Sunday, September 30, 2012

Healing in the Hurting Places - Excerpt

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Title: Healing in the Hurting Places
Author: Karen F. Riley
Genre: Healing/ Christian Living/ Self-Help
 Length: 224 pages
Format: Paperback and eBook
Publisher: Destiny Image
Release Date: August 16, 2011

Excerpt:

I attended a meeting where I felt prompted to share a story I had written about my abuse. Even though the forum did not relate to abuse, I felt it was important to share part of my journey with these folks, even though I didn’t realize why at the time. It seemed that God had a plan for that evening.
This was the first time I had written and read my story aloud. God gave me the courage to get through the difficult passages because the wound had not yet begun to heal. There were five women and two men in the room the night I shared my story. When I finished reading, there was silence.
It was unnerving. I had no idea what these people were thinking and that unhinged me a bit. But I drew confidence from the strength that God had given me to share and now that I had spoken the truth aloud, there was nothing more I could do. I couldn’t take back what I said.
But strangely enough, I didn’t want to. Releasing that story was very freeing and empowering in a way. And then one of the women sitting at the table said in a halting voice, “Thank you for sharing that. I was raped by my half-brother when I was twelve and you just gave me the courage to speak out.”
Thank you, God, I whispered. So this is why you wanted me to share my story with these folks. Now this woman knows she is not alone and can begin to heal.
I barely had time to think these thoughts when another woman at the table said, “My grandfather started abusing me when I was three. I barely remember that part because I was so young, but I was afraid to go to his house. And the abuse continued for years.”
I told those gathered there that my therapist had told me that one out of every three women are sexually abused. I added, “And you can see, right in this room, there are three of us out of five.”
From the other side of the table, another woman, looking down to avoid our eyes, said, “Make that four.” And she didn’t utter another word.
(From Healing in the Hurting Places by Karen F. Riley)

Trailer:



You can purchase Healing in the Hurting places from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

The Spy Lover Review

Welcome to Ever After PR's stop for The Spy Lover book tour presented by Charisma Media

                                                          Book Description: 
Thrust into the savagery of the Civil War, a Chinese immigrant serving in the Union Army, a nurse doubling as a spy for the North, and a one-armed Confederate cavalryman find their lives inextricably entwined.
Fleeing drought and famine in China, Johnny Tom arrives in America with dreams of becoming a citizen. Having survived vigilantes hunting “yellow dogs” and slave auction- blocks, Johnny is kidnapped from his Mississippi village by Confederate soldiers, taken from his wife and daughter, and forced to fight for the South. Eventually defecting to the Union side, he is promised American citizenship in exchange for his loyal services. But first Johnny must survive the butchery of battles and the cruelties inflicted on non-white soldiers.
Desperate to find Johnny, his daughter, Era, is enlisted as a spy. She agrees to work as a nurse at Confederate camps while scouting for the North. Amidst the unspeakable carnage of wounded soldiers, she finds solace in Warren Petticomb, a cavalryman who lost an arm at Shiloh. As devastation mounts in both armies, Era must choose where her loyalties lie—with her beloved father in the North, or with the man who passionately sustains her in the South.
A novel of extraordinary scope that will stand as a defining work on the Chinese immigrant experience, The Spy Lover is a paean to the transcendence of love and the resilience of the human spirit.

Review:
I am a huge fan of Kiana Davenport's novels and this one just makes me praise her more. 
The Spy Lover is a well researched book about the Civil War, but it focused around three main characters, one of which was a Chinese immigrant.
 I found myself with a multitude of emotions throughout the book. It was graphical but the was not a happy time, with many soldiers in POW camps, the brutality etc it was graphic but  I think Kiana did a great job in writing it with the full on approach as it made the book more believable.
The Spy Lover although fiction was based partly on an ancestor of Kiana's. 

Very well written, well thought out book and I would recommend this. 5/5



“An epic feminine saga!  Davenport’s prose is sharp and shining as a sword.”

¾Isabel Allende on Shark Dialogues
“Deeply Moving.  You can’t read Kiana Davenport without being transformed.”
¾Alice Walker on Song of the Exile
“A powerful and moving experience.”
¾The Washington Post on House of Many Gods”

                                          About The Author: 

Kiana Davenport is descended from a full-blooded Native Hawaiian mother, and a Caucasian father from Talladega, Alabama. Her father, Braxton Bragg Davenport, was a sailor in the U.S. Navy, stationed at Pearl Harbor, when he fell in love with her mother, Emma Kealoha Awaawa Kanoho Houghtailing. On her mother's side, Kiana traces her ancestry back to the first Polynesian settlers to the Hawaiian Islands who arrived almost two thousand years ago from Tahiti and the Tuamotu's. On her father's side, she traces her ancestry to John Davenport, the puritan clergyman who co-founded the American colony of New Haven, Connecticut in 1638.
Kiana is the author of the internationally best-selling novels, Shark Dialogues, Song Of The Exile, and House Of Many Gods. She is also the author of the collections, House Of Skin Prize-Winning Stories, and Cannibal Nights, Pacific Stories Volume II. Both have been Kindle bestsellers. She has just published her third collection, Opium Dreams, Pacific Stories, Volume III.
A graduate of the University of Hawaii, Kiana has been a Bunting Fellow at Harvard University, a Visiting Writer at Wesleyan University, and a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant. Her short stories have won numerous O. Henry Awards, Pushcart Prizes, and the Best American Short Story Award, 2000. Her novels and short stories have been translated into twenty-one languages. She lives in New York City and Hawaii.



Available to purchase at Amazon and Barnes & Noble


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