Boarding House Tales: Sequel to Out of Texas

In June 1872, Rebecca Brantley boarded a late-night train in Winona, Mississippi, searching for a new beginning in Memphis, Tennessee. Unbeknownst to her, a stranger who followed her to the station would not be long behind her. So begins the long-awaited sequel to Out of Texas, the 2022 novel by Joseph Townsend and Anne Hart Preus about the Baltzell-Brantley Feud and the devotion Rebecca and Beford Hobbs, a formerly enslaved person, shared for one another.

In Boarding House Tales, just as Rebecca was sure she'd found a lasting refuge in her busy routine in downtown Memphis, an old nemesis would soon be obsessively searching for her to settle an old score that began years ago on the Natchez Trace.

This is also the story of Walter Witty, a Civil War veteran from Winona with a troubled past, and his efforts to protect Rebecca. She and Walter soon became regular guests of Ginnie Moon's famous 3rd Street Boarding House. Ginnie and her sister, Lottie, held court there in the parlor on Monday evenings, where they and their guests entertained one another with stories of lost loves, ghosts, and their days as Civil War spies.

On one of those Monday evenings, Celeste Jones, fiance of Buford Hobbs' nephew, Theo, is assaulted. When the culprit is identified, it will be left for a circle of close friends to administer justice and bring an end to the carnage that came out of Texas all those years ago.