Mrs.
Travers Chapman
Welcome to my webpage, and to ‘Wild Iris’, my first
novel. Iris is an orphaned teenager living with her uncle in rural Tennessee at
the turn of the 20th century. She dreams of finding a man, and
having her own home. But her uncle trades her to a neighbor named Uriah Hitt
for a few gallons of moonshine, and she finds herself treated cruelly by
Capitola and Jedediah, Uriah’s parents, until pregnancy brings her a measure of
relief.
David Kingman is a railroad manager who brings his
beloved wife Franny and three small girls to Tennessee. But Franny is dying of
consumption. David meets Iris when Uriah asks him for work, and protects him
when he and his father cross a county sheriff. Uriah’s father dies, and his
mother attacks Iris in a fit of perverted rage, destroying her child.
Franny is horrified, and persuades David to take Iris in
to look after her three small girls. Uriah dies in a railroad accident, and
Franny realises that she is also close to her end. She has grown very fond of
Iris, and begs her to take her place at David’s side.
You may find ‘Wild Iris’ violent, you may be amused by
some moonshiner exploits. I have tried to paint a picture of conflict between a
closed community and a wider world, and a picture of how devotion can blossom
into love. I hope that Iris will touch your heart.
You may also
wonder who I am. Just think of me as kind of wraith, a spirit that dearly loves
the people amongst whom I live, and to whom I owe this book. Wild Iris is an
adventure story, and a l ove story, and also a tribute.
The following chapter link for Chapter 1 will take you
into the beginning of Wild Iris, and then another link at the bottom of each
chapter will take you into the following chapter, and so on through the whole
novel. You can also access each chapter at will through the links set out
below:
Chapter 1, Chapter
2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18, Chapter 19, Chapter 20, Chapter 21, Chapter 22