To Laugh Once More (Hope of the South Book 2)

To Laugh Once More is a Victorian Inspirational Romance set in Florida and Georgia in 1895. If you like Southern women's fiction, you'll love this one. There's a splash of plantation life and city life in places like Atlanta and Marietta, Georgia, when they were at the height of their post-War growth.
If you like a little sass in your heroine or you can identify with the love-hate relationship we all have with Scarlett O'Hara, then you're going to love this book. If you're not looking for a perfect heroine or hero, then you've found what you're looking for in To Laugh Once More. Lydia Barrington Scarbrough is still on her journey to overcoming her selfish ways and her debutante upbringing, but she's getting there.

A dissatisfied wife. A misunderstood husband. Three tragedies will alter their path forever. Will their choices tear them apart, or will they allow them To Laugh Once More?

Three years after her marriage to Hamilton, former debutante Lydia Barrington Scarbrough is dissatisfied with life. She has yet to have children, and she spends most of her days sitting in a circle of women chatting about homemaking. She thought life would be more than what it’s turned out to be. Hamilton travels on business and never takes her with him. What’s a lonely wife to do when she has no children to raise? She longs for adventure and romance, and really, she longs for the fulfillment of her purpose in life. A purpose beyond being a wife and raising children.

Lydia faces a series of hardships that stretch her faith beyond capacity. Leaving her childhood home in Florida for Georgia proves to be more difficult than she ever imagined, and her marriage may not survive the trials. Lydia’s own personal battles drive a wedge between them. What will it take to make Hamilton attempt to save their marriage and draw Lydia back to him?

As Lydia strives to etch out a place for herself in a new world full of unfamiliar prejudice against the poor and uneducated, and she attempts to overcome her private battles of infertility and insignificance, she must help Hamilton understand her deepest longings and learn the true meaning of joy. Will she surrender her will in order to find her purpose? Will her future hold a happier marriage, motherhood, and a calling greater than she could ever have imagined?

They won't find their place in this world until they find their way back to each other.

This journey through the historic Atlanta and Marietta, Georgia exposes both the beauty and the pain of the heart of the South.