Magic in the Backyard by Kellie Elmore

This is the second post in this week’s three-part series of new and self-published authors.  You can visit Kellie at http://www.kellieelmore.com

Magic in the Backyard, Kellie Elmore

Winter Goose Publishing, 131 pages

ISBN 9780985154820

Kellie Elmore moved to southern Tennessee when she was eight years old and has called it home ever since.  It’s the sort of place where kids play on tire swings while their mothers bake pies in houses with honeysuckle around the door.  In the summer, families gather on the porch to watch the fireflies twinkle in the night sky.  The pace of life is slow, the ties that bind run deep, and there’s love everywhere you look.  In Magic in the Backyard, Elmore has created a series of poetic sketches that shares her affection for southern Tennessee with readers everywhere.

From the title poem:

“She tells the pages a story that’s hers,

and makes her backyard magic with words.

Painting fairies and princes, from flowers and trees,

penning perfection, with grass-stained knees.”

Rich with atmosphere, Magic in the Backyard invites the reader into a beautiful daydream of country drives, tumbleweed and lazy summer afternoons.  It’s the perfect book to take with you to the cottage or the beach, or to open in your own backyard to escape for a few hours to the tranquility of southern Tennessee.

I’ll leave you with a few lines from “Twilight from the Tire Swing:”

“The sounds of twilight fade in.  Cicadas and/

the hum of the world fade out.  Silence, melting/

onto my ears, and all that remains is a velvet sky/

and the glow of her nightlight bathing the leaves.”