Meet our Prairie Page Authors: Bren McClain

Authored by: Laura Bray

One of the best things about Prairie Pages is that we often get to talk to the authors of our Prairie Pages Picks during our online book club events. Over the years, we’ve made some great friends who have become part of our Modern Prairie community.

In August 2024, we read One Good Mama Bone by Bren McClain. 

One Good Mama Bone is set in early 1950s rural South Carolina and chronicles Sarah Creamer’s quest to find her “mama bone,” after she is left to care for a boy who is not her own but instead is the product of an affair between her husband and her best friend and neighbor, a woman she calls “Sister.” When her husband drinks himself to death, Sarah, a dirt-poor homemaker with no family to rely on and the note on the farm long past due, must find a way for her and young Emerson Bridge to survive. But the more daunting obstacle is Sarah’s fear that her mother’s words, seared in her memory since she first heard them at the age of six, were a prophecy, “You ain’t got you one good mama bone in you, girl.”

When Sarah reads in the local newspaper that a boy won $680 with his Grand Champion steer at the 1951 Fat Cattle Show & Sale, she sees this as their financial salvation and finds a way to get Emerson Bridge a steer from a local farmer to compete in the 1952 show. But the young calf is unsettled at Sarah’s farm, crying out in distress and growing louder as the night wears on. Some four miles away, the steer’s mother hears his cries and breaks out of a barbed-wire fence to go in search of him. The next morning Sarah finds the young steer quiet, content, and nursing a large cow. Inspired by the mother cow’s act of love, Sarah names her Mama Red. And so Sarah’s education in motherhood begins with Mama Red as her teacher. (Bren McClain)

The book was a favorite of the Prairie Pages community so I wanted to catch-up with Bren and see what she’s been up to since we last saw her.

Laura: What are you writing now? Is there anything on the horizon we can look forward to?

Bren: I am currently working on a rewrite for my next novel that’s based on a real event in South Carolina’s history, after some significant feedback (from an editor) that I needed to broaden my lens and bring in more of the community vs. just a single focus on one woman. Will deliver to my agent this fall. 

Laura: What are you reading?

Bren: Kim Michele Richardson’s newest and final in her Book Woman series, The Mountains We Call Home. 

Laura: I’ve found that people use the most interesting items as bookmarks. I’ve used everything from bookstore receipts to candy bar wrappers. What do you use for a bookmark when you read? 

Bren: Likely a piece of paper I have lying around.

Laura: Do you prefer books, ebooks, or audiobooks?

Bren: I prefer the printed book, but I also love audiobooks. No ebooks!

Laura: Part of my reading hobby is to collect my favorite first lines and quotes in my  journal. Do you have a favorite first line or quote in a book that you have read? 

Bren: From Pat Conroy’s Prince of Tides – “My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call."

Laura: Do you have a favorite line from one of your books?

Bren:  “But I’ll tell you this now, Mama’s words were the first stitch on a garment that I would wear for the rest of my born days. And once that stitch got to running, it kept going more and more off seam. I let her words take up housekeeping inside of me.”

Laura: Where is your favorite bookstore or library?

Bren: Without a doubt, Page 158 Books in Wake Forest, NC. Talk about a community-based and community-serving bookstore. I LOVE THOSE FOLKS! 

Thanks Bren for catching-up with us! 

You can learn more about Bren on her website.

If you are new to Modern Prairie, please check-out Prairie Pages and join us to discuss our next book.