Patti Callahan Henry ~ Live Chat at BookTrib

Tuesday, June 25th at 3:30 ET you can chat with Patti Callahan Henry over at BookTribChat!

During the chat you can:

• Ask Patti questions directly
• WIN a free copy of her latest book, AND THEN I FOUND YOU
• See Patti's fabulous, creative writing space where all the magic happens

Click here to enter the chat. 

Back in the day, a long time ago, I posted my thoughts about one of Patti's books, Coming up for Air. I loved it and when I went back and looked at the post, (take a look here) written in 2011, I was kind of shocked at how much I have grown since then. Back then, I just wanted to have a place to log what books I read and how I felt about them. I never dreamed that The Book Bag would be what it is today! It's really kind of amazing to me! 

Anyway, Patti has a new book out And Then I Found You.
And I can't wait to read it!

About the book

Henry returns with her best, most personal and moving story to date. AND THEN I FOUND YOU (St. Martin’s Press; April 9, 2013, Hardcover) is inspired by her family's personal experience with adoption. The novel explores one of the most difficult decisions a mother could face and tells the story of the bravery it takes to find one’s place in the world and a miraculous reunion that changes everyone’s lives forever.

Henry’s sister, Barbi, placed her baby daughter for adoption over twenty years ago. She chose the family carefully and then waited. Twenty years later she heard from her daughter, Catherine. Catherine had stumbled upon her birth certificate and discovered her birth mother's name. After requesting permission from her parents to locate her birth mother, Catherine performed a Google search. Her birth mother’s name didn't pop up, but her novelist sister's did. Catherine couldn't believe the resemblance and immediately sent a Facebook request to Patti and her birth mother. And so their story begins. The anniversary of that Facebook reunion - of their family reunion three years ago - happens to coincide with the publication of the book in April. One could never have planned that.

In AND THEN I FOUND YOU Henry creates the wonderful characters of Kate, Jack, and Emily to capture the emotional truths of the way families connect and what happens when the lost becomes found. The story will resonate with anyone who has ever longed for a second chance, a new beginning and the joyful change that reunions bring to a family. You won’t forget the courage, heartbreak, healing, and redemption made possible in Henry’s capable hands.

Synopsis of the book from Goodreads 

Kate Vaughan is no stranger to tough choices.

She’s made them before. Now it’s time to do it again.

Kate has a secret, something tucked away in her past. And she’s getting on with her life.  Her business is thriving. She has a strong relationship with her family, and a devoted boyfriend whom she wants to love with all her heart. If Kate had ever made a list, Rowan would fill the imagined boxes of a perfect mate. But she wants more than the perfect on paper relationship; she wants a real and imperfect love. That's why, when Kate discovers the small velvet box hidden in Rowan's drawer, she panics.

It always happens this way. Just when Kate thinks she can love, just when she believes she can conquer the fear, she’s filled with dread. And she wants more than anything to make this feeling go away. But how?

When the mistakes have been made and the running is over, it’s time to face the truth. Kate knows this. She understands that a woman can never undo what can never be undone. Yet, for the first time in her life she also knows that she won’t fully love until she confronts those from her past. It’s time to act.

Can she do it? Can she travel to the place where it all began, to the one who shares her secret? Can the lost ever become found?

And Then I Found You gives new life to the phrase “inspired by a true story.” By travelling back to a painful time in her own family’s history, the author explores the limits of courage, and the price of a selfless act.

See you in the chat-room! 

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Coming Up for Air by Patti Callahan Henry

On the coast of Alabama, there is a house cloaked in mystery, a place that reveals the truth and changes lives... 

Ellie Calvin is caught in a dying marriage, and she knows this. With her beloved daughter away at college and a growing gap between her and her husband – between her reality and the woman she wants to be – she doesn’t quite seem to fit into her own life.

But everything changes after her controlling mother, Lillian, passes away. Ellie’s world turns upside down when she sees her ex-boyfriend, Hutch, at her mother’s funeral and learns that he is in charge of a documentary that involved Lillian before her death. He wants answers to questions that Ellie’s not sure she can face, until, in the painful midst of going through her mother’s things, she discovers a hidden diary – and a window onto stories buried long ago.

As Ellie and Hutch start speaking for the first time in years, Ellie’s closed heart slowly begins to open. Fighting their feelings, they set out together to dig into Lillian’s history. Using both the diary and a trip to the Summer House, a mysterious and seductive bayside home, they gamble that they can work together and not fall in love again. But in piecing together a decades-old unrequited-love story, they just might uncover the secrets in their own hearts… ~~synopsis from Goodreads

 

My thoughts on Coming Up for Air ~~

Hmmm - I stayed up way too late trying to finish this book. And darn it, I could not finish the last 40 pages or so. But I went back and reread, oh, the previous 10 pages or so and then moved forward and savored the ending.

I loved this book and did not want it to end. I got totally caught up in Ellie trying to figure everything out. I thought the flashbacks to the Civil Rights era were very informative and I was immersed in that time period for a short time.

In reading her mother's diary, Ellie learns that her mother was not the woman that she thought she was. She was very surprised with what she learned.

That got me thinking about how little I know about the lives of my parents before they were my parents. How sad that that part of my personal history is gone. It would have been interesting to know what my parents were like as 'real people.'

Here are some great lines that I marked in the book as I was reading ~~

"The choices we make when we're broken are sometimes the most awful of all our choices"

"But your mother wanted to make sure you weren't a wildflower in her botanical garden"

"Thought what? That if you knew that girl, you could know the woman who was your mother?"

"We all become the person we are from the person we were - if that makes sense - and I don't believe you mother was any different. Does it really matter how she became that way?" 

Authors website ~~ http://www.patticallahanhenry.com