ROSE SIDE PARK: based on a true crime story

By Lovey Smitham

Dorcas Holland's home sits beside the roadside park on Highway 80 between Grand Saline and Mineola, Texas. She named her place, Rose Side Park, because her white picket fence covered in climbing roses separated those two entrances. Her son, Hum, is a cruel man but she does not see that. He brings his ex-movie star wife, Grace and their five children from Bennington, Oklahoma, back home for the Mineola Watermelon Festival and for her to have her fifth child. Hum is in a cheap motel room with the mayor's girlfriend, the 'Lady in Red' after the parade downtown ends, while his wife is having her baby at her mother's. Dorcas and the grandchildren are serving free watermelon slices to travelers in cars on Highway 80, invited to come sit at tables set up along the highway into Mineola, to celebrate the annual affair. Who should come to her table but a dead man... in a wheelchair. Dorcas suspects Hum might have something to do with it, and sends him high-tailing it back to Oklahoma. He insists on taking the five other children but leaves his wife, Grace and the new baby in Grand Saline. Those two never go back. This is a true crime-murder story of a father's suspected patricide by Angelee, Thomas, Virginia, Jerome and Lorena Holland. It is a loving story. It is a dark story.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1798865475
• ISBN13: 9781798865477
• Release Date: March 2019
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 135 Pages
• Weight: 0.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.3" x 6.0"