It’s 1961 when small-town life insurance agent Winston Taylor finds a Black man dead on the floor of a North Florida forest. Once he learns the identity of the deceased, he quickly realizes the corpse has the ability to incriminate him in his own unethical insurance practices. Protecting his family and career, Winston (who is white) dumps the body into a wet sinkhole, vowing to clean up his transgressions and never tell a soul. Two years later, despite the current racial divide, he hires a new agent—a charismatic young Black man with a mysterious past. Unbeknownst to Winston, his recent recruit may hold the power to blow the sinkhole secret straight out of the water.
Never tell a soul.
A Southern suspense story set in North Florida during the 1960s. Published February 27, 2024 by TouchPoint Press.
Terresa Cooper Haskew’s Winston’s Book of Souls is a glorious page-turner. Damning secrets lurk in the troubled piney woods of the Florida Panhandle, and desperate characters work double-time to protect them. A keen observer of the human spirit, Haskew’s world of grief and redemption is a gut punch. Like the deftly drawn landscape—live oaks smothered in Spanish moss, dusty limestone roads, and bottomless sinkholes of cold, translucent water—this book is pure poetry, each line an absolute masterpiece. I guarantee that Winston and all his souls will wander with you long after you finish this beautiful book.
--Kim Bradley, author of Spillway, 2022 Florida Book Award Silver Medal
Get to Know Terresa
A native of the South, Terresa and her husband, Ben, have lived at Lake Murray in the Midlands of South Carolina since retiring in 2016. They have three children and five grandchildren, who all enjoy swimming, boating, and fishing on the lake.
Terresa Cooper Haskew’s award-winning poems, short stories, and book reviews have appeared in over 50 printed journal and anthology issues including American Journal of Nursing; Archive: South Carolina Poetry Since 2005; Atlanta Review; Press 53 Open Awards Anthology; Pearl; and The Main Street Rag. Her story, “Living the Dream,” premiered in 2013 as a short film produced by Ron Hagell and Shirley Smith. Haskew’s poetry chapbook, BREAKING COMMANDMENTS, was published in 2014 by Main Street Rag Publishing Company. WINSTON’S BOOK OF SOULS is her first novel. She is a member of the Poetry Society of South Carolina; the Ruminators poetry writing group (17 years); the South Carolina Writers Association—Chapin fiction writers’ chapter; and is a past Board Member of the Emrys Foundation, Greenville, SC’s association for writers.
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Breaking Commandments
"Terresa Cooper Haskew’s family stories are tempered by her quirky imagination and a good ear for the sound of things. If her title suggests the old language of sin and redemption, her poems offer something much more, a vision at once earthy and deeply ethical, a voice that locates grace in a dead dove in a father’s hunting jacket or a Bloody Mary on Sunday morning. This book is a delight."
–Ed Madden
Professor of English, University of South Carolina
author of A pooka in Arkansas and other works
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