Showboat Soubrette Blog Tour

Showboat Soubrette blog tour is through The Coffee Pot Book Club and includes an exclusive excerpt for Sarandipity’s readers. Share, comment, follow.

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Book Title and Author Name:

Showboat Soubrette

Brodie Curtis

Blurb:

FROM STAR SHOWBOAT SINGER
TO PIRATE PREY ON THE WICKED RIVER!

Showboat singer Stella Parrot’s star rises in the Antebellum South with every sold-out performance along the lower Mississippi River. When a river pirate viciously assaults her, new friends Toby Freeman and John Dee Franklin foil the attack. However, the pirate’s family is bent on revenge.

Stella, Toby, and John Dee escape their riverboat with able assistance from young cub pilot Sam Clemens, only to be pursued by the notorious Burton Gang. As the trio runs for their lives, mortal perils await at every turn: a fierce storm, high-stakes gambling confrontations, deadly combat, and a cotton boat up in flames. Stella, a Cherokee Indian, and Toby, a free Black man, and their friend White man John Dee endure relentless racial prejudices and injustices in the gritty underbelly of the Wicked River while fleeing to New Orleans—where the Burtons will be waiting!

SHOWBOAT SOUBRETTE’s fast-paced lower river adventure chase features romantic showboat scenes and is unsparing in its exploration of the bigoted and sometimes lawless riverboat era.

Excerpt 3:

Head-Butt on the Cedar Point

The old Black man threw water on the injured man’s face, stirring him. Two other men dragged him away. Brick Burton jeered at the injured man with a growling snarl that Toby wanted to knock off him.

“Burton damn-near killed him,” Toby said.

“What were they doing?” Stella asked.

“A head-butt contest,” Toby said. “All those men on the stairs bet on who’d win.”

“How barbaric.”

Toby lifted an eyebrow. “Ain’t head-butt been on any of the boats you worked?”

“Never.”

No sense explaining further. Stella only knew the lower river’s showy veneer. He and John Dee roamed its underbelly.

The crowd calmed when a man wearing a flashy gold cravat under a black suit jacket began handing out money. His bushy black beard worked up and down like a dark mop as he called out winners.

Brick Burton paced back and forth along a string tied between the stairwell and a support beam, about waist-high from the floor. He stopped in front of three Black men who were sitting on the floor, just beyond the beam. Two scooched behind the biggest of the three.

“Get up, boy!” Brick shouted at the Black man.

From the soot on their shirts, they were boiler room men, forced by the captain into head-butt combat for the amusement of his passengers. One man shook. Another covered his eyes with his hands. Fear. Fear of what Brick Burton might do to them—they had just watched him severely injure a man. And Toby suspected they feared winning. Defeating a White man might spell trouble on the lower river. Especially if the White man got hurt. The spectators were bloodthirsty White men, and who knew what a Black man who injured a White man might be accused of? They might want blood for blood. The sad reality was there was nothing in this head-butt contest for the Black men.

Brick Burton snorted like a rabid dog. Spittle and snot sprayed his reluctant opponent. This evil leviathan of the Mississippi River would destroy the poor unfortunate. Toby squeezed into the throng of men on the stairwell for a better look at the combatants. Burton’s opponent shook with fear, about to be crushed, plain as day. Maybe even killed.

For a second, Toby heard the crack of a whip. He was his young self, back in North Carolina. The White overseer struck a Black man’s naked back again and again. Toby flinched every time the whip cracked. He couldn’t move a muscle. He’d been powerless to stop it.

Brick Burton licked his lips, as if he were anticipating the exquisite taste of inflicting bone-crushing pain. The Black man was gonna die. Pure terror on the man’s face made Toby’s decision. His arm muscles tensed like iron. He grabbed a man’s shoulder, pulling him out of the way, and took a step down the stairs.

He hesitated. Don’t put Stella and John Dee at risk! But Stella was right—there was no avoiding Brick Burton on a small stern-wheeler.

Time to settle things here and now.

Toby took off his jacket and threw it to Stella. He pushed through the crowd to the bottom of the stairs. He unbuttoned his shirt. The deckhands let him pass.

“Ah, a taker,” the bearded man said to the mob of gambling men. “A nice big buck. Can this boy best mighty Brick Burton? Get your bets in!”

Burton eyed Toby with malice; he was out for blood.

Toby couldn’t tell if Burton recognized him. It didn’t matter. Two men were entering the ring of battle and only one would survive.

“Toby!” John Dee shouted from the stairwell.

Toby turned. The deckhands were restraining John Dee. “Don’t do this!”

“Just bet big,” Toby said.

Toby turned his attention to Brick Burton, who was snorting again. Then Burton snapped his head downward, showing Toby his knobby skull like it was a bull elk’s rack of antlers.

Buy Link:

Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/u/boPV81

This title is available to read on #KindleUnlimited.

Author Bio:

Raised in the Midwest, Brodie Curtis was educated as a lawyer and left the corporate world to embrace life in Colorado with his wife and two sons.

Curtis is the author of THE FOUR BELLS, a novel of The Great War, which is the product of extensive historical research, including long walks through the fields of Flanders, where much of the book’s action is set. His second novel, ANGELS AND BANDITS, takes his protagonists into The Battle of Britain. Curtis’ third novel is set on a Mississippi Riverboat prior to the Civil War.

A lover of history, particularly American history and the World Wars, Curtis reviews historical fiction for the Historical Novels Review and more than 100 of his published reviews and short takes on historical novels can be found on his website: brodiecurtis.com.