Thursday, March 20
1 p.m.
Cost: Free
Thelma Smoot is a native of St. Mary’s County and has published fictional books, that are based on some aspects of her African American upbringing in rural St. Mary’s County Maryland. She was raised in a small tobacco farming community in the 1960s. Her books are a mixture of mystery, drama and exploration of social issues. It also delves into justice, faith , and the impact the past has on present lives.
What's In A Name is deeply rooted in a rural farming community in Southern Maryland. In the 1960s a young African American girl, Elizabeth, struggles with the effects that class and race discrimination is having on her family and a neighboring white boy, Jacob. Although sharecroppers, her grandparents, play an integral role in the town finding ways to work around a cruel and unfair system. Jacob who is haunted by his past, now lives in a rundown efficiency apartment that was once a flourishing Days Inn. In this dark solitary room, an unaccustomed beam crosses his face as he thinks of her. To escape her past, Elizabeth is now living and working in New Jersey. She has developed new friendships and is now a lay speaker at Macedonia Methodist Church in Ocean City. Its Christmas time and Kathy, her supervisor, was just brutally murdered. Detective Carter's intuition is telling him that Elizabeth is either guilty or knows more than what she is telling the police. Just when they are about to depart on a holiday road trip, Elizabeth disappears from a snow-covered parking lot. Will her faith in God be enough to save her?