Thursday, July 14, 2011

Give Away #2!

I recently won  The Lost Summer Of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O'Connor McNees from the fine folks at The Debutant Ball.

This book is seriously good. And it could be yours!

Louisa May Alcott is one of the world's most beloved children's authors, but the truth is she never really wanted to write nice books for children. She wanted to write literary fiction for adults, serious stories for serious readers. She wanted to write about passion, betrayal, independence, injustice, intrigue.... But Little Women sold a lot of copies, and her family needed the cash. So Louisa set aside the stuff she truly loved and wrote the stuff that the world truly wanted.

Louisa was notorious for burning correspondance, evading biographers, and keeping quiet about herself (something tells me LMA would not have been much of a Tweeter). So no one knew much about her love life. But Kelly O'Connor McNees wondered: how could LMA write realistic love stories if she'd never been in love herself?

McNees discovered that there is very little known about the summer when Louisa was 22, just before she movee to Boston to begin her writing career. McNees got to thinking -- maybe that was the summer Louisa fell in love?

The Lost Summer Of Louisa May Alcott does a great job of imagining this romance. It's a lovely, well-written, and exciting novel. And it could be yours!

Leave a comment and I'll randomly select a winner!

Tell me about a bittersweet summer romance of yours,

OR

Tell me how old you think Katie was when she had her first romance. Be as detailed as you'd like in helping me to flesh out my (our) protagonist's romantic history!

I will announce the winner on July 22nd!

5 comments:

  1. I haven't heard of that book, but it sounds great!

    Unfortunately, I don't have a bittersweet summer romance. It was summer when I met my hubby but we ended up together, so nothing bittersweet about it! Lol :)

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  2. I don't have a bittersweet summer romance, either, and that books sounds fabulous. It was on my reading list awhile back, but I never got around to it.

    So, I will instead invent a fabulous romance for Katie! She had her first romance in Kindergarten, with a boy who she was convinced she would marry one day. She would fantasize about him coming by her house, dressed in a suit, and proposing marriage. Then, his family moved away at the end of the year. She still thinks about him sometimes, even though she doesn't remember what his last name is and can't ever find him again. BITTERSWEET!

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  3. Love Louisa May Alcott, so maybe I'm biased when I say this book sounds great! I did have a bittersweet summer romance last summer...bittersweet because it didn't make it through fall! Let's see if I can have better luck this smmer. ;)

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  4. I want this book too! I think Katie's first romance was with a cute boy in grade nine. They met in music class, maybe he played the trombone.

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  5. Katie woke up early. Aspens softly clacking and the smell of the lake. For three summers she had come to her aunt's cabin and the first morning was always the same. Up she'd get, at dawn, quietly dress and walk to the pole pier that stretched up and out onto the shallow lake. The far shore a thin white ribbon. She would sit and become lake Katie. This morning was different. Halfway out the narrow walk to the pier's end she noticed the boy. Blond, white t, shorts, very tanned, seated facing away. She paused, uncertain, a little pissed. She continued to walk the slight breeze and the water swallowing any sound she might have made. He didn't move and then he did.

    "Oh Hi?"
    "Hi?"
    He laughed and Katie smiled and maybe he blushed a bit and walked carefully past her and down the pier.

    [is that enough? can I be in the draw now?]

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