-
Born in the Netherlands at a time when girls are to be housewives and mothers and nothing else, Hendrika de Vries is a “daddy’s girl” until her father is deported from Nazi-occupied Amsterdam to a POW camp in Germany and her mother joins the Resistance. In the aftermath of her father’s departure, Hendrika watches as freedoms formerly taken for granted are eroded with escalating brutality by men with swastika armbands who aim to exterminate those they deem “inferior” and those who do not obey. As time goes on, Hendrika absorbs her mother’s strength and faith, and learns about moral choice and forced silence. She sees her hidden Jewish “stepsister” betrayed, and her mother interrogated at gunpoint. She and her mother suffer near starvation, and they narrowly escape death on the day of liberation. But they survive it all―and through these harrowing experiences, Hendrika discovers the woman she wants to become. Author: Hendrika de Vries Publication Date: August 27, 2019 -
Born during World War II, Marilee Eaves has long struggled to fit into the New Orleans elite―secret Mardi Gras societies that ruled the city―into which she was born. Then, as a student at Wellesley, she’s hospitalized at McLean psychiatric hospital, where she begins to realize how much of herself she’s sacrificed to blend into and be fully accepted by the exclusive and exclusionary white Uptown New Orleans culture to which she supposedly belongs. In Singing Out Loud, Eaves tells of her journey to stand on her own two feet―to find a way to be grounded and evolved in the midst of that culture. Along the way, she wrestles with bipolar disorder, alcoholism, and the effects of her bad (heartbreaking, and sometimes hilarious) choices. Raw and funny, this book offers hope and encouragement to willing to be vulnerable, address their issues, and laugh at themself in order to embrace who they truly are. Author: Marilee Eaves Publication Date: November 19, 2019 -
She left everything behind and risked not only her life, but also the lives of her two small children to escape from Vietnam after the Fall of Saigon. In the middle of the night, Charlie―along with her husband, two toddlers and two young sisters―joined 100 other people on a tiny boat and fled their home country. The journey was long and dangerous, but after almost two years in refugee camps, the family finally made it to America. After emigrating, as many Vietnamese refugee women did, Charlie began working in the booming nail industry. When her path crossed with Olivett, an African American woman, they became business partners―and built an empire together. After only a few years in the US, Charlie was a millionaire and living the American dream. Her tale is one of tragedy and triumph―a true rags to riches story that will amaze and inspire readers from all walks of life. Author: Krista Beth Driver Publication Date: October 8, 2019 -
Unflinchingly honest and darkly funny, this memoir will resonate with anyone facing the complicated reality of aging and illness in the United States. Elizabeth and her mother, Judy, have always had a complicated relationship. Now they face a confounding illness, as well as a labyrinthine healthcare system, at a complicated stage of life. Nothing is as it first seems in this riveting account of an unconventional mother-daughter journey—a journey that from the start poses questions about love, life, family, aging, healthcare, sex, and death. In Bound, Elizabeth Anne Wood addresses these questions as she chronicles the last eight months of her mother’s life—a period she comes to see, over the course of months, as a maternity leave in reverse: she is carrying her mother as she dies. Throughout their journey, Wood uses her notebook as a shield to keep unruly emotions at bay, often taking comfort in her role as advocate and forgetting to “be the daughter,” as one doctor reminds her to do. Meanwhile, her mother’s penchant for denial and childlike tendency toward magical thinking lead to moments of humor even as Wood battles the red tape of hospital bureaucracies, the frustration of planning in the midst of an unpredictable illness, and the unintentional inhumanity of a healthcare system that too often fails to see the person behind the medical chart. Author: Elizabeth Anne Wood Publication Date: August 13, 2019 -
Told alternately, by Colleen, an idealistic young white teacher; Frank, a black high school football player; and Evelyn, an experienced black teacher, Freedom Lessons is the story of how the lives of these three very different people intersect in a rural Louisiana town in 1969. Colleen enters into the culture of the rural Louisiana town with little knowledge of the customs and practices. She is compelled to take sides after the school is integrated―an overnight event for which the town’s residents are unprepared, and which leads to confusion and anxiety in the community―and her values are tested as she seeks to understand her black colleagues, particularly Evelyn. Why doesn’t she want to integrate the public schools? Frank, meanwhile, is determined to protect his mother and siblings after his father’s suspicious death―which means keeping a secret from everyone around him. Based on the author’s experience teaching in Louisiana in the late sixties, this heartfelt, unflinching novel about the unexpected effects of school integration during that time takes on the issues our nation currently faces regarding race, unity, and identity. Author: Eileen Harrison Sanchez Publication Date: November 12, 2019 -
Many counseling clients find comfort and meaning in their spiritual lives, in the context of religious affiliation or the diverse viewpoints of the “spiritual but not religious.” But counselors and psychotherapists often lack training for work in this territory and may be wary of opening the door. The Interplay of Psychology and Spirituality is an exploration of the subtle, fluid relationship between psychology and spirituality that offers valuable perspectives and suggestions for embracing spirituality and religion in the helping professions. Drawing on Jungian, transpersonal, and integral perspectives, Hepburn highlights personal and cultural styles, spirituality as a therapeutic resource, and the potential for psychospiritual growth. She also emphasizes the importance of focusing on metaphors, stories, and direct experience rather than beliefs. Thoughtful attention is given to potential psychospiritual problems, ethical dilemmas, and diagnostic challenges. There are also frequent opportunities for personal reflection. Unique features of the book include consideration of the potential relationship of spirituality to therapeutic themes such as attachment, trauma, subpersonalities, and somatic experience, as well as application of the concepts in the stories of nine fictional characters based on the Enneagram. Thoughtful and thought provoking, The Interplay of Psychology and Spirituality is a valuable resource for helping professionals, spiritual directors, and for general readers with a particular interest in the subject. Author: Alexandra M. Hepburn, PhD Publication Date: October 1, 2019 -
A schoolteacher escapes an abusive marriage and finds love on a blind date. Mary Jane’s new man, sure that riding a Harley will restore her confidence, ends up following the white lines with her through fifteen years of marriage. Traveling together, they learn to be partners, both on and off the road, until Dwayne is diagnosed with cancer. After losing her husband, Mary Jane once again must learn to live on her own―but she’ll never be the same again. Author: Mary Jane Black Publication Date: October 1, 2019 -
Joanna and Ev have been partners for ten years―in business and in love―when one of the only women in government in the Middle East invites their firm to design a children’s museum in Riyadh. Jo sees a chance to solidify her name in the design world, and help Saudi girls along the way, in the venture. Her husband, however, has no desire to work in a vigorously policed society; he prefers to remain in his workshop, fashioning gadgets for museum displays. Jo’s sister and young protégé share his doubts, but Ev accedes to Jo’s wishes. The process of bidding on the job soon throws their home office into chaos and challenges their long-held assumptions about the value of their work―and marriage. If they get the job, will their partnership survive the strain? Author: Sheila Grinell Publication Date: September 24, 2019 -
In the United States, more than 15 million women are parenting children on their own, either by circumstance or by choice. Too often these moms who do it all have been misrepresented and maligned. Not anymore. In We Got This, seventy-five solo mom writers tell the truth about their lives—their hopes and fears, their resilience and setbacks, their embarrassments and triumphs. Some of these writers’ names will sound familiar, like Amy Poehler, Anne Lamott, and Elizabeth Alexander, while others are about to become unforgettable. Bound together by their strength, pride, and—most of all— their dedication to their children, they broadcast a universal and empowering message: You are not alone, solo moms—and your tenacity, courage, and fierce love are worthy of celebration. Author: Marika Lindholm et. al Publication Date: September 10, 2019 -
When thirty-five-year-old Carol Richmond decides to end her seventeen-year marriage, she has no idea what’s in store. Within the first year of the divorce, her ex-husband abandons his children and ignores the court’s orders to pay child support, and despite working sixteen hours a day and seven days a week, Richmond cannot make ends meet. She is forced to sell her home and hawk her jewelry in order to keep her family fed and housed, and more often than not she relies on hired women to kiss her children goodnight and dry their tears. In the decade to follow, Carol’s growing children struggle with individual complexities. One son attempts suicide; another utterly fails academically; and her daughter is sexually abused by a trusted acquaintance. Yet Carol and her children endure―because they must. Haunting yet full of humor and self-effacing wisdom, Notes After Midnight is a story of the invisible binding thread connecting each of us to one another―the thread that helps us find our way along even the most difficult of paths. Author: Carol Richmond Publication Date: September 10, 2019 -
In Bowing to Elephants, a woman seeking love and authenticity comes to understand herself as a citizen of the world through decades of wandering the globe. During her travels she sees herself more clearly as she gazes into the feathery eyes of a 14,000-pound African elephant and looks for answers to old questions in Vietnam and the tragically ravaged landscape of Cambodia. Bowing to Elephants is a travel memoir with a twist―the story of an unloved rich girl from San Francisco who becomes a travel junkie, searching for herself in the world to avoid the tragic fate of her narcissistic, alcoholic mother. Haunted by images of childhood loneliness and the need to learn about her world, Dimond journeys to far-flung places―into the perfumed chaos of India, the nostalgic, damp streets of Paris, the gray, watery world of Venice in the winter, the reverent and silent mountains of Bhutan, and the gold temples of Burma. In the end, she accepts the death of the mother she never really had―and finds peace and her authentic self in the refuge of Buddhist practice. Author: Mag Dimond Publication Date: September 17, 2019 -
Yin yoga not only strengthens your body―makes it more vital and powerful in a yin way―it can also help with a lot of typical ailments, may they be allergies, teeth grinding, menstrual pain, headaches, infertility, skin problems, or back pain. In Be Healthy with Yin Yoga, best-selling author Stefanie Arend puts together many Yin yoga sequences to activate the self-healing powers of body and mind. She offers a holistic approach that includes Western and Traditional Chinese Medicine, breathing techniques, meditation, nutrition, fascia therapy exercises, and self-reflective questions to encourage deeper explorations of the roots of readers’ ailments. Suited for both beginners and experienced yoga practitioners, and replete with high-quality pictures that make the poses and sequences easy to follow and understand, Be Healthy with Yin Yoga is a wonderful support for anyone who wants to take their health back into their own hands. Author: Stefanie Arend Publication Date: August 20, 2019 -
“With sensitivity and candor, Baraf examines mental illness, immigration, forgiveness, and community—all framed within the precocity of her life’s circumstances.” —Ms. Magazine “At the Narrow Waist of the World is a compelling account of what it is like to live through turbulence and come out on the other side.” —Foreword Clarion Review “Deftly written, impressively candid, insightfully presented, At the Narrow Waist of the World is an extraordinary and memorable read.” —Midwest Book Review “By the end of At the Narrow Waist of the World, we have come to know, admire and even cherish its author in a way few memoirists manage to achieve . . . . ” —Jewish Journal Raised by a lively family of Spanish Jews in tropical and Catholic Panama of the 1950s and 1960s, Marlena depends on her many tíos and tías for refuge from the difficulties of life, including the frequent absences of her troubled mother. As a teenager, she pulls away from this centered world—crossing borders—and begins a life in the United States very different from the one she has known. This lyrical coming-of-age memoir explores the intense and profound relationship between mothers and daughters and highlights the importance of community and the beauty of a large Latin American family. It also explores the vital issues of mental illness and healing, forgiveness and acceptance. <i>At the Narrow Waist of the World</i> examines the author's gradual integration into a new culture, even as she understands that her home is still—and always will be—rooted in another place. Author: Marlena Maduro Baraf Publication Date: August 6, 2019 -
Her mom was working as a maid. Her dad’s Alzheimer’s was in high gear. And the rent on her parents’ small Chicago apartment had just gone up. Again. But Lori was holding it all together: helping care for her dad and pay her family’s bills, figuring out how to navigate graduate school and four jobs on top of her family responsibilities, and, somehow, continuing to believe that there was more to life than this. And there was. An exciting job teaching at a prestigious school in China. Although the previous month, she had turned down a job offer in Iowa―thinking it was too far away from her family―she felt completely at ease accepting the job in China. Grasping on to the fierce determination she’d had since childhood, Lori found herself in Guangzhou, China, where she fell in love with the culture and with a man from a tiny town in Hubei province. What followed was a transformative adventure―one that will inspire readers to use the bitter to make life even sweeter. Author: Lori Qian Publication Date: August 13, 2019 -
All the Sweeter tells the stories of families who have adopted one or more children from the US foster care system. Each of the twelve families interviewed has a dedicated chapter in which at least one representative tells their family’s adoption story. Woven through these stories are topical chapters that explore the common challenges these families face, including the complications that accompany transracial adoptions, helping children understand adoption, relationships with birth parents, and raising a traumatized child. Each year, over 50,000 children are adopted from the US Foster Care System. Informative and diverse in scope, All the Sweeter provides a resource to families considering adoption, families in the process of adoption, and families who have already adopted children from foster care—with the ultimate goal of facilitating a better life for the children they bring into their lives. Publication Date: May 7, 2019 Author: Jean Minton -
In this richly depicted story, told in vignettes relative to markers of age and experience, Patricia Eagle reveals the heartbreak and destruction of her sexual abuse, from age four to thirteen, by her father. A victim of her father’s anger and her mother’s complacency with his abusive behavior, Eagle uses dissociation and numbing in response to the abuse, and as a way to block her own sense of self. How does a child confused by episodes of abuse come to know what is safe or unsafe, right or wrong, normal or abnormal? How does a young woman learn the difference between real love and a desire for sexual pleasure stimulated by abusive childhood sexual experiences? Careening through life, Eagle wonders how to trust others and, most importantly, herself. As a mature woman struggling to understand and live with her past, she remains earnest in her pursuit of clarity, compassion, and trust to build a stronger life. Being Mean is about blocking sexual abuse memories, having them surface, then learning how to acknowledge and live with incomprehensible experiences in the healthiest ways possible. Author: Patricia Eagle Publication Date: June 11, 2019 -
The secrets, lies, and layers of deception about Diane Dewey’s origins were meant for her protection—but eventually, they imploded. Living with her family in suburban Philadelphia, Diane had grown up knowing she was born in Stuttgart and adopted at age one from an orphanage. She’d been told her biological parents were dead. Then, in 2002, when she was forty-seven years old, Diane got a letter from Switzerland: her biological father, Otto, wanted to bring her into his life. With that, her world shifted on its axis. In the months that ensued, everybody had a different story to tell about Diane’s origins, including Otto when they met in New York City. She struggled to understand what was at stake with the lies. Like a private eye, she sifted through competing versions of the truth only to find that, having traveled throughout Europe and back, identity is a state of mind. As more information surfaced, the myths gave way to a certain elusive peace; Diane discovered a tribe in her mother’s family, found a Swiss husband, gained a voice, and, for the first time, began to trust in the intuition that had nudged her all along. One-part forensic investigation, one-part self-discovery, Fixing the Fates is a story about seeing behind artifice and living one’s truth. Author: Diane Dewey Publication Date: June 4, 2019 -
It's 1967, and Katherine Roebling is a Chicago-based stewardess caught between the hold of highflying travel and the call of her Native American ancestors just as the women’s movement is taking the US by storm. As she vacillates between an ever-present mystical ancestral feather and her alluring stewardess life of excitement and travel, she embarks on a journey from one adventure to the next—each episode bringing her closer to her predestined calling. A chance meeting with a college student from Athens, Greece at a Chicago Playboy Mansion Press Party and her visit to the Oracle of Delphi intertwine with Katherine's discovery of the treasure inside herself. Ultimately, she gains wings that allow her to glide over society’s barriers; she abandons the so-called glamorous life she’s been living, creates her own path, and embarks upon a new career at the Smithsonian in DC—one that will take her on a miraculous experience of personal growth and uncharted paths. Author: Judy Kundert Publication Date: June 18, 2019 -
Through eight humorous essays, Keturah Kendrick chronicles her journey to freedom. She shares the stories of other women who have freed themselves from the narrow definition of what makes a “proper woman.” Spotlighting the cultural bullying that dictates women must become mothers to the expectation that one’s spiritual path follow the traditions of previous generations, Kendrick imagines a world where black women make life choices that center on their needs and desires. She also examines the rising trend of women choosing to remain single and explores how such a choice is the antithesis to the trope of the sorrowful black woman who cannot find a man to grant her the prize of legal partnership. A mixture of memoir and cultural critique, No Thanks uses wit and insight to paint a picture of the twenty-first-century black woman who has unchained herself from what she is supposed to be. A black woman who has given herself permission to be whomever she wants to be. Author: Keturah Kendrick Publication Date: June 18, 2019 -
Yamini Redewill is an Uber driver in San Francisco—one of a growing number of rideshare drivers around the world. What makes her unique is that she’s a seventy-nine-year-old single woman who views her Uber driving as a form of spiritual practice! The Joy of Uber Driving chronicles the unexpected corkscrew twists and turns Redewill encounters on the road to love and happiness. How could she know that all those fabulous dreams she cherished as a younger woman were just illusions on the way to reality and would vanish like dust in the wind? But ultimately, her wild ride through life—which includes obsessive love on Catalina; sex, drugs, and alcohol in Hollywood; eleven years of celibacy in Buddhism, and Tantric sex and spirituality in India—helps her wend her way to her authentic self and to creative fulfillment in the winter of her life. In The Joy of Uber Driving, Redewill shares the wisdom that comes from living a full life of heart-centered passion, as well as the self-awareness that has allowed her to be the happy, confident, creative, and young “old broad” she now finds herself to be. Author: Yamini Redewill Publication Date: June 25, 2019 -
We Never Told is a page-turning novel about a glamorous family in the golden age of Hollywood. Set in suburban New York, it follows Sonya Adler's life from growing up in a "broken home," to the hippie sixties, and into the present with a shocking twist at the end. The story outlines a time when unmarried women were shamed into putting their newborns up for adoption and the consequences which have touched thousands of people. This fast-paced story is not just about sisters keeping a secret but is a heart-wrenching and funny tale about a not often talked-about part of American history: children finding their birth families fifty years later. Author: Diana Altman Publication Date: June 11, 2019 -
It's 2014 and Amy Daughters is a forty-six-year old stay-at-home mom living in Dayton, Ohio. She returns to her hometown of Houston over the Thanksgiving holiday to discuss her parents’ estate—and finds herself hurled back in time. Suddenly, it’s 1978, and she is forced to spend thirty-six hours in her childhood home with her nuclear family, including her ten-year old self. Over the next day and a half she reconsiders every feeling she’s ever had, discusses current events with dead people, gets overserved at a party with her parent’s friends, and is treated to lunch at the Bonanza Sirloin Pit. Besides noticing that everyone is smoking cigarettes, she’s still jealous of her sister, and there is a serious lack of tampons in the house, Amy also begins to appreciate that memories are malleable, wholly dependent on who is doing the remembering. In viewing her parents as peers and her siblings as detached children, she redefines her difficult relationships with her family members and, ultimately, realizes that her life story matters and is profoundly significant—not so much to everyone else, perhaps, but certainly to her. Amy’s guide said her trip back in time wouldn’t change anything in the future, but by the time her thirty-six hours are up, she’s convinced that she’ll never be the same again. Publication Date: June 4, 2019 Author: Amy Weinland Daughters -
In September 2007, Christine Ristaino was attacked in a store parking lot while her three- and five-year-old children watched. In All the Silent Spaces, Ristaino shares what it felt like to be an ordinary person confronted with an extraordinary event—a woman trying to deal with acute trauma even as she went on with her everyday life, working at a university and parenting two children with her husband. She not only narrates how this event changed her but also tells how looking at the event through both the reactions of her community and her own sensibility allowed her to finally face two other violent episodes she had previously experienced. As new memories surfaced after the attack, it took everything in Ristaino’s power to not let catastrophe unravel the precarious threads holding everything together. Moving between the greater issues associated with violence and the personal voyage of overcoming grief, All the Silent Spaces is about letting go of what you think you know in order to rebuild. Author: Christine Ristaino Publication Date: July 9, 2019 -
At the age of forty-five, Deborah Tobola returns to her birthplace, San Luis Obispo, to work in the very prison her father worked in when he was a student at Cal Poly. But she’s not wearing a uniform as he did; she’s there to teach creative writing and manage the prison’s arts program—a dream job. As she creates a theatre program for prisoners, Tobola finds plenty of drama off the stage as well. Inside the razor wire she finds a world frozen in the ’50s, with no contact with the outside except by telephone; officers who think prisoners don’t deserve programs; bureaucrats who want to cut arts funding; and inmates who steal, or worse. But she loves engaging prisoners in the arts and helping them discover their voices: men like Opie, the gentleman robber; Razor, the roughneck who subscribes to The New Yorker; charismatic Green Eyes, who really has blue eyes; Doo Wop, a singer known for the desserts he creates from prison fare. Alternating between tales of creating drama in prison and Tobola’s own story, Hummingbird in Underworld takes readers on an unforgettable literary journey—one that is frank, funny, and fascinating. Author: Deborah Tobola Publication Date: July 23, 2019
