Caroline Friday is a novelist and award winning screenwriter with eleven screenplays. Her adaptation of No Place for a Lady, by Maggie Brendan, has been optioned by Starz Media for distribution on the Hallmark Channel. In addition, her script, Angels on Earth, placed second-runner up in the 2008 Kairos Screenwriting Competition sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation. She recently completed her first novel, The River Flows, based on her script by the same name. She currently serves as attorney, co-founder and EVP of Sixth Day Media, LLC, a faith-based and family film finance and production company headquartered near Atlanta. Caroline has a Business Administration degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as a Juris Doctor in Law (JD) and an (MBA) from Wake Forest University. Affiliations include Women in Film, American Christian Fiction Writers, the American Bar Association, and the Illinois State Bar Association. Caroline is also a Stephen Minister and a Bible study teacher. She resides in Marietta, Georgia, with her husband, Bill, three children, Anna, Braxton, and Rachel, and yellow lab Dodga. She can be found at www.sixthdaymedia.com/caroline.

Blue Hole Back Home is a powerful To Kill a Mockingbird–type story, only without the compelling courtroom scenes that inspired many readers to endure the grind of law school, present company included. Loosely based on an actual event, it is a coming-of-age tale of fifteen-year-old Shelby Lenoir (a tomboy with the nickname of Turtle), set in a small Appalachian town in North Carolina in the summer of 1979. When not working a landscaping business by day, Turtle and her brother, Emerson, spend every free moment with their friends, Jimbo, L.J., and Went, at a rock quarry–turned-lake known as the Blue Hole. But this summer is different. A new girl has moved to town: a dark-skinned, exotic beauty from Sri Lanka, who has everyone talking and has captured the hearts of both Em and Jimbo.

Farsanna is her name, a younger, darker version of Selma Hayek, with intelligence and wit to match the toughest white kid around. And there are plenty of local white folk who make it abundantly clear that she and her family are not wanted. Chock-full of tension and conflict, the story is complete with an evil, gun-toting, “good ole boy” antagonist named Mort, who threatens Farsanna with horrible names and images of vile and repulsive abduction. Combine his antics with drive-by shootings, attempted assaults, death threats, and the resurrection of a long-inactive Ku Klux Klan, and you have the makings of a classic, quasi-horror film that had me on the edge of my seat.

But what grabbed me most was the tender love story between Turtle and Jimbo, who looks a lot like Zac Ephron in my mind. Once Farsanna steals his heart, Turtle realizes she loves him after all, but not as the brother he has always been to her. His goodness, courage, and twinkling green eyes see her as just the cute tomboy sister, and she knows that. From the first moment she observes him rise to Farsanna’s defense, then gently caress her dark-skinned arm, and finally whisper softly through her

licorice-straight hair (author’s description), you sense what Turtle knows deep down in her soul: This can only end in heartache and doom.

Many elements of this story would make it a fabulous film. First, it is an excellent piece for an ensemble of young actors, reminiscent of the Brat Pack movies in the ’80s, but with a much deeper thematic edge to it—think Mississippi Burning and you’ll know what I mean. Also, classic Southern dichotomies are represented, such as the idealistic savior who wants to end racial tensions nonviolently, the tormented pastor who is unable to defend his pulpit from the will of the majority, the Judas Iscariot who can’t decide which side of the fence he wants to sit on, as well as the well-bred Southern lady who insists on living under a cloud of self-imposed ignorance and oblivion. Enough to make your blood boil.

I can’t bring myself to describe the climactic moment in the story, but rest assured it delivers on a grand scale. It is prefaced with a swinging rope, burning crosses, sheets with haphazard eye holes cut out, and the unthinkable. You’ll have to read the book to learn more. But most important, Ms. Jordan-Lake does a splendid job of showing how an irrational evil survived the civil rights movement to the dawn of the ’80s, reminding us of its persistence to live on, immune to the political correctness of the day. In a single moment and without warning, it reared its ugly head and the innocence of Turtle’s childhood was snatched away, propelling her into an adulthood haunted by the images and stench of death, forcing her to ask of herself Why didn’t I speak? Why didn’t I stand? Why didn’t I fight? Good questions for all of us, even those who didn’t have the privilege of growing up in the South. Good questions that will put me on the front row of my local movie theater.