Several years ago, while working on Mother of Rain, the beginning of the Appalachian novels I wrote, I snuck in late to the evening service at Christians Bend Church in Tennessee. I had not been in the church since 1968. The last time I[..]
I came across this photo while looking for another. Everyone in this picture has gone on to be with God except for me and the babies. The two I'm carrying and the one sitting at the table. That's Mama, the baby of her family,[..]
I have kin who were raped. Each of them only spoke to me about it once. When they told their stories, they lowered their voices and spoke as if they were afraid to wake the dead, although the man who reportedly raped them was very[..]
I just got off the phone with our son. Stephan is living in Columbus, Georgia, the town I grew up in. Of all the people I expected to live in Georgia, I never expected it to be our son. But as Mary Engelbreit so[..]
God is an orphan. As far as any of us know, he had no father, no mother. He had to learn to scrap by on his own from the earliest of time. He didn't have a mother to tell him when to switch the lights[..]
Author/Journalist Karen Spears Zacharias is a Gold Star daughter and an alumni of Oregon State University.
Karen's work has been featured in the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, National Public Radio, and Good Morning America.
Her debut novel, Mother of Rain (Mercer University Press), received the Weatherford Award for Best in Appalachian Fiction from Berea College and was adapted for the stage by Georgia's Historic State Theater, The Springer. In 2018, Karen was named Appalachian Heritage Writer by Shepherd University, and Mother of Rain was chosen as the One Book One West Virginia Read.
Her first true crime book A Silence of Mockingbirds was chosen by the city of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as the One City Read.
Karen's upcoming book The Murder Gene, is her second true crime work.
Karen and her husband, Tim, make their home in Deschutes County, Oregon.
For more information on Karen and her books, click here