King novelist Sam Newsome has been awarded The Garcia Memorial Prize for his debut novel, Jackie. An annual award presented in conjunction with the national Reader Views Book Awards, The Garcia Memorial Prize is awarded to the best fiction book of the year.

A powerful, inspiring, and touching novel, Jackie is an extraordinary tale about how marvelous things can happen when untapped potential is fostered and developed.

About the book: Jackie chronicles the life of a young man born to misfortune. As a child, Jackie is labeled as mentally challenged. He suffers an abusive home life and the torment of bullies at school. Soon he is judged uneducable, relegated to homeschooling that is no more effective than the classroom, and left without a formal education. Thirteen years later, Jackie reunited with an old classmate, Jimmie, who is now a recent college graduate. Circumstances reunite the old acquaintances when Jackie’s mother becomes ill. Together they discover that Jackie has a secret ability and enormous untapped potential. That ability enables the friends to discover and expose deeply seated local government corruption and create a future for Jackie.

A mesmerizing story about friendship, luck, potential, Jackie is the story of one unforgettable young man’s journey to fulfill his destiny.

Dr. Sam Newsome was raised in King, on a farm that has been in his family for generations. He attended King School and graduated from South Stokes High School in 1967. Newsome graduated from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 1971 and then attended Bowman Gray School of Medicine (now Wake Forest University Medical School) and received an MD degree in 1975. He then completed a residency in Family Medicine. In 1978 Dr. Newsome began his practice of Family Medicine in King in an office he built on his family’s land and has been on staff at Stokes County’s hospital ever since. During his decades of medical practice, he has also helped staff the county health department, run the county jail’s and the local state prison’s health programs, worked with the local skilled nursing facilities since 1980, and served as a county medical examiner since 1978. He has been married to his high school sweetheart, Betty Jo, since 1971. They have two children. Jackie is Sam Newsome’s debut novel.

Jackie is published in trade paper and eBook editions and is available where fine books are sold.

The Reader Views Awards is an annual literary awards program that recognizes excellence in independent publishing. Founded in 2005, Reader Views (www.readerviews.com ) is based in Austin, Texas.