10/22/2026
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
LOCAL AUTHOR CARMAN RENEE JONES TO LAUNCH DEBUT BOOK, IN YOUR PRESENCE, ON 60TH BIRTHDAY AT UNION PUBLIC LIBRARY
UNION, MS — The Union Public Library will host a hometown book signing and birthday celebration for debut author Carman Renee Jones on Monday, November 9, 2026, from 5:30 to 7:00 PM. The event marks both the release of her contemporary fiction debut, In Your Presence: A Story of Faith and Second Chances, and Jones's 60th birthday.
Jones grew up in Union and spent much of her childhood inside the Union Public Library. She wrote her first book five decades later, between fares, driving rideshare at night in Nashville.
Set against the neon-blurred backdrop of Nashville, Tennessee, In Your Presence peels back the skin of maternal devotion to reveal the bone underneath. The story follows Carman, a sixty-year-old rideshare driver working twenty-hour days through an economic and medical crisis she cannot afford to name, as she navigates the fracturing relationships with her grown children — her daughter, Beth, carrying years of unspoken family grief, and her son, Adrian, gone silent at an overseas military base.
Blending working-class realism with a journey of spiritual surrender, the book explores the heavy arithmetic of modern isolation and what happens when we finally choose to let ourselves be held.
"Hosting this launch at my hometown library on my 60th birthday is incredibly meaningful," says Jones. "That library was my refuge as a child. This book is about the quiet spaces between family members, the burdens we carry in isolation, and the second chances that find us when we finally drop our armor. I can't think of a better place to share this story than the community that shaped me."
The launch will feature a live reading by the author, a Q&A on family, hyper-independence and generational healing, and a book signing. Refreshments will be served in honor of the author's 60th birthday.
Books will be available for purchase at the event. Admission is free and the public is warmly invited to attend.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carman Renee Jones was raised in Union, Mississippi, and now lives in Brentwood, Tennessee, where she drives rideshare in Nashville. In Your Presence is her first book. She wrote it in her car, between fares, on the same nights it describes.
EVENT
Monday, November 9, 2026
5:30 – 7:00 PM
Union Public Library
101 Peachtree Street
Union, MS 39365
MEDIA CONTACT
Carman Renee Jones
(601) 287-9039
[email protected]
