Press Kit

Stones: A Novel by Jeanie Kortum

Co-published by: She Writes Press & UnCUT/VOICES
Due out: July 18th, 2017 | $16.95 | 978-1-63152-180-5
Distributed by: Ingram Publisher Services
Public Relations Contact: Eva Zimmerman
 EvaZimmermanPR@gmail.com | 510-292-8678

Download the Press Kit PDF here....

Plotline

A master’s degree student in narrative anthropology, Emely has examined her own roots---but only through an academic lens. All this changes, however, when she returns home to Africa and reconnects with her family’s tribe and its mystical prophecies. Sent on an assignment to embed herself with the last living members of an ancient tribe living the old way deep in the forest, Emely attempts to keep an academic distance even as the people she’s there to observe insist that she is the one they’ve been waiting for---that it is her destiny to find a stone tablet made thousands of years before Christ and lead the tribe into the future. But resisting her call for change are the females of the tribe who believe in a secret goddess and practice female genital mutilation as a symbol of purity and worship, as well as a police chief with an agenda all his own. Soon, Emely is swept into a battle of opposing minds, souls, and bodies---one that could determine the future not just of her tribe but women everywhere.

About the Author

Jeanie Kortum is an award-winning author, journalist, and humanitarian. In partnership with the National Park System, she founded and directed A Home Away from Homelessness for nearly twenty years. Her philanthropic work has been widely recognized by a long list of awards, some of which include the San Francisco Foundation’s Community Award, the Commission on Women Making History Award, the Jefferson Award, the Espiritu Award from the Isabel Allende Foundation and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the San Francisco Urban Research Association. She has been the subject of two CBS national news profiles and rights to her life story have been sold to Warner Brothers.   Kortum’s award winning first novel, Ghost Vision, is loosely based on her experiences dogsledding to a Greenland village at the top of the world. She researched Stones by living with a hunter/gatherer tribe in Africa, during which time she witnessed a clitoridectomy. This experience compelled her to bring awareness to the danger of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).