The Dead Become Ancestors | Read an #Excerpt from Forest Girl #ComingSoon #PreOrder #AAromance

Woohoo! Forest Girl is out on Pre-Order. If you're like me, you want it in your hands already! So here's what I've decided to do. I'll share an excerpt here on my blog every week until the book releases in 19 June!

Scroll down for this week's excerpt.

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Title: FOREST GIRL

Author: Empi Baryeh

Genre: Multicultural Romance, Africa

Length: Full length novel

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He fell in love with her at first sight, 

but didn't recognize her when he saw her again.

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Esi Afriyie has been in love with Michael Yaw Badu since childhood. When he receives a scholarship to study in America, all hope seems lost ... until he returns to Ghana ten years later. An arranged marriage contracted by their families makes her dreams come true, but does the reality of being Mrs. Michael Badu live up to the fantasy?

Michael may have married Esi, but he is in love with someone else—Forest Girl, a mystery woman he encountered just once in the forest. His heart belongs to her, and he doesn't need his beautiful wife awakening his carnal desires. He is even willing to sacrifice his marriage for another encounter with Forest Girl.

Reality is not what either Esi or Michael imagined. Esi is disillusioned; Michael feels trapped.

Will Michael give in and allow his heart to discover a love that was always meant to be, before it's too late?

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Amazon US

Amazon UK 

Amazon CA

(and all other Amazon outlets)

Smashwords 

(more outlets coming soon)

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This is an excerpt from the Prologue (yes, I have one of those), which gives an idea of the setting and sets the tone for the story. (PS. written in UK English)

Ghana, early 1990s

A few dense forests, a few animals, a few good roads, some tall buildings…that was people’s image of Africa—a little of everything everywhere. However, if we considered the essence of life, the things that really mattered—like love—then maybe things would cease to seem so basic.

Take a Ghanaian village like Ebinom, a small settlement just sixty kilometres north of the city of Kumasi, their only connection a ribbon of rough road that turned what should have been a forty-five-minute journey into three hours of misery as drivers attempted to dodge potholes. It proved an added torture for those travelling by commercial vehicles, which, even when available and no more than two days in a week, lilted from side to side under the weight of their overloaded cargo, tossing passengers like trees dancing in the evening breeze.

     A typical village, littered with mud houses and dirt roads, the natives were hardworking men and women who tilled the soil and reared livestock for their livelihood. They held tradition in high esteem and made it their concern to meddle in one another’s affairs in their commitment to be each other’s keeper.

The village folk lived out their lives, as had generations before them, celebrating victories and mourning their dead together. At close of day, many gathered in their homes and greeted the evening with songs and folktales. A few hours of sleep, and the next morning began a day very much like the previous one.

Today, Ebinom was bereaved. Unforgiving death had given up on lurking in the corners and laid its icy hands on one of their most resourceful men. The village square brimmed with mourners who shamelessly expressed their grief with tears and wailing. The cool breeze ceased its whiffling as if it, too, were aware of the elegy in the air. The desolate tune rekindled the tears of mourners, particularly the women, who seemed especially blessed with the ability to cry on demand.  

Opanyin Badu had been in his mid-eighties when he was called to take his place with the forefathers. A hardworking man with three big farms a distance from the village, he had been loved and respected for his generosity and regard for all. His competence in work, from which many village folk benefited, earned him a place among the elders at an early age of forty.

When the women had finished displaying their mourning prowess, the men, majestically clad in their funeral cloths, sombrely paid their respects to the lifeless body of a onetime great man. The adowa dance ensued, and the old women took over. While dancing adowa, the older generation was envied for the elegance of their advanced age, because somehow, their delicate frames possessed the grace required for this dance. With every step, turn, and shrug, their smiles acquired a mystic quality as though they had soared into a higher realm.

Despite the mournful occasion, the crowd cheered the dancers on. A bit of alcohol and the resulting ambience gingered some others to join in. Amidst the drumming and dancing, they marched to the burial grounds.

While parents mourned, children gathered in various courtyards, telling folktales among themselves until bedtime, for children weren’t allowed to see the face of death. At the end of what may have been construed as an unproductive day, the people retired to their various homes, with many shamelessly drunk and hardly in control of themselves. One couldn’t be sure whether anyone had sound sleep when a person died, but life had to go on.

As for the dead, they became ancestors.

I hope you enjoyed this setting-the-stage excerpt. Leave me a comment (pretty please with a cherry on top), and don't forget to come back next week to meet my hero (Or go to: Chapter 1: part 1).

Add Forest Girl to your Goodreads TBR.

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