Book Description:
What makes us step back to examine the events and people that have shaped our lives? And what happens when what we discover leads to more questions?
Angelica Schirrick wonders how her life could have gotten so far off-track. With two children in tow, she begins a journey of self-discovery that leads her back home to Ohio. It pains her to remember the promise her future once held and the shattering revelations that derailed her life.
Can she face the failures and secrets of her past and move forward? Somehow she must learn to accept the violence of her beginning before she can be open to life, and a second chance at love.
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Praise for In the Context of Love
“Linda K. Sienkiewicz’s powerful and richly detailed debut novel is at once a love story, a cautionary tale, and an inspirational journey. In the Context of Love should be required reading for all wayward teenage girls—and their mothers, too.” ~Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of National Book Award Finalist, American Salvage, and critically acclaimed, Mothers, Tell Your Daughters.
“With tenderness, but without blinking, Linda K. Sienkiewicz turns her eye on the predator-prey savannah of the young and still somehow hopeful.” ~ Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of the #1 NY Times Bestseller, Deep End of the Ocean
“Absorbing, heartbreaking, compulsively-readable and insightful, Linda Sienkiewicz’s In the Context of Love casts a hypnotic spell. This is storytelling at its best.” ~ Lewis Robinson, author of the critically acclaimed, Officer Friendly: and Other Stories, and Water Dogs
Book Trailer:
In the Context of Love | Book Trailer from Linda Sienkiewicz on Vimeo.
MY REVIEW:
At the beginning of this book, readers are introduced to Angelica Lowsley. She is a married (but separated) mother of two and her life is a mess. We learn a few details, but the story quickly shifts from present day to Angelica’s past.
Readers find that the story has regressed in time to 1974, Angelica is sixteen (having been born in 1958) and just beginning the year that would forever change her life.
Entering the story at this time is a boy named Joe Vadas: “…a stone fox…”
Joe and Angelica become a couple and it is through this relationship that Angelica experiences the exquisitely exciting and euphoric world of first love. Author Linda K. Sienkiewicz perfectly captures and describes the heady rush and the mixture of emotion and hormones that all teenagers experience when they fall in love for the first time, and she conveys the extreme feelings and the euphoria that comes with first love in perfect nostalgic detail. Readers will not be able to stop themselves from reminiscing about their own first “love”.
Because I am unwilling to ruin the joy that reader’s will experience when they read this book, I do not want to give away any of the plot. Suffice it to say that this is a book that everyone should read. If you do not find something to relate to in this book then you have led a very sheltered nd very uninteresting life.
Being a teenager is hard. That is just a fact of life. But, some teens have it harder than others and some teens are forced to grow up too fast. Linda K. Sienkiewicz understands this. I believe that Linda has a talent that is extremely special. She is able to perfectly describe the incredible angst that comes from being an immature teenager and to highlight exactly how events that occur at this volatile and emotionally-charged time in a person’s life can have a profound and lasting effect. She understands that these events can help mold a person and can have the potential to determine who that person will be when he or she reaches adulthood.
As I have already stated, I absolutely loved this book. It will make you laugh, it will make you cry and very definitely, it will make you not want to put it down. This is an absolute MUST READ book and I rate it is 5 out of 5 Stars.
I will be on the lookout for more books by this talented author. Buy this book. You will not be disappointed.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Linda K. Sienkiewicz is a published poet and fiction writer, cynical optimist, fan of corgis, tea drinker, and wine lover from Michigan. Her poetry, short stories, and art have been published in more than fifty literary journals, including Prairie Schooner, Clackamas Literary Review, Spoon River, and Permafrost.
She received a poetry chapbook award from Bottom Dog Press, and an MFA from the University of Southern Maine. Linda lives with her husband in southeast Michigan, where they spoil their grandchildren and then send them back home.
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