I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on blog tour for DIG TOO DEEP by Amy Allgeyer! I have a deleted scene to share with you today! And make sure to enter the awesome giveaway for a finished copy of the book!
Haven't heard of DIG TOO DEEP? Check it out!
Title: DIG TOO DEEP
Author: Amy Allgeyer
Release Date: April 1, 2016
Pages: 272
Publisher: AW Teen
Formats: Hardcover, eBook
With her mother facing prison time for a violent political protest, seventeen-year-old Liberty Briscoe has no choice but to leave her Washington, DC, apartment and take a bus to Ebbottsville, Kentucky, to live with her granny. There she can at least finish high school and put some distance between herself and her mother--or her former mother, as she calls her. But Ebbottsville isn't the same as Liberty remembers, and it's not just because the top of Tanner's Peak has been blown away to mine for coal. Half the county is out of work, an awful lot of people in town seem to be sick, and the tap water is bright orange--the same water that officials claim is safe. And when Granny's lingering cold turns out to be something much worse, Liberty wonders if somebody at the mine is hiding the truth about the water. She starts to investigate and is soon plunged into a world of secrets, lies, threats, and danger. Her searches for answers and justice lead to even tougher questions--should she turn to violence and end up like her mother? Give up her quest for the sake of keeping the peace? Or keep fighting until the mine is shut down for good?
Now on to the deleted scene!
Hi Jaime! Thanks so much for hosting me! I’m posting a scene that we tried out for the middle of the book, but ended up not using. In this scene, Lib hasn’t cut ties with her mom completely. You’ll notice she’s not calling her MFM (my former mother) … not yet.
(The scene starts after Liberty confronts Mr. Dobber about his possible involvement in the mine cover-up and he chases her off his property.)
I’m in town before my heart stops pounding. The half-excitement, half-fear adrenaline running through my body has every hair on my arms standing at attention. I pull over in the Kroger parking lot to breathe and check my messages.
There’s a missed call and a message from Mom. While I stare at it, wondering if I’m glad or sorry I missed it, she calls again. With my finger poised over the reject button, I hesitate. Granny’s sickness is a lot to go through alone. It would be nice to have someone to talk to. Someone who cares about her as much as I do. And Granny is her mother, after all.
I sigh and answer the call.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Liberty!” She sounds surprised I answered. “How are you?”
Hearing her voice starts a slideshow of memories in my head. How many times have I held a phone, with her on the other end, and gotten bad news? I won’t be home for dinner. I can’t come to your play. I’m not going to make it to your game. Honey, I’ve been arrested.
“Liberty?”
“I’m here.” I push my anger aside and try to focus on Granny. “You got my email?”
“I did. Cancer. God, are they sure?”
“Yeah. The x-rays showed it.”
“I just… I don’t know what to say. Can they treat it?”
“No.” I run my finger around and around the square in the middle of the steering wheel.
“Not without killing her, anyway.”
“What’s that mean?”
Anger seeps into my voice. “She’s weak, Mom. You haven’t seen her in years.” There’s more than a hint of accusation in my words. “I don’t even think you’d recognize her.”
“Surely there’s something they can do. Slow the progress. Give her more t—”
“Are you listening? She’s too weak for treatment. Any treatment.” I let that sink in for a second. “We should have visited her.”
“I had no idea. I’m sorry, Lib.”
That’s new. I didn’t even know the word ‘sorry’ was in her vocabulary.
She’s sniffling. I wonder what she looks like, sitting in prison, sobbing into a phone alone.
“Is there really nothing they can do? Really? Just…nothing?”
I understand her frustration. It’s the same thing I felt in the doctor’s office: nothing to fix and no one to fight. “Nothing.”
I can’t imagine what she’s feeling right now, knowing she may not get to see her own mother ever again. Deep inside, there’s an ugly part of me that says this is fair. That she deserves this for all the times she let me down. Then another part of me says, in Granny’s voice, if Mom’s paying for her mistakes we should forgive her.
“I’m sorry you have to deal with this alone,” she says. “It must be so hard.”
“It’s not fun,” I admit. But it is nice to hear Mom thinking about someone other than herself for a change.
“I should be there,” she says, quietly. “I should be there for both of you. God, I feel awful.
When I get out of here, Lib, I’m going to make things right.”
My head snaps up. What the hell does that mean? She’s going to make Granny better? Undo this whole fiasco so I can un-spend months in Ebbottsville, struggling and starving and watching my grandmother die?
“Just hang in there,” she says. “I know things are tough right now, but we’ll get back to normal. I promise.” And there it is. The same tired old mantra. Only this time, there’s a new word in the middle. “We just need to pull together as much as we can, and—”
“Hang on.” My fingers curl around the gear shift knob. “Did you say normal? Get back to normal?”
She pauses. “Well, except for Mommy.”
But for once, I’m not thinking about Granny. “Are you saying the life we had, before you went to prison, that life was normal?”
There’s no reply.
“Weren’t we working for a better life?”
“Of course,” she says. “And we got there! Lib, we had it. You were in a great school, heading for college. I had a great job, making a difference in the world. I know it wasn’t perfect. It took some effort, but it was worth it, wasn’t it?”
My mouth hangs open as I stare at the people walking in and out of Kroger. A woman not much older than me struggles a cart full of kids up the curb.
“And then I went and messed it up,” Mom says. “Look, I know this is my fault. All of it. And I promise, Liberty, honest to God, when I get out of here, I’ll fix this. We’ll have our life back. Just like before.”
“Just like before.” I nod slowly. Once. Twice. “When you say ‘before’, you mean, back when it was me, living alone in our apartment, while you were gone every night? Missing my games and my plays, not being able to pick me up or drop me off or be involved in my life in any freaking way. That’s what you want back? That was our better life?”
Silence. Then, “I…I don’t understand—”
“That’s the goddam problem! You never understand. You have absolutely no clue what that life was like for me, do you? Because you never think about anybody but yourself.”
“Of course I do.” But her voice is shaky, uncertain.
“All the effort and the sacrifice and the…the…” My hands start to shake at the memories: the Halloween costumes I made by myself, the scrapes I had to put my own band-aids on, the nightmares that no one was around to shoo away. “All the times I needed you!” I bite my cheek and count to five. “I needed you and you weren’t there.”
There’s a long silence. “I didn’t realize.”
“No. Of course you didn’t,” I say. “You never do. So I’m going to help you out. From now on, when you think about me, don’t. Forget all about me. Forget about going back to normal. In fact, you can forget about having any kind of life with me at all. I don’t need you anymore. From this point on, I no longer have a mother.”
Hi Jaime! Thanks so much for hosting me! I’m posting a scene that we tried out for the middle of the book, but ended up not using. In this scene, Lib hasn’t cut ties with her mom completely. You’ll notice she’s not calling her MFM (my former mother) … not yet.
(The scene starts after Liberty confronts Mr. Dobber about his possible involvement in the mine cover-up and he chases her off his property.)
I’m in town before my heart stops pounding. The half-excitement, half-fear adrenaline running through my body has every hair on my arms standing at attention. I pull over in the Kroger parking lot to breathe and check my messages.
There’s a missed call and a message from Mom. While I stare at it, wondering if I’m glad or sorry I missed it, she calls again. With my finger poised over the reject button, I hesitate. Granny’s sickness is a lot to go through alone. It would be nice to have someone to talk to. Someone who cares about her as much as I do. And Granny is her mother, after all.
I sigh and answer the call.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Liberty!” She sounds surprised I answered. “How are you?”
Hearing her voice starts a slideshow of memories in my head. How many times have I held a phone, with her on the other end, and gotten bad news? I won’t be home for dinner. I can’t come to your play. I’m not going to make it to your game. Honey, I’ve been arrested.
“Liberty?”
“I’m here.” I push my anger aside and try to focus on Granny. “You got my email?”
“I did. Cancer. God, are they sure?”
“Yeah. The x-rays showed it.”
“I just… I don’t know what to say. Can they treat it?”
“No.” I run my finger around and around the square in the middle of the steering wheel.
“Not without killing her, anyway.”
“What’s that mean?”
Anger seeps into my voice. “She’s weak, Mom. You haven’t seen her in years.” There’s more than a hint of accusation in my words. “I don’t even think you’d recognize her.”
“Surely there’s something they can do. Slow the progress. Give her more t—”
“Are you listening? She’s too weak for treatment. Any treatment.” I let that sink in for a second. “We should have visited her.”
“I had no idea. I’m sorry, Lib.”
That’s new. I didn’t even know the word ‘sorry’ was in her vocabulary.
She’s sniffling. I wonder what she looks like, sitting in prison, sobbing into a phone alone.
“Is there really nothing they can do? Really? Just…nothing?”
I understand her frustration. It’s the same thing I felt in the doctor’s office: nothing to fix and no one to fight. “Nothing.”
I can’t imagine what she’s feeling right now, knowing she may not get to see her own mother ever again. Deep inside, there’s an ugly part of me that says this is fair. That she deserves this for all the times she let me down. Then another part of me says, in Granny’s voice, if Mom’s paying for her mistakes we should forgive her.
“I’m sorry you have to deal with this alone,” she says. “It must be so hard.”
“It’s not fun,” I admit. But it is nice to hear Mom thinking about someone other than herself for a change.
“I should be there,” she says, quietly. “I should be there for both of you. God, I feel awful.
When I get out of here, Lib, I’m going to make things right.”
My head snaps up. What the hell does that mean? She’s going to make Granny better? Undo this whole fiasco so I can un-spend months in Ebbottsville, struggling and starving and watching my grandmother die?
“Just hang in there,” she says. “I know things are tough right now, but we’ll get back to normal. I promise.” And there it is. The same tired old mantra. Only this time, there’s a new word in the middle. “We just need to pull together as much as we can, and—”
“Hang on.” My fingers curl around the gear shift knob. “Did you say normal? Get back to normal?”
She pauses. “Well, except for Mommy.”
But for once, I’m not thinking about Granny. “Are you saying the life we had, before you went to prison, that life was normal?”
There’s no reply.
“Weren’t we working for a better life?”
“Of course,” she says. “And we got there! Lib, we had it. You were in a great school, heading for college. I had a great job, making a difference in the world. I know it wasn’t perfect. It took some effort, but it was worth it, wasn’t it?”
My mouth hangs open as I stare at the people walking in and out of Kroger. A woman not much older than me struggles a cart full of kids up the curb.
“And then I went and messed it up,” Mom says. “Look, I know this is my fault. All of it. And I promise, Liberty, honest to God, when I get out of here, I’ll fix this. We’ll have our life back. Just like before.”
“Just like before.” I nod slowly. Once. Twice. “When you say ‘before’, you mean, back when it was me, living alone in our apartment, while you were gone every night? Missing my games and my plays, not being able to pick me up or drop me off or be involved in my life in any freaking way. That’s what you want back? That was our better life?”
Silence. Then, “I…I don’t understand—”
“That’s the goddam problem! You never understand. You have absolutely no clue what that life was like for me, do you? Because you never think about anybody but yourself.”
“Of course I do.” But her voice is shaky, uncertain.
“All the effort and the sacrifice and the…the…” My hands start to shake at the memories: the Halloween costumes I made by myself, the scrapes I had to put my own band-aids on, the nightmares that no one was around to shoo away. “All the times I needed you!” I bite my cheek and count to five. “I needed you and you weren’t there.”
There’s a long silence. “I didn’t realize.”
“No. Of course you didn’t,” I say. “You never do. So I’m going to help you out. From now on, when you think about me, don’t. Forget all about me. Forget about going back to normal. In fact, you can forget about having any kind of life with me at all. I don’t need you anymore. From this point on, I no longer have a mother.”
About
Amy:
The youngest of seven kids, Amy has been
writing stories since she first learned to make her letters face the right way.
Her work has appeared in Family Fun, A Fly in Amber and Stories for Children.
As an architect, she spends her days restoring hundred-year-old homes in Boise
where she lives with her son, a feral house cat, and a fake owl named Alan. She
hates chocolate, but loves vegetables. She also loves travelling to foreign
lands and the smell of honeysuckle on humid Southern nights.
Amy is represented by the lovely and amazing Danielle Chiotti of Upstart Crow Literary.
Amy is represented by the lovely and amazing Danielle Chiotti of Upstart Crow Literary.
Giveaway Details:
2
winners will receive a signed ARC of DIG TOO DEEP, and a silver starfish
bookmark, magnet, button, and "Make Your Own mini-protest sign" kit,
US Only.
Tour Schedule:
Week
One:
3/21/2016- Curling
Up With A Good Book- Interview
3/22/2016- Read.Read.Read- Review
3/23/2016- Two Chicks on Books- Guest
Post
3/24/2016- The
Phantom Paragrapher- Review
3/25/2016- The Cover Contessa- Interview
Week
Two:
3/28/2016- 5 Girls Book
Reviews- Review
3/29/2016- A Dream Within A
Dream- Guest Post
3/30/2016- Queen of All She
Reads- Review
3/31/2016- Wanderlust
& Books- Interview
4/1/2016- The Bookish
Angel- Review
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