"A Thousand Painted Hours"

Barbara O’Neal is the author of more than a dozen award-winning, bestselling novels, including the runaway bestseller, When We Believed in Mermaids, which has been published in 21 countries and spent many months on both the most sold and most read Amazon Charts, as well as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Washington Post bestseller lists. O’Neal is an avid traveler and passionate cook, and discovered the Oregon coast on a pandemic-era trip with her husband. She now lives on that rocky, moody coast in a quirky beach house and writes her books from a room overlooking the sea. She lives with her British husband, who has promised to never lose his accent, and their cats and dogs.

O’Neal applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, A Thousand Painted Hours, and reported the following:

Page 69 of my book is a divider. It reads "Bread, Vinegar, And Runner Beans." 1940 London.

I suppose it give a little whiff of the story, but not very much.

I will say it goes to the fascination I felt over the way people fed themselves in wartime London. Who knew, for example, that you could make more vinegar with vinegar? A useful trick. Elsie is trying to keep her ill mother as healthy as possible on rations that were quite slim, so she supplements with a garden ("it was a very good year for carrots") and trades with neighbors. A friend keeps hens, so she has the glory of extra eggs. Everyone in London was quite thin by the time it was all over.

Visit Barbara O'Neal's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Thousand Painted Hours.

--Marshal Zeringue