"The Ticket" Selected as a Finalist for the 2016 Selah Awards

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. - May 11, 2016 - PRLog -- Edie Melson, Director of the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference, and Eva Marie Everson, BRMCWC Contest Director, announce the finalists in the 2016 Selah Awards.

The Selah Awards are open industry wide and internationally to authors published by traditional and nontraditional publishing houses during the previous year. The awards will be given during the awards banquet held on Wednesday evening, May 25, at 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time. The 2015 Book of the Year award is chosen by the contest director from the top scores/first place recipients.

This year "The Ticket" (Firefly Southern Fiction, an imprint of Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas), by Debra Coleman Jeter, is a finalist in the categories of Young Adult Fiction and First Novel.

Romantic Times Book Reviews gives "The Ticket" 4 stars. "One would be hard-pressed not to root for the likable protagonist and hope that her story eventually ends with a happy ending."

:Complex characters," says Publishers Weekly. "Jeter s coming-of-age novel considers the problems that might follow a sudden windfall."

Tray Dunaway longs to be part of the popular set at school, but she's growing too fast and her clothes no longer fit. The only person who understands Tray's need for acceptance is her grandmother, but when Tray wears Gram's hand-sewn clothes to school, the kids make fun of her tall, boney appearance.

Tray's luck improves when Pee Wee Johnson, a down-and-out friend of her father's, buys two lottery tickets and gives one to Mr. Dunaway as a thank-you for driving him to Hazard, Illinois. When her father's ticket turns out to be the winner, Johnson demands his cut of the proceeds. Tray's dad refuses.

What seems like a stroke of good fortune quickly becomes a dangerous game of life and death for Tray and her family.

Available in bookstores and on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1941103863/