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 far behind her. So begins Boarding House Tales, the long-awaited sequel to Out of Texas, the 2022 novel by Joseph Townsend and Anne Hart Preus about the Baltzell-Brantley Fued of the mid-1800s and the devotion Rebecca Brantley and Budord Hobbs, a formerly enslaved man, always 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 there to settle an old score that began years ago when they first crossed paths at an inn 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 parlor guests of the famous Ginnie Moon and her sister, Lottie, at their 3rd Street Boarding House. There, they held court on Monday evenings in the parlor and told tales of lost loves and ghosts as well as astonishing and often hilarious accounts of their days as Confederate spies. The Moon sisters held nothing back from their dinner guests as they told of coffins loaded with contraband drugs, fleeing from the Union General Benjamin "the Beast" Butler, and even an anonymous carriage ride with President Lincoln that resulted in a $10,000 "Dead or Alive" bounty.
The dramas of 3rd Street were not limited to tales of the past, as there was real danger lurking on those nights just a few steps away in the dark shadows of downtown Memphis. When Celeste Jones, fiance of Buford's nephew Theo Hobbs, is assaulted, it will be up to a close circle of friends to administer justice and to bring to a close the carnage that came out of Texas all those years ago.
