The Grist Mill Bone

Amidst the rural beauty of a tidal peninsula, a dog uncovers a cache of bones in the woods. Quietly, a priest refuses a starving man a ride to a free dinner. A woman finds a decomposed body floating the marsh by her farmhouse. Through it all, an old woman with no heirs makes unreasonable demands of the young attorney who writes her will. But the proof of evil is a boy, imprisoned in a cellar, toiling for his bitter father and learning a lesson that leaves a legacy. As a homeless adult he inhabits a ruined grist mill on the banks of a silted creek. Claire McIntosh and her husband Booker discover what links these cascading events during the old woman's lifetime and in doing so, they risk everything that is valuable to them-their family, their home, and one another. The Grist Mill Bone weaves two timelines from historical events in coastal Maryland with imagined events on the Delaware shore. Colloquialisms are sprinkled throughout small town life as joy and sorrow give the reader heart in a place, time, and people they know on the Eastern Shore. A debut novel, Third Haven, won the first place award from the National Federation of Press Women and the Delaware Press Association as the prequel to The Grist Mill Bone. In 2018, The Grist Mill Bone became a finalist in regional fiction for the international Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Its cover design by Booklocker was a finalist for the Da Vinci Eye from the Eric Hoffer Awards. B. B. Shamp's next novel, A Wife in Watercolor, a work of historical fiction based on the MacIntosh family, will be available in fall of 2021.