Like a well-crafted stage play, Just Passin' Thru delivers one suspenseful scene after another. But in this historic setting — a store on the Appalachian Trail called Mountain Crossings — the characters who show up are no fictional creations. They are the real-life stars of the author’s new life as a backpack-purging, canteen-selling, hostel-running, bandage-taping, lost-child finding, argument-settling, romance-fixing, chili-making man of many faces. Like any good drama, there are the good guys (and gals) and the weirdos, too. Some show up once (and that’s enough), and some appear again and again. Some are friends, and some dangerous. But all are united by two things: the author’s story-capturing talent, and whatever it is that lures them to attempt (or conquer) a 2,200-mile path that climbs and plummets from Georgia to Maine.

Between the eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, countless African Americans passed as white, leaving behind families and friends, roots and community. It was, as Allyson Hobbs writes, a chosen exile, a separation from one racial identity and the leap into another. This revelatory history of passing explores the possibilities and challenges that racial indeterminacy presented to men and women living in a country obsessed with racial distinctions. It also tells a tale of loss. As racial relations in America have evolved so has the significance of passing. To pass as white in the antebellum South was to escape the shackles of slavery. After emancipation, many African Americans came to regard passing as a form of betrayal, a selling of one’s birthright. When the initially hopeful period of Reconstruction proved short-lived, passing became an opportunity to defy Jim Crow and strike out on one’s own. Although black Americans who adopted white identities reaped benefits of expanded opportunity and mobility, Hobbs helps us to recognize and understand the grief, loneliness, and isolation that accompanied—and often outweighed—these rewards. By the dawning of the civil rights era, more and more racially mixed Americans felt the loss of kin and community was too much to bear, that it was time to “pass out” and embrace a black identity. Although recent decades have witnessed an increasingly multiracial society and a growing acceptance of hybridity, the problem of race and identity remains at the center of public debate and emotionally fraught personal decisions.

After receiving the devastating news that she would have to receive a lumpectomy in order to remove a tumor, Marci goes under the knife in hopes that the tumor will be benign. While the tumor is removed and it is not cancerous, the worst is only yet to come. Her health drastically declines due to this (her thirteenth surgery) Several deadly complications arise- a painful hematoma, pulmonary embolism and appendicitis. As she undergoes emergency surgery for appendicitis, she almost dies due to complications of having two surgeries so close together.This is just the beginning of a life and death struggle for Marci. Her health declines and she is diagnosed with the incurable disease of Gastroparesis, a chronic illness that has developed through all of her medical issues. This disorder means her stomach cannot tolerate food or drink, and she finds herself being rushed to the emergency room every week for IV fluids as her health continues to deteriorate.Now too sick to work and living alone, Marci is convinced her time on earth has come to an end. As she prepares for hospice care, she receives an outpouring of love and support by friends and family, including angelic visits from her deceased father. They give her the strength to fight for her life.Overwhelming trials continue for Marci, and at one point she loses consciousness and falls, striking her head. Her spirit goes to heaven and meets the Savior. She wants to stay, but the Savior tells her she must return and finish her second book "Just Passing Through On My Way To Heaven". Join Marci on her journey of faith, hope, and miracles amidst great adversity as she places her life and trust in the Lord's hands.

Harlem Renaissance author Nella Larsen (1891 –1964) published just two novels and three short stories in her lifetime, but achieved lasting literary acclaim. Her classic novel Passing first appeared in 1926.

This book tells the story of the extraordinary life of a man from North London, from 1960 to 2020. He battles his way through life, mostly in a catastrophic manner. To the reader he openly admits his faults and mistakes, from violence, cocaine, sexual differences, prison, and to Northern Ireland and back to London. Whilst reading this book you will feel joy, sorrow, then more joy. You will want to love him, hit him, then love him some more. It’s an enjoyable read for everyone to learn from his mistakes and understand how he turned his life around to success.

Can socially awkward, closeted virgin Avery survive with his heart intact when hot drifter Chase inevitably moves on?