next targets.

Amidst growing racial tensions in the wake of World War I, My Mistress’ Eyes are Raven Black explores the disturbing lengths to which people will go to protect racial purity and condemn those they fear.

The summer of 1917 should have been a summer like any other. 

Stephen Robbins should have been doing the same thing he'd been doing for years past. As a young boy he'd fled his life in a secluded mountain cove and risen through the ranks to become the manager of the South's finest resort, the elegant Mountain Park Hotel. By all rights, he should have spent this summer as host to some of the wealthiest gentry on the East Coast. Hans Ruser, German Commodore of the world's largest and most luxurious cruise liner, Vaderland, should have been sailing yet again with his elite passengers to the far corners of the world. And Anna Ulmann, captivating and beautiful, should have been at home in her New York mansion planning yet another lavish dinner party for her famous husband and his rich and powerful friends. She should have idled away her spare time by taking perfectly staged photographic portraits of the very same people.

But war will change everything that should have been in that summer of 1917- the U.S. enters WWI and the Mountain Park Hotel is pressed into service as an internment camp for over 2,000 German nationals, including Ruser and his men. This sudden collision of lives and cultures in the small town of Hot Springs, North Carolina is both frightening and exhilarating. And the unlikely alliance that forms between Hans Ruser and Stephen Robbins will force each to decide just how far they are willing to go to keep peace in the beautiful and isolated mountains. Feisty Anna Ulmann, seeking to assert her independence in a male-dominated world, mysteriously flees south to devote her life to documentary photography. When she steps off the train at the Hot Springs depot one sultry summer day, she could not have imagined the passionate journey that will result when she matches wits with Stephen Robbins. Haunted by demons both past and present, they will face heartbreaking tragedy. Yet together they will discover the true meaning of imprisonment and escape.

PRAISE FOR A SHORT TIME TO STAY HERE & DR. TERRY ROBERTS

"In A Short Time to Stay Here Terry Roberts shines a narrative light into a little known corner of modern history, German POWs in World War One in the Hot Springs resort in the mountains of North Carolina. This is a thrilling story of the clash of cultures, of mystery, espionage, revenge, and love. It is a riveting story you will not be able to put down or forget, bringing to life a particular Appalachian time and place, by one of the exciting new voices of Southern fiction."

-Robert Morgan Author of Gap Creek and Brave Enemies

"A Short Time to Stay Here is the real thing, a brilliant novel about a fascinating yet unknown chapter in history...Highly original yet authentic characters populate this page-turner with its themes of love, violence, espionage, and the clash between cultures. There is something particularly evocative about its setting....I couldn't put it down while I was reading, and it has haunted me ever since."

-Lee Smith, author of Fair and Tender Ladies

"There's so much to like about this novel: the village itself, stretched out alongside the French Broad River, its famous hotel now used to house German civilians during wartime; the man in charge with his many decisions to be made; the woman he meets and how--page by page, month by month, they fall in love."

-John Ehle, author of The Winter People and The Journey of August King

"A little known World War I incident--the detention of German internees in Western North Carolina--has given Terry Roberts the background for a vital, absorbing novel. His characters, largely local, bring their own conflicts and concerns to the narrative, which throughout an evolving love story sheds light on darker events."

-Elizabeth Spencer, author of Voice at the Back Door and Light in the Piazza

"Terry Roberts brings an obscure bit of WWI history to vivid life. A tiny mountain town in North Carolina, a batch of German detainees quartered at a once-grand hotel, and the inevitable conflicts that ensue provide an intricately layered backdrop to a beautifully imagined and timeless love story. Read it for the history; read it for the setting; but, most of all, read it to make the acquaintance of these fascinating characters."

-Vicki Lane, author of Under the Skin and The Day of Small Things

"Fiction in the mountain regions of North Carolina and in the mountain culture of the state have formed a significant part of southern literature from Thomas Wolfe through more recent novelists such as John Ehle, Robert Morgan, Fred Chappell, Charles Frazier, Wayne Caldwell and Ron Rash, to name only a few. With A Short Time to Stay Here, Terry Roberts joins this distinguished company. His story of love on the fringes of a distant yet oddly intrusive war, is brilliantly plotted and rendered in a style both lyrical and concretely realistic, flawless in characterization and with an authoritative command of the history that enfolds it. One suspects, and hopes, that there is much more to follow from this gifted writer."

-Jerry Leath Mills, Editor Emeritus, Studies in Philology

"We have forgotten that in 1917 thousands of German sailors were our prisoners in the North Carolina mountains, but in this novel Roberts brings to life both the historical circumstance and much more. With psychological skill, he reveals how hatred--national or local--can lead to murder, but also how a man and woman can fall in love anywhere, anytime."

-Doris Betts, author of Souls Raised from the Dead and The Sharp Teeth of Love

"Novelist and Asheville native Terry Roberts delivers a stirring, well-crafted...novel that blends romance and wartime espionage to compulsively readable effect.... Roberts digs deeper and presents a clash of cultures painted with an assured hand and authoritative knowledge."

-WNC Magazine

"North Carolina author Terry Roberts offers a glimpse of a world off-kilter because of war."

-Charlotte Observer

"The joyfulness in reading Roberts' novel comes first of all from identification with his appealing hero. Who doesn't love a recovering drunk with a heroic core? In a novel that features a bountiful number of delights ... more mysterious the more you know.... Roberts plays this instrument splendidly."

-Asheville Citizen Times

"Centers on the romance and the small-town dramas fanned by the unwanted [German] visitors.... The characters are compelling and the historical context will ... engage North Carolinians and history buffs alike."

-Raleigh News and Observer

Winner of the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction and the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Prize.

A new Southern gothic thriller from the winner of the 2012 Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction.

In the Summer of 1866, Jacob Ballard, a former Union soldier and spy, is dispatched by the War Department in Washington City to infiltrate the isolated North Carolina mountain community where he was born and find the serial killer responsible for the deaths of Union veterans. Based on true events, That Bright Land is the story of a violent and fragile nation in the wake of the Civil War and a man who must exorcise his own savage demons while tracking down another.

PRAISE FOR THAT BRIGHT LAND & DR. TERRY ROBERTS

"Early in this gripping whodunit set in the summer of 1866 from Roberts (A Short Time to Stay Here), Zeb Vance, the real-life governor of North Carolina, meets with his Yankee nephew, Jacob Ballard, a former Union soldier and retired detective who now works for the War Department in Washington City. Someone is murdering North Carolinians who fought for the North during the Civil War, and Vance wants Ballard to apprehend the killer. Ballard travels to mountainous western North Carolina, many of whose residents were hostile to the Confederacy. There he presents himself as a government agent checking on the legitimacy of Union army veterans' disability benefit claims. Ballard finds some correspondence between the list of those seeking the payments and the names of the murder victims―and support for Vance's notion that the motive for the crimes is connected with an 1863 Confederate massacre of Union sympathizers. This historical approaches the high standard of Owen Parry's mysteries set during the same period."

―Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Ballard's struggle for identity parallels that of the remote, mountainous region of North Carolina, which will complicate his future. That Bright Land deserves an A for the sympathetic protagonist, intelligent love story, and well-crafted plot, but Ballard's discovery of his own roots, after years of homelessness and war, makes it an A+. Highly recommended."

―Historical Novel Society

"Terry Roberts, who lives in Asheville and has deep roots in the mountain region, gives us a fine book that's at once a vivid historical novel with an unforgettable setting, a murder mystery and thriller, and a believable, mature romance. There's good reason that the book's back cover bears testimonials from Fred Chappell, Robert Morgan and Ron Rash, three esteemed authors with ties to the same mountains. Roberts' book deserves to be on the shelf with theirs, as well as with those of John Ehle, to whom the book is dedicated." 

―Greensboro News

"Civil War buffs: You don't want to miss this one."

―Charlotte Observer

"In That Bright Land, [Terry Roberts] engagingly combines a serious subject and a jocular survival spirit with a suspense story." 

-Asheville Citizen-Times

"Set in the aftermath of the Civil War, That Bright Land is a thrilling and seamless fusion of fact and imagination, bringing to light a too-long neglected part of American history. This novel further confirms Terry Roberts' place as one of Appalachia's most important voices."

-Ron Rash, author of the New York Times bestseller, Serena

"Terry Roberts has set his gripping detective story, That Bright Land, in the still bleeding aftermath of the Civil War. The place is backwater Appalachia and the depiction of ways and manners is not only accurate but integral to the force of the story. And what force it has! Reading, I felt at times that I was on a raft down the flooding French Broad river, exhilarated and more than a little scared, but wishing that the ride would continue as long as possible."

―Fred Chappell, author of I Am One of You Forever

"That Bright Land is a thriller set in the complex and deadly aftermath of the Civil War in the mountains of Western North Carolina. With authority and authentic and precise detail, Terry Roberts brings to life an obscure corner of our history where brother fought brother and neighbor was divided from neighbor. With humor as well as compelling drama, this mystery story unfolds in conflicts of loyalty, revenge, vivid poetry of place, and the bonds of healing love. No one who reads this novel will ever forget it."

―Robert Morgan, author of Gap Creek and Chasing the North Star

"Out of the tangled conditions in the Southern mountains just after the Civil War, Terry Roberts has constructed a novel of considerable historic value, containing a charming love story."

―Elizabeth Spencer, author of The Light in the Piazza and Starting Over

"Without a single doubt, Terry Roberts captured the volatile and chaotic times after the Civil War here in Madison County. And with such an interesting, well written and shocking cliff-hanger of a story."

-Sheila Kay Adams, renowned ballad singer and author of My Old True Love

Jedidiah Robbins is a man on a crusade. From town to town, his Gospel train rides the rails of 1920s Appalachia, spreading the Good News with his daughter and a loyal group of roustabouts in tow. But Jedidiah's traveling revival company has a secret: in addition to offering the gifts of the Holy Spirit, it also delivers spirits of another kind. Prohibition is in full swing, but The Sword of the Lord train keeps the speakeasies in the towns it visits in business by providing the best that mountain stills have to offer. While beyond the gaze of federal agents, the operation eventually runs afoul of an overzealous small town sheriff and a corrupt judge, setting in motion a series of events that could land them all in chains. Told with haunting lyricism, this is the story of a preacher full of contradictions, a man for whom the way is never straight and narrow. It bends like the river, a river that leads him in the paths of a different brand of righteousness--and perhaps even to salvation.

PRAISE FOR THE HOLY GHOST SPEAKEASY AND REVIVAL & DR. TERRY ROBERTS

"In his latest novel, Terry Roberts has created an unforgettable character in Jedidiah Robbins, a reverend who delivers both sermons and whiskey to his followers, but his novel transcends mere satire to become much more. Ultimately, The Holy Ghost Speakeasy and Revival contemplates complex questions of faith and morality in a world ripe with hypocrisy. Terry Roberts is an im-mensely gifted writer and he gets better with each book. Bravo!" 

- Ron Rash, PEN/Faulkner Finalist and NYT bestselling author of Serena

"This ballad of a novel is an affectionate account of a charismatic evangelist and his devoted team. Part Elmer Gantry, part confidence man with a heart of gold, Jedidiah Robbins delights and surprises us in this Prohibition era romp of romance and moonshine, as impossible to resist as a Doc Watson solo. Rev. Robbins is haunted by the past, confronts the KKK, and though all too human at times, displays a bedrock of spirituality, and even makes friends with the Grim Reaper, in this picaresque narrative of loyalty and love in the mountains of North Carolina." 

- Robert Morgan, author of Chasing the North Star

"Once again, Terry Roberts skillfully explores the South to find answers from the King James Bible and jars of white lightning from mountain stills." 

-Elizabeth Spencer, author of Voice at the Back Door and Light in the Piazza

"Joyous and melancholy all at once, haunting in its depth and confidence, The Holy Ghost Speakeasy and Revival feels like a leisurely train ride, even in the tense moments where lives, and souls, hang in the balance. I was absolutely blown away by it." 

- Glenn Dallas, Manhattan Book Review