Showing results by narrator "Bruce Conger" in All Categories

As America slept in the pre-dawn hours of December 7, 1946, 280 of its citizens awoke suddenly in a hotel already burning out of control. Like the unsinkable Titanic, Atlanta’s Winecoff Hotel had been billed as “fireproof.” And, in fact, it did not burn. Its guests did. Or they died on Peachtree Street, or in quiet clusters, huddled together for courage against the silent, suffocating smoke. It was the worst hotel fire ever, anywhere. The fact that today it is still the worst hotel fire in North America — and the second worst in the world — is testament to its horror.

In book one of the Plowed Fields trilogy, we met Joe Baker and his large family as a rare white Christmas descended on their South Georgia farm. It was 1960, and the family seemed poised on the brink of a grand experience in the years to come. As the decade progresses, the Bakers see their fortunes rise and fall, beginning with an illness that shakes the family at its very core. Prosperity comes calling when it’s least expected, but a harrowing ordeal forces a reckoning with faith that nearly shatters the family.

On a cold December day in 1960, Joe Baker finishes plowing the largest field on his family’s farm in South Georgia and acknowledges the well of restlessness running deep inside him. Joe appreciates the good life provided by his parents, but his heart yearns for something else. So begins Plowed Fields, setting the stage for a conflict that will nag at Joe for the next decade as he tries to reconcile his own desire and ambition with loyalty and responsibility to his family.

For much of the '60s, Joe Baker has wrestled with reconciling his own desire and ambition with loyalty and responsibility to his family. The oldest of six children, he has led his brothers and sisters with quiet charisma. But what happens when his instincts fail him? When we first met Joe and his family, it was December 1960, and a rare white Christmas was blowing toward their farm in South Georgia. As the decade unfolded, they battled drought, fire and other hardships that threatened the family’s livelihood.