A super fun read, indeed! Even more entertaining, as you get inspired to participate in this interactive Poetic Musical Production, with Social Media, Family and Friends. You may use this Manuscript, as a real tool, to create and discover your own opportunities to bloom where you’re planted and soar like an eagle to new heights, from the Grace available in the Flame of Love of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Please allow our Heavenly Father to lead and inspire you with His Holy Spirit, bringing forth the abundant gifts He placed inside each of you. Co-creating and sharing in the Bounty of Christ. Therefore, benefiting generations to come, all for the Glory of God! Thank You!
“Will she die soon?” Sixteen-year-old Livy Moore has finally summoned the courage to ask about her mother’s illness. But she already knows the answer: for two years, Livy has watched her mother grow smaller and weaker. Now, in a series of journal entries, Livy chronicles the summer before her junior year--the summer she watches her mother slip away from her, as she succumbs to breast cancer. Livy has survived the pain of losing her mother by shutting herself off from the rest of the world. She has alienated herself from her best friend, and her and her father live as strangers in the same house, barely speaking, and never allowing themselves to share the grief that is tearing each of them apart. But when Livy gets swept up in a strong but ill-fated crush, and her mother’s condition worsens, she must learn to trust not only those around her, but herself. A beautifully written coming-of-age novel, Dream Journal gazes unflinchingly at the pain of loss and the beauty in survival.
This story moves around Aunt Emily, a farm lady (that would become a well known fashion designer after she moved to New York) and Phelps Durham, a writer of romance novels. In due course the two would wed. First, everybody remembers how Phelps Durham, the famous writer of romance novels, looked like in reality, not as he appeared in the yellowish pictures that Aunt Emily kept around the house: a 6:10 ft. tattooed Yankee – too tall to be a serious writer - who couldn’t fit in a normal door frame, or in a rolling door, and who could start a storm with his deep breath and crush a brick without utensils, with his bare hands or feet, if you gave him the idea that he could do it. He looked funny when Aunt Emily, who was 5.2 feet, was around. His head was like an egg decorated with a fresh crew haircut. Aunt Emily’s head was round and her face was pale. Also Phelps’ and Aunt Emily’s personalities were opposite: Aunt Emily was docile, she would listen to everybody’s talk and always make concessions, while Phelps was one of those men that thought that only his opinion was right and who could convince anybody in a couple of seconds that whatever he was saying was the only truth that there was The first chapter is dedicated to Phelps Durham only, to his passion for writing and his love for an actress Maggie – his first major flame, which he married shortly after they met in a fish market in downtown New York. Very soon their marriage fell apart. Maggie got increasingly troubled by a strange trembling (she called it “tremolo”) of her both hands. In her miserable state of mind she told Phelps one day that she didn’t want to have sex anymore, that she had enough of it. As Phelps and Maggie decided to divorce Phelps knew that he was dishonest, given that he was running away from a woman that was more than ever in need of somebody to take care of her. Chapter two is dedicated to Aunt Emily: “People ask me all the time how was Aunt Emily Wagner in reality. I confess that I don’t know everything about Aunt Emily’s family. The way I describe her in this story is how I felt she was. I began seeing her more often after her family moved and lived on a farm next to ours. When I think of Aunt Emily there are two hypostases that are very distinctive and irreconcilable. First, when she was fifteen (I was seven at that time), her beauty was like a “peach flower whispering to a spring breeze”. I found the above quotation in a small book called “How to impress a young lady with versatile poetry”. First I thought that versatile was the name of a poet. Her beauty, Aunt Emily’s, made me feel happy and also uncomfortable. I’d stand next to her and pinch her arm. I was in love with her, nobody would doubt that. As opposed to Phelps that had a modest background and worked very hard to make a living from his writing, Aunt Emily was born wealthy. Her dad used to collect vintage cars, among them a precious Rolls Royce that belonged to Winston Churchill.
After two years, Shula still cant believe her husband, Seth, is gone. In an effort to live again and to feel again, she accepts an offer to counsel women about marriage, love and fulfillment at Namaans, a Christian spa and retreat center designed to meet the spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical needs of women. It all begins with Shulas first week-long retreat, Naked and Unashamed, where she leads four women on a journey, exploring the ins and outs of the big S. Barbaras husband just retired and has finally joined her at home. Shes dreamed of this moment but so far nothings changed. Barb reasons there must be passion after sixty, and shes hoping shell discover ways to spice things up in more ways than adding cayenne pepper to her chicken tetrazzini. Lindsey hopes to boost her confidence as her wedding draws near. Shes done it rightvirgin til I doyet the man she loves took an alternate route. How will Lindsey measure up to Gabriela, the mother of her fiancs son, and how on earth will she fare as a stepmother and new wife? Then theres Savannah, who believes she has the perfect marriage. So why did her husband, Reed, suggest she attend this retreat? Savannahs hoping some new moves in the kitchen and bedroom will solve her problems. But Shulas hoping she can help Savannah uncover the root of her struggles and do what it takes to penetrate the wall that guards her heart. And finally theres Alex. Shes already determined divorce is the answer. She makes six figures, six figures more than her husband, and runs her home single handedly. Shes convinced she really has no need for a husband and wonders why she married him in the first place. This week is her last-ditch effort to salvage her marriage, or at least give the illusion that she gave it her all before giving the loafer the boot. These four very different women united by Shulas unusual therapeutic tactics as well as the amazing staff, services and food at Naamans, make unexpected discoveries about marriage, love, and more importantly, themselves. Surprising truths are revealed, past wounds are healed, and precious relationships are made, all while learning to live freefree of guilt, pain, fear, sorrow, shame, and the lies of the enemyfree to live naked and unashamed.
Josey Dale has come to a crossroad in her life. The hopes and dreams of the past are gone, the present looks bleak, and what the future holds is a mystery. A respite at Ivy's Bed & Breakfast will give her time to contemplate what to do now that she has nowhere to go. Dr. Thunder Wade, the local veterinarian, has to stop by Ivy's Bed & Breakfast Inn to pick up the owners' dog since Aurora, the temporary caretaker, can't handle the enormous St. Bernard puppy. He is intrigued by the single guest, Josey, in residence. An invitation to tea turns into a fight for their lives as a powerful thunderstorm rages outside, floods the area, and causes a giant cottonwood to fall on the only road out. Three strangers stuck together without electricity and phone service share their stories. As the days lengthen they learn more about each other and the secrets that rule their lives. And facing their pasts, their fears, and their hearts might be the biggest challenge of all.
“Impressive . . . [Cristina García’s] story is about three generations of Cuban women and their separate responses to the revolution. Her special feat is to tell it in a style as warm and gentle as the ‘sustaining aromas of vanilla and almond,’ as rhythmic as the music of Beny Moré.”—Time Cristina García’s acclaimed book is the haunting, bittersweet story of a family experiencing a country’s revolution and the revelations that follow. The lives of Celia del Pino and her husband, daughters, and grandchildren mirror the magical realism of Cuba itself, a landscape of beauty and poverty, idealism and corruption. Dreaming in Cuban is “a work that possesses both the intimacy of a Chekov story and the hallucinatory magic of a novel by Gabriel García Márquez” (The New York Times). In celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the novel’s original publication, this edition features a new introduction by the author. Praise for Dreaming in Cuban “Remarkable . . . an intricate weaving of dramatic events with the supernatural and the cosmic . . . evocative and lush.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Captures the pain, the distance, the frustrations and the dreams of these family dramas with a vivid, poetic prose.”—The Washington Post “Brilliant . . . With tremendous skill, passion and humor, García just may have written the definitive story of Cuban exiles and some of those they left behind.”—The Denver Post
