September 2020 Bonus Books

Sisters of the Undertow: A Novel

Sisters Kim and Kathy Hodges are born sixteen months apart in a middle-class existence parented by Linda and David Hodges of Houston, Texas. The happy couple welcomes their “lucky daughter” Kim, who is physically and mentally advanced. Following several miscarriages, Linda delivers “unlucky” Kathy at twenty-nine weeks, ensuring a life of cognitive and physical disabilities. Kathy enters public school as a special education student, while Kim is recognized as gifted.

Both sisters face life and death decisions as Houston is caught in the rip current of Hurricane Harvey. Kim learns the capricious nature of luck, while Kathy continues to make her own luck, surviving Hurricane Harvey, as she has survived all undertows with the ethereal courage of the resolute.

Sisters of the Undertow examines the connotations of lucky and unlucky, the complexities of sibling rivalry, and the hand fate delivers without reason.

by Author Johnnie Bernhard

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When Never Comes

As a teenage runaway and child of an addict, Christy-Lynn learned the hard way that no address was permanent, and no promise sacred. For a while, she found a safe haven in her marriage to bestselling crime novelist Stephen Ludlow—until his car skidded into Echo Bay. But Stephen’s wasn’t the only body pulled from the icy waters that night. When details about a mysterious violet-eyed blonde become public, a media circus ensues, and Christy-Lynn runs again.

Desperate for answers, she’s shattered to learn that Stephen and his mistress had a child—a little girl named Iris, who now lives in poverty with her ailing great-grandmother. The thought of Iris abandoned to the foster care system—as Christy-Lynn once was—is unbearable. But she’s spent her whole life running—determined never to be hurt again. Will she finally stand still long enough to open herself up to forgiveness and love?

by Author Barbara Davis

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GOING TO SOLACE

GOING TO SOLACE was named a Best Read of 2012 by public radio KRCB’s “Word for Word.” In this moving tale, it’s Thanksgiving week, 1989. We’re in Big Piney and Little Piney, two hollows near the town of Garnet in the Blue Ridge Mountains. A handful of mismatched folks – some country people, some far-flung, fancy people – discover they have one thing in common: someone they know is sick, real sick, dying sick. Their paths cross at a local hospice called Solace. Suddenly, they’re caregivers, bedside improvisers, doing all they can to beat back death or “hurry him on about his business.”

by Author Amanda McTigue

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‘Til Health Do Us Part: One Woman’s Extraordinary Story of Healing

Julie Rooney was forty-eight years old in the summer of 2010, and to anyone looking in from the outside, she appeared to be living the dream. She and her husband owned houses in Silicon Valley and Hawaii, flew first class and stayed in five-star hotels. Their four children were all in college.
But Julie was on her last legs. She suffered from Addison’s disease, Crohn’s colitis, diabetes and hypothyroidism, and after years of synthetic steroids she weighed almost 200 pounds. She had blood drawn more often than most women had their nails done. The bones in her feet were as brittle as glass, and the team of doctors who had cared for her for years had run out of ideas.
“If your illnesses don’t kill you,” her endocrinologist told her, as gently as she could, “the drugs will.”
And then, when Julie had nearly given up hope, a scrap of paper with a hastily scrawled name and a phone number changed her life. Eighteen harrowing months later, against all odds, she had weaned herself off all her medications and her labs had come back normal for the first time in more than ten years.
The lessons she learned during her extraordinary journey of healing will resonate with all those who have struggled to regain their health, and more importantly, to understand their own role in the process.
“We can heal ourselves and each other with our thoughts, our actions and our stories, and in so doing we can heal the world.” – Julie Rooney

by Author Julie Louise Rooney

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