A True Testimonial
In Hair Calamities and Hot Cash, a romantic comedy with mystery, Philip Wells, a stockbroker from New York, nearly drives over a cliff on a North Carolina Highway. He swerves to miss a truck, his brakes give way and he sails downhill until his car stops abruptly because he’s run into Eve Castleberry’s beauty shop. That scene opens the book and triggers a romantic mystery with comedy.
Under very different conditions, I once nearly sailed off a cliff in the North Carolina Mountains. My memory of the experience triggered the opening for Hair Calamities and Hot Cash.
I rode home from college with two friends when a cold rain started. We had the radio tuned to the college station, but we lost reception, and an eerie quiet settled around us. I glanced at my friend driving the car. I’ll call her Mandy.
She gripped the steering wheel, her body tense. That was out of character for the tall, dark-haired beauty, the epitome of grace and calm. “The road seems slick. I guess it’s covered in water. It’s hard to see at night.”
I’d ridden this route many times in the daylight and knew we would pass a steep, rocky drop-off on our right. With only our headlights cutting into the dark I had no idea whether or not we’d reached the precipice.
Our co-ed in the backseat…I’ll call her Amy…said, “I can’t stand the silence and not knowing where we are. Could we sing or something?”
“Sure. What song?” Mandy asked.
‘How about the hymn, “He Leadeth Me?”” The suggestion seemed like a good idea.
“Okay,” Amy said. She started the song, and we joined in.
All of a sudden, the car slid to the right.
Mandy screamed. “The rain’s turned to ice. The road’s frozen.”
“Turn into the slide,” I said.
“I’m trying,” Mandy hollered as the vehicle veered more to the right.
“O words with heav’nly comfort fraught!” Amy kept singing.
The sedan turned sideways and slipped across the highway while scooting down a steep grade as slick as oil. Amy stopped the song, but the words to it resounded in my head.
“Keep singing,” Mandy said.
“Whate’er I do, where’er I be, still ’tis God’s hand that leadeth me.”
All of a sudden, a thud jarred us. The vehicle stopped, and the motor rattled, the wipers scraping ice pellets off the windshield. The headlights shone on the trunk of a huge hardwood tree growing above the edge of the cliff. I slumped in my seat as we sat speechless for what seemed like an hour, but must have been only a few minutes.
Mandy pulled back on the highway. As we crept down the mountain to a lower elevation the ice turned to rain.
We arrived at our homes shaken but safe.
While my experience took place at night in bad weather and stirred enormous thankfulness to God for our safety, the catastrophe in Hair Calamities and Hot Cash leads to new lives for Eve Castleberry and Philip Wells.
What happens when a New York stockbroker crashes his car into Eve Castleberry’s North Carolina beauty shop … on the same day the young widow’s defective hair products are causing wild hairdos? Soon, Eve finds herself helping the handsome stranger hunt the thieves who stole his clients’ cash…and hot on the trail of two of the FBI’s most-wanted criminals!
Romance blossoms amid danger, suspense and Eve’s hair-brained plan to get back the money.
Hair Calamities and Hot Cash is a 2020 TopShelf Award Winner in the Fiction – Humor, Comedy Category
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Gail Pallotta’s a wife, Mom, swimmer and bargain shopper who loves God, beach sunsets and getting together with friends and family. A 2013 Grace Awards finalist, she’s a Reader’s Favorite 2017 Book Award winner and a TopShelf 2020 Book Awards Finalist. She’s published six books, poems, short stories and several hundred articles. Some of her articles appear in anthologies while two are in museums. She loves to connect with readers. Sign up for her newsletter and visit her website.
What a great story, Gail. So glad you made it down off the mountain safely.
Hi Carol, Thank you, it was a scary trip and we were blessed. Thanks too for stopping by.