In his last few books, Hattiesburg author Jason Beverly has taken readers through various times and locations throughout Mississippi and Louisiana, including New Orleans, the Mississippi Delta and the fictional town of Christmas, Mississippi.
For his latest book, “A Mississippi Summer,” which is set to be released on July 1, Beverly revisits the Magnolia State – specifically, the Mississippi Gulf Coast – during the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. “A Mississippi Summer” is the romantic story of a man from Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, who falls in love with a mysterious woman after coming to the Coast to help rebuild after the storm.
“I just wanted to switch it up a little bit,” said Beverly, who usually incorporates supernatural elements in his books. “It’s a crazy world we live in, and I just want to give people something relaxing, laid back, and just kind of give them an escape to get away from everything that’s going on in the world.
“I think’s it’s a fun read.”
The novel starts when the main character, who is debt-ridden, loses his job in Louisiana when the plant he works at begins cutting employee’s hours. Soon after, he gets a job offer to help rebuild a hurricane-ravaged casino in Gulfport.
He and his friend move to Mississippi to take advantage of the well-paying gig, and in the process he falls head-over-heels for the aforementioned woman.
“The relationship grows, but she’s very, very mysterious, and her behavior is very suspicious,” Beverly said. “His parents come from Louisiana and meet this young woman, and his father disapproves of her.”
“A Mississippi Summer” is the first book in a two-part series, with the sequel, “Another Mississippi Summer,” set to follow in the future.
The new book, upon release, can be found at www.jasonbeverly.com, along with Beverly’s other books, “Christmas Clues,” “More Christmas Clues,” “Ghosts of Beauvoir,” “The Flying Church of Orleans Parish,” “Mississippi Revival Roads” and “Releasing Magnolias Along the Mystical Railway: A Collection of Mississippi Ghost Tales.”
For Christmas 2022, Beverly plans to release “An Eighties-Something Christmas,” which will be the first in a two-book series dealing with Christmas in various decades, followed by “A Nineties-Something Christmas.”
In those books, the characters find themselves transported to the 1980s and 1990s, respectively, during the Christmas season.
“I think people are craving for simple times, nostalgia,” Beverly said. “It’s kind of just taking folks back to how things used to be – low-key, without all this technology and that kind of stuff.
“People actually talked and communicated, instead of texting all the time.”
Beverly also is working on the third book in the Christmas Clues trilogy, “The Final Christmas Clues,” which is expected to be released in time for Christmas 2023. That series follows Cam Cade and his wife Eve, who are traveling home from a Christmas event when their toddler twins mysteriously age by seven years and vanish from the back seat of the car. While searching for the kids, Cam and Eve find themselves back in Christmas, where they are transported to the 1970s.
In addition, Beverly plans to return to the supernatural/ghost story genre with “A Haunting in Mississippi,” scheduled to be released in October.
“The neat thing about that is, the story is fictional but it’s based on true events,” he said. “So that’s going to give me the opportunity to go back to those supernatural ghost stories that people always like me to write, so I’m very excited about that one.”
