Joy That Long Endures - #TeaserTuesday and First Chapter / First Paragraph / Tuesday Intros

     If you like historical fiction set in the Old West, you'll enjoy Joy That Long Endures as much as I did. Author Alethea Williams tells the tale of men and women working to succeed in Wyoming Territory in the days after completion of the Great Transcontinental Railroad. Although hordes of men and women headed west in search of gold, the people who were most successful were those who provided services to the fortune seekers. This book tells the story of Devin Cavanaugh, a former ironworker who now hauls freight; Dulcinetta Jackson, who owns a saloon; and other characters with ambition and drive.
     This book stands alone; however, it is the second volume in Williams's Irish Blessings series. I blogged about the first book (Walls for the Wind) HERE.
I have also enjoyed and blogged about Alethea Williams's other books: 
Náápiikoan Winter
Willow Vale

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of Joy That Long Endures in exchange for an honest review. The author also included a dictionary with the book, defining the colorful slang of the times.

Beginning: 
     HAAWWWW, HAAAWWWW!
     Well might the mule sound amused, Devin Cavanaugh thought, as he pondered the present state of his life while hoisting another bag atop the pile in the wagon. It took only a glance for the man to resolve anew that this Wyoming Territory was a rough, raw place. The harsh landscape proved hospitable to equally raw weather: the wind had finally let up after an earlier blow so ferocious that loose dirt spiraled in a brown cloud two miles high. Now, with a sudden streak of lightning and vicious crack of thunder, rain cascaded in blinding sheets, turning the normally mindless job of loading the wagons into a wet, miserable business indeed. And to top off the whole soggy mess, there was Caleb Wilson and his fit of temper, accompanied by a veritable geyser of raw language. Wilson's tantrum was coarse enough that Devin almost expected clouds of steam to emanate from the man's mouth along with the steady flow of heated cussing aimed at one of the lead mules.
     "Ya bacon-faced baggage, I'll strip the hide from yer jingle-brained gawdamned bones! Hold still, ya stinkin' Tom turd jilt! By gawd, I'll whip the skin clean off from yer scrawny fundament once I get ya fully hitched, ya useless scraggy whorepipe!"

Teaser (from Page 96):
     Devin said, "I was a big city guttersnipe. My parents died within a few years of arriving in this country - at least I know my mam is dead and I think my da is. He just never came home one night, and Mam died a year or so after that."

Genre: Historical Fiction
Book Length: 170 Pages (trade paperback) plus a reader's group guide.
Amazon Link: Joy That Long Endures
Author Blog: Alethea Williams - Western Historicals

Synopsis:
Joy that Long Endures is the second of the Irish Blessings series of historical novels that began in Cheyenne with Walls for the Wind. The series tells the stories of Irish immigrants set along the tracks of the new transcontinental railroad in Wyoming Territory. A former iron man for the Union Pacific, Devin Cavanaugh labors day after day to transport loads from the little railroad town of Bryan 100 miles over dirt trails to South Pass City. He wants only one seemingly unattainable thing: to be his own man. Dulcinetta Jackson, taught from childhood how to profit from the dreams of desperate men, wants the one thing denied her by her life of fabulous wealth: the place bestowed on those accepted in respectable society. What happens when very different people with different ambitions team up to gamble on achieving their dreams? 

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by The PurpleBooker. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please! List the author and book title too.
Link up HERE

First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by I'd Rather Be At The Beach. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.

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The Butterfly's Daughter - #TeaserTuesday and First Chapter / First Paragraph / Tuesday Intros

I enjoy books where I learn something while being engrossed in a good plot. In The Butterfly's Daughter, the subject was monarch butterflies. Mary Alice Monroe takes readers on a young woman's journey to fulfill her recently-deceased grandmother's wish for the two of them to go to Mexico. The granddaughter's quest parallels the flight of monarch butterflies in their annual migrations south. This is also a coming-of-age story. 

The book begins with a prologue, in which the grandmother tells an ancient fable to her 21-year-old granddaughter. Each chapter also begins with brief factual information about the monarch butterfly's migration. The action in Chapter One starts like this:

First Paragraph(s):
    Esperanza Avila had told the story so many times over the years that it was accepted as truth--even by herself. She'd meant only to blanket her granddaughter's frightening loss, not to mislead her. She saw the story she'd created as a safe, happy cocoon for her to grow up in.
    But in the end, she'd created a lie. Now she was caught in her own trap of deception. The only way out was to tell Luz the truth, no matter how painful that truth might be.

Teaser (from page 256 in trade paperback):
There were moments in the past three years of recovery when she felt such despair that she didn't think she could make it past another day without using. Moments like now. At these low points when her hands shook and her gut roiled, she'd go to the garden and put her hands deep into the earth. 

Genre: Contemporary Women's Fiction
Book Length: 382 Pages (trade paperback) plus a reader's group guide.
Amazon Link: The Butterfly's Daughter
I picked this up from the book exchange shelf at the senior center. It was published in 2012.

Synopsis: Every year, the monarch butterflies - las mariposas - fly more than two thousand miles on fragile wings to return to their winter home in Mexico. Now Luz Avila makes that same perilous journey south as she honors a vow to her beloved abuela - the grandmother who raised her - to return her ashes to her ancestral village. As Luz departs Milwaukee in a ramshackle old VW Bug, she finds her heart opened by a series of seemingly random encounters with remarkable women. In San Antonio, however, a startling revelation awaits: a reunion with a woman from her past. Together, the two cross into Mexico to await the returning monarchs in the little village Abuela called home, but they are also crossing a border that separates past from present . . . and truth from lies.

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by The PurpleBooker. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please! List the author and book title too.
Link up HERE

First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by I'd Rather Be At The Beach. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.

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All the Light We Cannot See - #TeaserTuesday and First Paragraph / First Chapter / Tuesday Intros

Marie-Laure Leblanc: A blind girl lives with her father in Paris, near the Museum of Natural History where he works.
Werner Pfennig: An orphan, enchanted by a makeshift radio, grows up in a mining town in Germany.
Anthony Doerr's fascinating novel about these two young people in Nazi Germany and France during World War II is unforgettable. From the blurb on the book's back cover: "Marie-Laure and Werner, from warring countries, both having lost many of the people they loved, come together in Saint-Malo, as Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another."



Here's the opening:

7 August 1944
Leaflets

At dusk they pour from the sky. They blow across the ramparts, turn cartwheels over rooftops, flutter into the ravines between houses. Entire streets swirl with them, flashing white against the cobbles. Urgent message to the inhabitants of this town, they say. Depart immediately to open country.

Teaser from Page 156 in trade paperback copy:
He pulls up a ring in the center of the floor. Beneath a hatch waits a square hole out of which washes a damp, frightening smell. "One step down, hurry now."

Synopsis:
From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

Pulitzer Prize winning novel.

Genre:  Historical Fiction
Amazon Link: All The Light We Cannot See
Book Length: 545 Pages
Author Website: Anthony Doerr
NOTE: I downloaded this ebook from the library.

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by The PurpleBooker. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please! List the author and book title too.
Link up HERE

First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by I'd Rather Be At The Beach. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.

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Miller's Valley - #TeaserTuesday and First Chapter / First Paragraph / Tuesday Intros

I've almost finished reading Miller's Valley, and I'm loving it. Here's the opening:

First Paragraph:
It was a put-up job, and we all knew it by then. The government people had hearings all spring to solicit the views of residents on their plans. That's what they called it, soliciting views, but every last person in Miller's Valley knew that that just meant standing behind the microphones set up in the aisle of the middle school, and then finding out afterward that the government people would do what they planned to do anyhow. Everybody was just going through the motions. That's what people do. They decide what they want and then they try to make you believe you want it, too.

And here's a Teaser from Page 166:
I guess there are times in your life that tell you what you're made of, the weeks after you bring a colicky baby home from the hospital, the year when you lose your job and the number on your checking account just gets smaller and smaller until it looks like it's going to wink out like daylight on a January afternoon. This was my time.

Synopsis:
For generations the Millers have lived in Miller’s Valley. Mimi Miller tells about her life with intimacy and honesty. As Mimi eavesdrops on her parents and quietly observes the people around her, she discovers more and more about the toxicity of family secrets, the dangers of gossip, the flaws of marriage, the inequalities of friendship and the risks of passion, loyalty, and love. Home, as Mimi begins to realize, can be “a place where it’s just as easy to feel lost as it is to feel content.” 

Genre:  Women's Fiction / Family Saga
Amazon Link: Miller's Valley
Book Length: 257 Pages (Trade Paperback)
Author Website: Anna Quindlen
NOTE: I picked up this book at a book-swap shelf.

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by The PurpleBooker. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please! List the author and book title too.
Link up HERE

First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by I'd Rather Be At The Beach. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.

Link at I'd Rather Be At The Beach

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Faultlines - #TeaserTuesday and First Chapter / First Paragraph / Tuesday Intros

    Maybe it's because I have a son or because I was born and raised in Texas or maybe because the man character's name is Sandy, but Barbara Taylor Sissel's Faultlines spoke to me deeply. The story tells of a family torn apart by an automobile accident in which Sandy's son was believed to have been driving. Drinking was involved. He and his passengers were seriously injured, one of them fatally. The wreck has far-reaching consequences. 
   If you enjoy books that delve into family relationships in true-to-life situations, you'll enjoy Faultlines too. I definitely recommend it.
FYI: I saw no errors or typos in this book, which I always appreciate.


First Paragraph:
     Jordy wasn't dead.
     Sandy plucked that single fact from the sea of information she was hearing from the police sergeant, and she clung to it as tightly as she clung to the phone. Behind her, she felt the bed shift when Emmett sat up. She felt his warmth, his sleepy unawareness - his beforeness, and she envied him. "What is it?" he asked, and he was close enough that his breath on her bare shoulder made her shiver.

Teaser (from 28% on my Kindle):
    But there had always been so much goodness in her life, enough that at times she felt compelled to apologize: I'm sorry my childhood was so happy, stable, abundant. It was only after she learned that the one blessing she longed for most - a child - would be denied her that she thought there was a price for having been given so much when she was young, that possibly there was such a thing as too much good, too much joy.

Genre: Women's Fiction / Mystery
Book Length: 305 Pages
Amazon Link: Faultlines
Author Website: Barbara Taylor Sissel

Synopsis (from Amazon):

It’s the phone call every parent dreads: in the middle of the night, Sandy Cline learns that her twenty-year-old son, Jordan, has been in a car accident. Her nephew, Travis, was also in the car, along with Travis’s girlfriend. All three are alive—but barely. The car was smashed against a tree along a remote and winding road, beautiful but deadly, in their rural Texas Hill Country town.

In the wake of the car crash, the close-knit family is tested like never before. Jenna, Travis’s mother, blames Jordan—as well as her sister, Sandy—after reports surface that Jordan had been driving. As the young adults struggle to survive, tension between their parents escalates. But when trust is broken and a shocking family secret is exposed, it creates a perfect storm of harrowing consequences. Rumors in the small town spread like wildfire. When details of the accident are questioned, Sandy and Jenna wonder if their family has been destroyed beyond repair.

As always, there’s much more to the story…if the family is to survive, they will have to come together to confront the terrible truth and overcome their pain. But are some betrayals unforgivable?

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by The PurpleBooker. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please! List the author and book title too.

Link up HERE

First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by I'd Rather Be at the Beach. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.

Link up HERE

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A Memory of Violets - First Paragraph / First Chapter / Tuesday Intros and #TeaserTuesday

I enjoyed this novel about orphaned flower sellers in 1870s London (remember Eliza Doolittle?) with a second plot that takes place in 1912. The author's descriptions were beautiful, the plots held my attention, and I cared about the characters. Her depiction of the grim life of impoverished children in London during that time was vivid and must have been the result of extensive research. The only slight complaint I have is that some aspects of the story were a little too coincidental to be believable to me. Are you bothered by coincidences?

Genre: Historical Fiction
Book Length: 386 Pages
Amazon Link: A Memory of Violets
Author Website: Hazel Gaynor

First Paragraph:
     Mammy once told me that all flowers are beautiful, but some are more beautiful than others. "Same with babies," she said, 'cause I was after saying that little baby Rosie looked like a rotten old turnip, what with her face all purple and scrunched up. "All babies look like rotten old turnips at first," Mammy said. "She'll be all smoothed out by Lady Day. You wait and see."
     She was, too. All smoothed out. After turning into a real pretty little thing she was then, 'specially with that hair. Red as the flames in the costers' smudge-pot fires.

Teaser (from Page 162 in the paperback):
In the north, nobody would know anything about them. In the north, they could be whoever they wanted to be and, perhaps, if they were farther away from London, farther away from the memories, Violette might forget about her sister.

Synopsis from Amazon:

Step into the world of Victorian London, where the wealth and poverty exist side by side. This is the story of two long-lost sisters, whose lives take different paths, and the young woman who will be transformed by their experiences.

In 1912, twenty-year-old Tilly Harper leaves the peace and beauty of her native Lake District for London, to become assistant housemother at Mr. Shaw’s Home for Watercress and Flower Girls. For years, the home has cared for London’s flower girls—orphaned and crippled children living on the grimy streets and selling posies of violets and watercress to survive.

Soon after she arrives, Tilly discovers a diary written by an orphan named Florrie—a young Irish flower girl who died of a broken heart after she and her sister, Rosie, were separated. Moved by Florrie’s pain and all she endured in her brief life, Tilly sets out to discover what happened to Rosie. But the search will not be easy. Full of twists and surprises, it leads the caring and determined young woman into unexpected places, including the depths of her own heart.

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by The PurpleBooker. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please! List the author and book title too.

Link up HERE

First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by Bibliophile By The Sea. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.

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Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die - #TeaserTuesday and First Paragraph / First Chapter / Tuesday Intros

Seattle Police Detectives Nick Winston and Pat Strom are at it again in Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die, Kelly Marshall's latest mystery. Nick is straight, Pat's lesbian, and the banter between these two characters is hilarious! 

If you like murder mysteries with a touch of humor and hot sex, you'll enjoy this book as much as I did. 

First Paragraph:

I kissed her eyelids, then gently brushed her soft, red lips. They tasted of cherry. Rising, pulling away from the body I had just ravaged, I gazed down at Kylee, her pale face peaceful, almost as if she slumbered. Pulling her legs apart, I exposed her for the whore she was.

Teaser (from 20% on my Kindle):
"Winston? Don't take that misogynist to interview Sofia. She'll eat him for breakfast."

Genre: Mystery (Rated R)
Amazon Link: Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die
Book Length: 332 Pages
Author Website: Kelly Marshall Books

Synopsis (from Amazon):
Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die is the third book in the Winston and Strom Novels. Author of 70 books and owner of Venture Galleries, an online marketing and promotional company, Caleb Pirtle lll writes of Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die. “Kelly Marshall writes compelling mysteries and dares you to come along for a ride you will never forget. Tension traps you immediately, then the intensity is strangled with fear. In Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die, I found myself walking the same dark streets where a serial killer walked, the same deadly streets where the lives of beautiful girls can fall without warning into the frightening chill of a nightmare that ends only when they take their final breaths. Detectives know a murderer will strike again, and time, like life itself, is a precious commodity that is quickly running out. Each new sundown may be someone’s last. Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die is a haunting, terrifying journey, and I dare you to breathe during the final fifty pages.

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by The PurpleBooker. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please! List the author and book title too.

Link up HERE

First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by Bibliophile By The Sea. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.

Link at BibliophileByTheSea

Twitter: @SandyNachlinger

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FYI:
I've featured two of Kelly Marshall's books on my blog before. Links:
6 White Roses - A Winston & Strom Mystery (originally titled Millstone)
and 
The Chair
                                       
Full disclosure: Kelly Marshall is a member of my Puyallup, Washington, writing group.

The Boys in the Boat - #TeaserTuesday and First Chapter / First Paragraph / Tuesday Intros

Anyone who enjoys stories of triumph over adversity will be enthralled by The Boys in the Boat. The author shows the incredibly hard work that goes into being part of a crew team and taught me more than I expected about events during the 1930s, leading up to World War II. I don't read much nonfiction, but this book kept me turning pages as if I were reading a thriller. I'd already seen the PBS special about this amazing team of rowers, but as is usually the case, the book went into much greater detail than the documentary and focused on the life of rower Joe Rantz. As a resident of the Seattle area, I was fascinated by the setting too.

I highly recommend reading this uplifting book.

Genre: Nonfiction
Book Length: 370 Pages (Trade Paperback from the library)
Amazon Link: The Boys in The Boat
Author Website: Daniel James Brown

Each chapter begins with a photo from the 1930s, as well as a quote from George Yeoman Pocock, the man who built the boats for the Washington team and most other teams, as well. 

First Paragraphs from Chapter One (instead of from the Prologue):
    Monday, October 9, 1933, began as a gray day in Seattle. A gray day in a gray time.
     Along the waterfront, seaplanes from the Gorst Air Transport company rose slowly from the surface of Puget Sound and droned westward, flying low under the cloud cover, beginning their short hops over to the naval shipyard at Bremerton. Ferries crawled away from Colman Dock on water as flat and dull as old pewter. Downtown, the Smith Tower pointed, like an upraised finger, toward somber skies. On the streets below the tower, men in fraying suit coats, worn-out shoes, and battered felt fedoras wheeled wooden carts toward the street corners where they would spend the day selling applies and oranges and packages of gum for a few pennies apiece. Around the corner, on the steep incline of Yesler Way, Seattle's old, original Skid Road, more men stood in long lines, heads bent, regarding the wet sidewalks and talking softly among themselves as they waited for the soup kitchens to open. Trucks from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer rattled along cobblestone streets, dropping off bundles of newspapers. Newsboys in woolen caps lugged the bundles to busy intersections, to trolley stops, and to hotel entrances, where they held the paper aloft, hawking them for two cents a copy, shouting out the day's headline: "15,000,000 to Get U.S. Relief."

Teaser (from Page 84):
    It rained, and they rowed. They rowed through cutting wind, bitter sleet, and occasional snow, well into the dark of night every evening. They rowed with cold rainwater running down their backs, pooling in the bottom of the boat, and sloshing back and forth under their sliding seats.

Synopsis (from Amazon):
    For readers of Unbroken, out of the depths of the Depression comes an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate account of how nine working-class boys from the American West showed the world at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin what true grit really meant.
    It was an unlikely quest from the start. With a team composed of the sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the University of Washington’s eight-oar crew team was never expected to defeat the elite teams of the East Coast and Great Britain, yet they did, going on to shock the world by defeating the German team rowing for Adolf Hitler. The emotional heart of the tale lies with Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not only to regain his shattered self-regard but also to find a real place for himself in the world. Drawing on the boys’ own journals and vivid memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, Brown has created an unforgettable portrait of an era, a celebration of a remarkable achievement, and a chronicle of one extraordinary young man’s personal quest.

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by The PurpleBooker. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please! List the author and book title too.

Link up HERE

First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by Bibliophile By The Sea. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.

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Twitter: @SandyNachlinger

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A Thread of Truth (Cobbled Court Quilt #2) - #TeaserTuesday, First Chapter, First Paragraph, Tuesday Intros

A quilting friend recently gave me all seven books in Marie Bostwick's Cobbled Court Quilt Series. I finished Book #1 and today I'm featuring excerpts from Book #2, which I've barely started. So far, I'm enjoying the intertwined stories of the women of small-town New Bern, Connecticut, all of them connected by the Cobbled Court Quilt Shop. This story deals with domestic violence. Thanks for the books, Nan!

Genre: Women's Fiction
Book Length: 335 Pages
Amazon Link: A Thread of Truth
Author Website: Marie Bostwick

First Paragraph (from the Prologue):
     The counselor is young, blond, and pretty, and obviously nervous. She glances at her reflection in the wall mirror when she enters the waiting room, adjusts her collar, and clears her throat before extending her hand toward me with a wide, rehearsed smile and a request for me to follow her back to her office.

Teaser #1 (from Pages 15-16 in my trade paperback):
She wouldn't listen to any of my excuses about passing on the quilt class, just knocked them all down in that way she has, huffing and puffing out words like "Nonsense!" and "Rubbish!" like the big, bad wolf on a mission, not stopping until your little house of sticks is lying in a heap and there you stand with nothing left to hide behind. Next thing I knew, I was sitting in a room with six other students, listening to Evelyn Dixon explain the techniques for constructing our first project, a log cabin quilt.

Teaser #2 (from Page 90): 
There never was a moment when I could relax and be myself because I was always aware that he could walk through that door at any moment and if he didn't like what he saw, there would be consequences. Inevitable, unpredictable, irrational consequences. 

Synopsis:
At twenty-seven, having fled an abusive marriage with little more than her kids and the clothes on her back, Ivy Peterman figures she has nowhere to go but up. Quaint, historic New Bern, Connecticut, seems as good a place as any to start fresh. With a part-time job at the Cobbled Court Quilt Shop and budding friendships, Ivy feels hopeful for the first time in ages.

But when a popular quilting TV show is taped at the quilt shop, Ivy's unwitting appearance in an on-air promo alerts her ex-husband to her whereabouts. Suddenly, Ivy is facing the fight of her life--one that forces her to face her deepest fears as a woman and a mother. This time, however, she's got a sisterhood behind her: companions as complex, strong, and lasting as the quilts they stitch. . .

Just for fun, here's a photo of a log cabin quilt I made several years ago. I arranged the blocks in a diamond pattern, and it's one of my favorite creations.

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by The PurpleBooker. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please! List the author and book title too.

Link up HERE

First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by Bibliophile By The Sea. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.

Link at BibliophileByTheSea

Twitter: @SandyNachlinger

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The Sea Between - #TeaserTuesday and #FirstChapter / First Paragraph / Tuesday Intros

Australia and New Zealand are at the top of my must-visit list. Through the pages of The Sea Between, Margaret Sutherland took me to those countries as they existed in the early 1900s. What a trip! The book follows Dot from childhood to motherhood and shows daily life and social mores during the Roaring Twenties, First World War, and Great Depression. If you like family sagas, you'll enjoy this "Trans-Tasman Story" too.

FYI: I've featured another book by this author previously. Link here: Saving Shelby Summers 
Margaret's latest release is Her Valentine Romance: Link here.

Here's the First Paragraph from the Prologue:
Auckland, 1919
   It was here - the day she was leaving the world - and, even now, life was asking Dot to reconsider. As she stepped down from the tram and began to walk, the clean scent of rain steamed from the drying road. Bright flowers in front gardens lifted sodden faces to the sun. The grass was as green as a Granny Smith. Sparrows hopped, pecking, sipping; and, somewhere in the canopy that overhung the convent wall, hidden birds opened their small throats in a pure and rapturous singing.

Teaser (from 7% on my Kindle):
   Writers were grand people. He wouldn't mind being one, except that he had nothing to write about. 

Genre: Historical Fiction
Book Length: 344 Pages
Amazon Link: The Sea Between
Author Website: Margaret Sutherland

Synopsis (from Amazon):

     Growing up in New Zealand during the unsettled years of the First World War, Dot Butler is deserted by her father when she is eleven. Shattered, unable to hate and blame him as her mother and siblings do, she decides his going must be her fault.     

     At the age of eighteen, seeking safe and lasting love, she decides to leave the provincial Irish-Catholic life of Wellington and enters the convent. Her health breaks down and she finds herself, a misfit, back in the changing world of the twenties.

     Moving to Sydney, she tries various careers and samples the flapper’s fun-loving life. Working as a nurse at St. Vincent’s hospital, she meets Chas, an English seaman. Serious, resourceful and handsome, he is a complete contrast to the juvenile men who have partnered Dot to dances, parties and the beach. Opposites in nature, Dot and Chas fall in love, and their impulsive courtship becomes a headlong marriage.

     Six years on, in 1933, it is the depths of the Depression. Restless as ever, and hating country life, Dot persuades Chas to take the family home to New Zealand and her fantasy of secure love. Instead she meets conflict of every kind. Her brother is in jail, her mother is ill, and her worldly sister is making eyes at Chas. Dot must face her worst fear and meet the father who left without a goodbye. When she finds he isn’t the villain she has come to believe in, their reconciliation frees her to examine her life and see that her options for happiness lie in her own hands.

     With a wide cast and significant background of war, epidemic and Depression, this trans-Tasman story follows the Butler men and women in their pursuit of love. God, romance, money and sex lure them on, across oceans and into the answers of the heart.

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by The PurpleBooker. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please! List the author and book title too.
Link up HERE

First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by Bibliophile By The Sea. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.

Link at BibliophileByTheSea

Twitter: @SandyNachlinger

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