Margaret, Rose, Jane, and Fran had a good thing meet every week in the quiet of their peaceful chapel and knit prayer shawls. No muss, just ministry. That is, until their pastor boots them out of the church in his last-ditch effort to revive the dwindling congregation.
Uptight Margaret isn’t having it. Knitting prayer shawls where people can watch is the most ridiculous idea she’s ever heard of, and she’s heard plenty. Prayer belongs in the church, not out among the heathen masses. How are they supposed to knit holiness into these shawls if they’re constantly distracted by the public? But with no choice, the others embrace the challenge. They pack their knitting bags and drag Margaret–grumbling the whole way–to the mall with them. She can’t wait to prove them all wrong when it fails miserably, and show the pastor that she always knows best.
Without the familiar mold the group has been stuck in, their own losses, pain, and struggles rise to the surface. And the people and situations they encounter every time they try to sit quietly and knit are taking them a lot further out of their comfort zone than they ever imagined. Can they find the courage to tackle the increasing number of knotty issues they learn about in the community–or will the tangle be too much to unravel?
Sharon Mondragon’s debut is warm and delightful, full of real laughter, grief, and personality. It beautifully illustrates the power of women across generations to reach people for Christ.
My thoughts:
This book was not something I “normally” read, but yet it was. I read a lot of mystery books, but even I need a break from the mysteries sometimes and enjoy a book that is going to make me think about my faith without bashing me over the head. I also don’t mind books that bash me over the head a little bit with my faith so…yeah…sometimes you need a lighter one though.
This book had it all – humor, lovable characters, meaningful moments, thoughtful passages, characters grappling with long-held emotional pain, and people finding a new awareness of God in their lives. It was realistic and raw without being inappropriate or salacious.
Some of the members like the idea of leaving the chapel and going into public, but at least one, Margaret, completely balks. The idea of the group is to knit quietly and pray over the shawls and the people who will receive them, she says.
Going out into the community, though, becomes an outreach for more than members of the public. Soon, the knitting group members are being ministered to as well. New friendships are formed, old hurts are healed, and the church is beginning to grow with new members. More importantly, some of the biggest objectors to moving the group out of the church are learning about themselves and coming closer to the God they said they wanted to serve.
I absolutely loved the members of the knitting club that is the center of this book. They immediately felt like friends. Out of all of them, I could actually relate to Margaret the mos,t even though she was the most “grumpy” out of the women. I don’t know that I am grumpy (others might disagree) but I am a control freak who doesn’t like change for a variety of reasons. There were some tough subjects in this book, and I don’t usually don’t like that in my books, but I kept going because I felt there would be some resolutions and comforts that were needed for the characters and the reader(s). The characters were also so lovable and, in most cases, sweet. I became very invested in their lives.
I will leave it to you to find out the meaning of the title and who the dragon lady really is.
Trigger warning: There is discussion of cancer and death in this book. It is handled very respectfully without going into graphic detail, but it could be difficult for some readers.
I listened to the majority of this one on Audible and enjoyed the narrator, Christina Moore.
I finished the last few chapters in a paperback, which I bought because I felt like I might want to loan it out to people in the future. This is the second book I read by Sharon (the first being Grandma Ruth Doesn’t Go To Funerals, which had a totally different feel to it) and I am certain I will be reading more. I really enjoy how her writing pulls you write into the story and makes you love her characters right from the start.
Christy by Catherine Marshall is a very dense book. It is full of life lessons weaved between poetic prose and hard realities of life in the Smoky Mountains in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Following the story of fictional 19-year-old Christy Huddleston, the book is fiction but based, very loosely, on the real-life experience of Marshall’s mother, Leonora Whitaker Wood.
The CBS series, Christy, starring Kellie Martin, and a couple of made-for-TV movies were based on the book. I watched the show in the 1990s but had never read the book. I didn’t even know the TV-movies existed until I was doing research for this post.
In both the show and the book, Christy travels to a small mission in the mountains of Tennessee from her home in Ashville, North Carolina to teach in a school full of mountain children who have very little material items but a lot of heart and heartache.
The small area where these children and their families are from is called Cutter Gap. The fictional area isn’t really a town since it is only a collection of cabins scattered across the mountains and through the woods, but there is a fiction town called El Pano, located near it. The families in Cutter Gap are poor, uneducated, and fighting for their lives against disease and judgment.
Christy arrives at the mission after listening to the mission founder speak about it and begins her work with Miss Alice Henderson, a Quaker woman, and Pastor David Grantland, a minister who has been assigned to the school.
Once she arrives she meets other colorful members of the community — Dr. Neil McNeil, resident Ruby Mae, and resident Fairlight Spencer (who becomes her best friend), as well as other colorful (shall we say) characters. She also begins to learn more about the history of the area, the hardships they have faced since the 1700s, and the way some of the men feel they have to take a criminal route in life to scrape out a living.
There is a lot of beauty mixed in with some very ugly tales within the 500 pages of Christy. I marked up a lot of the book to remember parts of it later. Even though I found parts of the faith message of the book contradictory and a little confusing at times, there were many parts that were extremely thought-provoking and moving to me.
Most of what I underlined in the book were quotes by Miss Alice, who was my favorite character in the book besides Fairlight Spencer. In the beginning of the book, I found it hard to connect Christy who was very hard-headed and brash at times. She came to the mission with head knowledge of God but not heart knowledge of him.
I couldn’t stand David Grantland through most of the book and wasn’t sure what to make of Neil McNeil.
I wanted to shake Christy a couple of times throughout the book and tell her not to rush into dangerous situations. Toward the end of the book, though, when she truly struggled with the faith that she had only really found since working at the mission, I related to her immensely. So much of what happened to the people she’d come to love in Cutter Gap seemed so cruel to me. Even though the book was fiction, I found myself questioning the goodness of God, thinking about some similar cruel situations of those I’ve known over the years. It’s something I had to sit and wrestle with mental and spiritually in the moments, hours, and days after finishing the book. In many ways I am still struggling with these questions about God and the goodness I sometimes don’t see.
Some of the sections I underlined in the book included:
“Evil is real – and powerful. It has to be fought, not explained away, not fled. And God is against evil all the way. So each of us has to decide where WE stand, how we’re going to live OUR lives. We can try to persuade ourselves that evil doesn’t exist; live for ourselves and wink at evil. We can say that it isn’t so bad after all, maybe even try to call it fun by clothing it in silks and velvets. We can compromise with it, keep quiet about it and say it’s none of our business. Or we can work on God’s side, listen for His orders on strategy against the evil, no matter how horrible it is, and know that He can transform it.”
“What do you do when strength is called for and you have no strength? You evoke a power beyond your own and use stamina you did not know you had. You open your eyes in the morning grateful that you can see the sunlight of yet another day. You draw yourself to the edge of the bed and then put one foot in front of the other and keep going. You weep with those who gently close the eyes of the dead, and somehow, from the salt of your tears, comes endurance for them and for you. You pour out that resurgence to minister to the living.”
“I’d long since learned that no difference in viewpoint should ever be allowed to cause the least break in love. Indeed, it cannot, if it’s real love. …But relationships can be kept intact without compromising one’s own beliefs. And if we do not keep them intact, but give up and allow the chasm, we’re breaking the second greatest commandment.”
“The secret of her calm seemed to be that she was not trying to prove anything. She was—that was all. And her stance toward life seemed to say: God is—and that is enough.”
This was one of the few books I’ve read that I became completely immersed in when I read it. Everything around me disappeared – the language and descriptions were so vivid. I could see the mountains, picture the cabins and the people, and sometimes even smell, sadly, the smells.
It took me a little over a month to read through the book because it was so dense. I felt like I really got to know the characters that way and this was both a good and a bad thing.
It was a bad thing because, toward the end, some of the events hit me so hard and left me on my couch on a cold Sunday afternoon with a warm fire in our woodstove burning and me crying until my sides hurt.
I like to be immersed in books but at that moment I thought that maybe I wouldn’t like to be so immersed if it was going to be this painful to continue to read on.
I won’t give away too much but there was a death in the book that I could not make sense of in the least. Much of the book seemed to want the reader to see that there was hope still available, even in the midst of darkness, anger, and sadness, but when we had almost reached the end it was like that message was yanked out from under us with such a ferociousness that it made my head spin.
When I was reading the book, I was thinking, “Wow. There are so many deep messages about our relationship with God in this book” but then I was like, “But there were some really theological muddy waters in this book and I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
There was a lot of talk about superstitions and instead of dispelling them by saying God is in control, there were times the characters tried to explain it away by science or simply telling the mountain people that their beliefs were faulty. There is little to no mention of Jesus in this book. Yet this book is marketed as a great Christian book. That confuses me a little. Still, the story, overall, was very compelling, interesting, and realistic (maybe a bit too realistic).
I saw a review of this after I read it that tagged the book as being “heartfelt” and “family-friendly.”
The book was NOT family-friendly. There are discussions of rape, abuse, murder, molestation, and many other disturbing and triggering topics. There are not, however, extremely graphic descriptions of these subjects.
There are times this book seems to push that there is truth in superstition, even though, I’m sure that’s not what the author, a well-known Christian author, meant to do.
In the end, Christy was a painfully beautiful book that wrung me out emotionally. It challenged my thinking, built me up, tore me down again, and left me with a glimmer of hope that Christy and the people of Cutter Gap found some joy and happiness beyond the time frame addressed within the book’s pages.
I would be remiss if I did not mention that the ending of this book is very open-ended and, to me, somewhat abrupt. It does not answer all of the reader’s questions. Or it didn’t answer some of my questions at least. It left me with a bit of mystery and with a strong desire for a sequel.
According to more than one article online, notes for a sequel to the book were discovered in Catherine Marshall’s things after her death by her family. Those notes have never been revealed, however. Part of me would love to know what happened to Christy after the events at the end of the book (which were wrapped up a bit too quickly for me), but part of me agrees with the blogger of Taking Up Room who wrote, “Christy ending on a question mark has never failed to get my brain thinking, even after dozens of times of reading the book. In a way, it means the story never really ends. Adding more might just spoil whatever ending fans have come to in their own minds, and that’s no fun. I say keep the mystery.”
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Today is my dad’s 81st birthday. We had a family dinner for him yesterday when my brother could visit and will probably have another lunch together with the kids and I today.
We had ham and bean soup yesterday and today we will eat some sausage balls I plan to make in memory of my aunt Dianne, as well a beef roast.
Last night we played a game of Uno that got a little crazy and felt like it might ever end. We ended up laughing and shaking our heads at how long it seemed to be going on.
This upcoming week we have nowhere to go which is fine with me because homeschool has to get back under way first thing tomorrow. Ha. First thing. Yeah right. It will probably be afternoon before we do anything, but it sounds better if I write “first thing.”
Having an easy-going week is something I am looking forward to after a pretty nuts Christmas break. The Husband was in the ER and diagnosed with Diabetes a few days before Christmas, so it’s been a period of adjustment and him not feeling well. He slept or rested most the break, which he needed and I’m glad he wasn’t working when this all hit.
I also injured my knee by – I don’t know how actually. By rolling over in bed or something. Who even knows.
So far we have not caught any of the various illnesses going around but I know our time is coming and I’m pretty worried about that happening.
I’m reading Christy by Catherine Marshall and really enjoying it. I loved the show that was based on it and aired on CBS in the 1990s and the book is fairly close to it from what I can see so far.
The book is a fictional book very loosely based on the life story of Marshall’s mother, if you’ve never heard of it. The main character travels to a very remote area in the Smokey Mountains of North Carolina in the early 1900s to become a teacher at a missionary school.
As a young, inexperienced woman she is for a rude awakening but also an amazing experience of learning about the determination of the people who live in the mountains.
Upcoming books for me:
I have three Nancy Drew books coming in the mail from Thriftbooks and hope to read at least one of those after Christy.
World Travel: An Irreverent Guide by Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolever
Little Men by Louisa May Alcott
The Two Towers by JRR Tolkien
Little Miss finished Harry Potter Chamber of Secrets yesterday while reading at her grandparents. She even made us wait for our game of Uno so she could finish the book. I’m very proud of her for reading the first two books. She was bothered by some of the violence in the end of the Chamber of Secrets so says she will be taking a break before she decides if she want to read book three.
The Boy and I will be starting Frankenstein soon, which he’s looking forward to a lot more than me. If you know anything about what I read, Frankenstein isn’t my normal read. We are reading through British literature this year and he likes the story of Frankenstein so we will go for it.
After that I’ll be having him read some Agatha Christie so that will be more up my alley.
The Husband is reading Bourdain The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever.
This past week I watched The Power of the Press, a 1928 silent movie starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Morning Glory, a 1933 movie starring Fairbanks Jr. and Katherine Hepburn, a few episodes of No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain, and videos by Booktubers preparing their 2025 reading journals.
I enjoyed this video by Plant Based Bride. It scratched some sort of crafty itchy for me, but I don’t think I’ll ever be as detailed or organized in my reading journal.
I also watched A Victorian Farm: A Victorian Christmas this past week and am now starting A Tudor Farm.
I am finishing up corrections to Gladwynn Grant Shakes The Family Tree and started a Patreon, which you can subscribe to here if you’d like a sneak peek of the book.
I’ve been listening to the podcasts Pop Culture Preservation Society, which is aimed at us middle-agers to talk about some of the odd pop culture from when we were teens, etc. and True Drew, a podcast about Nancy Drew. I would recommend them both.
Now it’s your turn! What have you been doing recently? Watch anything good? Read a good book? Go anywhere interesting? Let me know in the comments.
The first thing to note about The Maestro’s Missing Melody by Amy Walsh is that it can be read alone, even though it is part of a series.
The second thing to note is that this is a very well-written sweet romance that had me captivated from the beginning to the end. Also, I think I might be in love with The Maestro. Not really, of course, but I mean bookishly in love. The way The Maestro attempts to fight love when it is calling to him is very enthralling, even for readers, like me, who don’t always read romances.
The Maestro’s Missing Melody isn’t a over dramatic romance, but is instead a series of gentle steps toward healing for both main characters. The use of musical terms and musical metaphors are two of many aspects that make this book so rich and authentic.
McKay Moonlight has had her share of heartaches – the main one being abandoned by drug-addicted parents. Now she is in Scotland after being given a chance to study under the famous Scottish fiddler Huntley Milne, who she refers to as The Maestro because – to her – he is the fiddling maestro. She’s been listening to his fiddle music for years with her grandparents, who raised her.
Huntley isn’t sure what to make of McKay when she arrives, especially since during their first meeting she ruins a beautiful classical musical performance when the ringtone on her phone blares out a Willie Nelson song. Huntley has some heartache of his own to get over. First there is the loss of his wife many years before and the fact his Aunt BeeBee has suddenly been placed in a home, which means he is left to care for his tween niece and nephew that his aunt adopted years before.
This is an easy going book in some ways, yet there always seem to be something happening. There is a mystery that Huntley must solve when his aunt makes it clear that she wants Huntley to find a family book for her back at her mansion. The students that Huntley is mentoring are staying at the mansion as well and after the niece (Dory) attaches herself to McKay and asks her to come with them to visit Aunt BeeBee, McKay also becomes involved in helping to look for the book.
The mystery and the possibility of an “age-gap” romance (this means Huntley is a bit older than McKay) kept me turning the pages. Walsh’s writing did as well. She turns a simple meeting or interaction between characters into a delightful word treat.
For example:
“The Maestro bent toward me again and surrounded me with those huge arms. I savored the warmth of his chest, the smoothness of his newly shaved cheek sliding across mine, and a scent I’d never smelled on him before––possibly spiced citrus with a hint of pine. If the night had ended right then with my first-ever hug from Huntley Milne, it would have been the best birthday ever.”
Faith is a big part of this book, with both McKay and Huntley asking God to heal Aunt BeeBee, to guide them in their steps, to be a comfort to the children as they fear for their guardian while she is in the nursing home. Bible verses are also shared throughout or intertwined with aspects of the plot throughout.
The Maestro’s Missing Melody is a heartwarming, cozy read that I enjoyed each night before bed to help me decompress from long and stressful days. It’s a story that left me hoping the best for each character, praying (yes, for fictional characters) for them to have a happily ever after.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
The beginning of this week the weather was beautiful which led my dad to decide to take my kids for a hike along the old railroad tracks near his house two days in a row. I stayed back at my parents and helped my mom with cleaning the house.
The kids enjoyed walking the path where the train tracks used to be and my dad told them the history of where the station was and where the trains traveled. He also talked to Little Miss about where the old French mill used to be along the creek.
Zooma The Wonder Dog also loved the trip. She and Little Miss splashed in the creek and looked for fish, but didn’t see any.
The kids took some photos:
Two days later our little town was placed under a water boil advisory when there was a water main break. This made cooking and washing dishes a challenge, but we managed – not without complaint from me. The advisory was lifted on Friday, thankfully.
Last week I wrote a bit about our family’s cats over the years and barely scratched the surface of all the cats we’ve had over the years. I’ve decided I’m going to sit down one day this week and write about all the cats I can remember us having. Cats have such interesting personalities and each one seems to be different.
Mom and Dad’s cat Molly.
I also hope to write a blog post in the next month or so about the letters we have between my great-grea-grandfather and his brothers and mother that were written during the Civil War. They are very interesting.
What I/we’ve been Reading
The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood and The Anne of Green Gables Devotional by Rachel Dodge
Murder Handcrafted by Isabella Alan, which I have been sharing the wrong title of for a couple of weeks. So this one was good but also annoying. First, I didn’t know it was the last book in the series until I read some reviews. Second, there were some super weird typo and consistency issues that really threw me out of the story. I was surprised to see this because the book was published by Random House Publishing.
I really shouldn’t have been surprised because I’ve seen some errors like this before in Amanda Flowers’ books and Isabella Alan and Amand Flowers are the same person. There are so many books out by Amanda that I feel like they are trying to push them out way too fast and therefore letting quality slide.
Now, as someone who is independently published and has a lot of errors in her book as well, I’m not trying to act superior. I’m just surprised because so many readers are so negative about independently published books because of their supposed lack of quality but I am seeing that lack across the board in publishing right now.
In some ways I think the production of books needs to slow down and focus on quality over quantity. There are just too many rushed books out there.
All of this said I did enjoy the story of the book. I was, however, really annoyed to find out this was the last book in the series and she did not wrap up the love story between the main character very well (I mean they were still together so I guess that’s good at least) and left the storylines of other characters hanging. I still enjoy the stories and her writing, though, so this doesn’t mean I won’t read further books by her. Just not for a while.
I need to take a break from mysteries for a bit so I am going to try either Miracle in a Season by Sarah Loudin Thomas or Finding Lady Enderly by Joanna Davidson Politano
I haven’t read either of these authors before.
I decided to put The Cat Who Brought Down the House by Lilian Jackson Braun aside for now since I learned it was one of the later books in the series. I read one or two of those and they weren’t as good, and I think it might have been because Lilian was quite old by then and others may have been writing them or she was, and they just weren’t as good.
The Husband is reading Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie.
Little Miss is reading Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone. At night we are sometimes reading The Four Story Mistake. During the school days we are reading Johnny Tremaine.
The Boy is listening to an audiobook – Tales From The Gas Station Part Four.
What We watched/are Watching
Her Majesty, Mrs. Brown. This was my first time watching this one and I found it very interesting. It sent me down a rabbit hole of reading the real story of John Brown and Queen Victoria.
For Comfy, Cozy Cinema with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs, I watched Dial M for Murder. If you want to join in on our movie marathon posts for the rest of October and November you can follow the list here:
You don’t have to blog about them if you watch them but if you do write a blog post about your impression about the movies, we will be adding a link up at the end of our posts.
On Nov. 14 we will be watching Chocolat as a group watch. We will be pushing play together at the same time and then chatting about the movie in our Discord group (The Dames), which you can join for free now here: https://discord.com/invite/J7qQ36Uf
On my own I watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (original with Danny Kaye) this weekend and really enjoyed it. I loved the music and Danny Kaye’s performance overall. I watched an episode of the first season of Only Murders In The Building as well last week. I am really enjoying it and it’s hard not to binge watch it but I’m trying to wait for my husband to be home to watch it with me.
What I’m Writing
I am getting much closer to the end of the third Gladwynn book.
I released the description this past week, if you are curious:
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
Last week was pretty chilly part of the week but things have started to warm up again. Little Miss and I hoped that warm up would include some time in the pool but the nights have been very cool so that has left us with very cool pool water. It’s been so cool our teeth have started chattering as soon as we enter the pool, and our bodies don’t really become acclimated even though we hope they will.
Yesterday we tried again, and I somehow lasted 90 minutes but my body did not feel well afterward. The warmest days this week will be Tuesday and Wednesday so I think we will wait to try again until then and those will probably be the last swims of the season.
This week I will ease into lessons for Little Miss to kick off school, but we won’t start in earnest until after Labor Day. The Boy already started back at tech school. I’ll start his lessons the week of Labor Day as well but he has much less to do this year.
So this week is the last week of freedom, so to speak, for the kids before school really gets underway.
What I/we’ve been Reading
Currently: I am still reading Trouble Shooter by Louis L’Amour because I have been reading a couple of other books in addition to or in between. I am going to focus on the book more this week because there is a mystery woven in and I really want to know what happened.
I am also reading The Gardener’s Plot by Deborah J. Benoit. It is an Advanced Reader’s Copy.
On cozy evenings I am also reading Little Men by Louisa Mae Alcott
I just finished Clueless at the Coffee Station by Bee Littlefield and really enjoyed it. I’ll share a review of it on here tomorrow.
My upcoming list has shifted around some as I plan for reads for Autumn.
Up next, possibly, depending on my mood,
A Simple Deduction by Kristin Holl (An Amish Inn Mystery)
The Secret of Red Gate Farm by Carolyn Keene (A Nancy Drew Mystery)
Murder Handcrafted by Isabella Alan (An Amish Quilt Shop Mystery)
The Cat Who Brought Down the House by Lilian Jackson Braun
Little Miss and I read Homer Price by Robert McCloskey over the last couple of weeks.
What We watched/are Watching
Last week I watched Clambake. I don’t want to talk about it. I’d just like to never remember I watched it.
I also watched a few episodes of the old British show Lovejoy.
I then watched Just A Few Acres on YouTube.
What I’m Writing
I made quite a bit of progress on Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree this past week. I hope to make even more progress this upcoming week.
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
Today for Fiction Friday I am interviewing Sandra Ardoin who has a new book out. Renee is the seventh book in the Apron Strings Book Series, a multi-author series of which I am also a part.
Each book can be read as a standalone with the only connecting factor being an old-fashioned cookery (recipe) book called Mrs. Canfield’s Cookery Book. Each book takes place in a decade from 1920 to 2020.
Sandra’s book takes place in the 1980s.
First, a little about the book:
Renee Burnette, a widow living in the North Carolina mountains, has longed for two things she never had growing up—a permanent home and a lasting friendship like the one she has with Val from her cooking club. In the summer of 1986, the local apple growers sponsor a bake-off with a monetary prize that would bring Renee closer to her housing goal. But after Renee and Val each enter, their relationship goes from best friends to bitter rivals.
When Renee learns of the opportunity for a promotion at work, she’s determined to prove her qualifications to her handsome, single boss. The closer they draw to one another, though, the more Renee fears that an office romance will jeopardize her job and her housing dream.
As the bake-off competition intensifies, Renee’s office relationships are strained, her sweet son becomes unruly, and the rift with Val widens. Can a decades-old cookbook help Renee restore the bonds every woman needs?
Now, an interview with Sandra:
1. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
For me, writing is a business, but it’s also a ministry, so the faith aspect is important. I write Christian romance and began with historicals set in the late 19th century. For the past couple of years, though, I’ve written contemporary romances. Honestly, I’m eager to get back to the past and alternate with a mix of time periods.
My writing career began in 1986 (the same year in which Renee takes place) with greeting cards and posters, then I moved on to children’s short stories for Sunday School take-home papers. I’m a big believer in God’s timing, and His timing, when it came to writing novels, was not until 2009. That’s been my focus since, with my first (a novella) traditionally published in 2014 and the follow-up novel in 2016—the Barnes Brothers series. In 2019, I went independent and have published ten additional novels and novellas.
In my real life, I’m a wife, mom, and occasional granddog-sitter living in North Carolina.
2. What is your latest book about? Who are the main characters and when and where does it take place?
My latest book is Renee, Book Seven in the Apron Strings series. In this series of books that takes place in different decades, I was blessed to be given the 1980s, a decade I know well. I set the book in western North Carolina near Asheville and gave the story a young widow (Renee) with a six-year-old boy. She had a somewhat vagabond childhood and yearns for a sense of belonging and lifelong friendships.
Renee believes a house, rather than the small apartment she and her son now occupy, will offer that permanency she’s lacked in life. Hoping the prize money will complete the funds she needs to buy a house, she enters a baking contest, only to discover she’s competing against her best friend.
3. What is the overarching message of your latest book?
Renee is a story about relationships . . . with a little romance thrown in. Her go-to verses are Ecclesiastes 4:9-10. I chose those scriptures, because they are so because they are so apropos to Renee’s spiritual growth.
4. Did you learn anything about writing or yourself as you were writing the book?
I’m accustomed to writing romance from two points of view—the hero and heroine. This book is only in Renee’s point of view and light on the romance. When it came to her interactions with Greg, I so wanted to write his POV, too, which made the romance a little more challenging for me.
5. Where can readers find out more about you and your projects?
Readers can visit my website and find my complete book list at http://www.sandraardoin.com/books. I’m also on BookBub, Facebook, X , and Goodreads.
The best way to keep up with what’s new, discover what’s upcoming, and learn of sales and specials is to subscribe to my newsletter. I send it out once a month or when something special is happening, like a sale or new release.
Check out Renee or any of the books in the Apron Strings series on Amazon and read them through Kindle Unlimited.
The books for the Apron Strings Book Series keep releasing and this month Cynthia by Jessica Marie Holt was released.
The Apron Strings Book series features books about women in each decade from 1920 to 2020. The characters are connected by one recipe/cookery book, but otherwise the books can be read individually and in any order. My book, Cassie, will be released in August and there are 11 books in all.
Today I am interviewing Jessica about her writing and her book, which was released June 15.
Here is a quick description:
At twenty-two, Cynthia Bailey has had enough family drama to last a lifetime. She loves her small eastern North Carolina town, and longs to settle into a simple, quiet life on her own . . . or maybe with Tucker, the boy next door who won’t stop asking her to marry him. Unfortunately, Momma’s wild ways have a tendency of throwing monkey wrenches into Cynthia’s plans. Besides, without Cynthia there to keep constant watch over her, Momma is certain to get herself into real trouble.
Cynthia has one respite from her problems: Granny Tru’s farm. Momma doesn’t like her going there, as she left Granny and farm life behind long ago and expects Cynthia to do the same. But she doesn’t dare say much, because if there’s anyone more strong-willed and determined than Momma, it’s Granny.
Cynthia secretly wishes everyone would just get along. But Momma and Granny are worlds apart, with bitterness, family secrets, and tragedies between them. It all seems hopeless until, tired of Momma’s frozen TV dinners, Cynthia asks Granny True for help learning to cook. When Granny gives her a vintage cookbook she acquired from a used book shop, she finds much more than cooking lessons. She finds faith, hope, and a way back to healing for her family.
See the bottom of this post for a link to the book.
1. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
I’m a mom of five, although two of my little birds are grown and have flown the nest. I homeschool my three younger kids. We have two dogs, Jack and Daisy, and two cats, Milo and Whiskey. We also have a hamster named Taco. I grew up in South Florida, but I currently live in central/eastern North Carolina. I absolutely love it here; it has inspired so much of my writing.
I have been writing almost all my life, but I have only been published since 2018, when I dusted off a short story I’d written 20 years earlier and made being a writer official.
2. What is your latest book about? Who are the main characters and when and where does it take place?
My latest book, Cynthia, is part of an amazing multi-author series called Apron Strings. Each book is set in a different decade, and each main character is from a different place and a different walk of life. The stories are tied together by one cookbook from the 1920s.
My book, Cynthia, takes place in the 1970s. Cynthia is a sweet 22-year-old girl who is caught between two very different generations—Momma’s and Granny Tru’s. She’s also caught between a rock and a hard place. She wants to move on with her life and find her place in the world, but she’s stuck. She lives at home with Momma, whose wild ways make it difficult for Cynthia to start a new life on her own—or with Tucker, the boy next door who won’t stop asking her to marry him.
3. What is the overarching message of your latest book?
Mainly, Cynthia is a story about finding the courage to let go and move forward. In one way or another, each of the three women in the story, Cynthia, Momma, and Granny, are struggling with the past and finding it hard to let go and move on.
In our doubt and fear, we often tend to try and hold on to people we love—to manage them or rescue them or control the outcomes of their choices. We do this to protect them, and to keep ourselves from getting hurt. But this kind of “help” isn’t really helpful. At some point, we need to learn to let people go and be at peace. After all, God loves them more than we do, and he’s in control.
4. Did you learn anything about writing or yourself as you were writing the book?
This was a healing story for me. I found a little bit of courage and clarity when I wrote it.
5. Where can readers find out more about you and your projects?
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays (yes I did post this on Saturday night this week), I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
Yesterday I shared in my Saturday blog post that I was in the ER on Monday. I am doing fine now and long story short is my heart felt like it was flipping/skipping for more than 12 hours but because I’ve had this feeling off and on for years (and been checked for it), I delayed going. As it has been in the past, I was told my heart was fine. I don’t know why the skipping feeling was happening and kept happening over and over again and the doctor who was there didn’t either but by Thursday it had stopped for the most part and by Friday it was all the way gone.
I am now thinking it was related to a muscle twitch in my chest caused by – well, who knows. A possible autoimmune condition and just the fact I am over weight (just started an exercise plan and a new way of eating so maybe I strained something)? Who knows.
If you want to read more about my weird and stressful week, you can catch up on that post.
Today, though, I will share that after all of that, I was carrying in groceries yesterday, tripped over a curb in our sidewalk, went flying, and injured my knee. Yesterday I spent half the day with it propped up and frozen veggies on it.
This is where I would like to announce that I will be encasing myself in bubble wrap for the foreseeable future but I really don’t know if that is practical or financially wise.
What I/we’ve been Reading
Currently:
The Real James Herriot by Jim Wight
and
Death At A Scottish Christmas
and
The Women of Wyntons by Donna Mumma (I forgot I had started this one! Whoops! It is for a book tour and it’s good so far.)
So I started the Jim Wight biography of his father Alf (James Herriott is his pen name), but decided it was a little bit dry. I still want to read it but I feel like I’ll need a bit to break up the slower pace, which is why I started Death At a Scottish Christmas by Lucy Connolly. It turns out it was just what I needed to have a little bit of a fun read in addition to more of a educational read.
Just Finished:
I finished The Fast Lane by Sharon Peterson, a fun romantic comedy last week. It comes out June 25. I am behind on reviews, but hope to have one up for this soon. It was a silly, sweet book with a few parts that started to drag but then picked right back up again. I would recommend it for romance fans. I don’t read a lot of romance books but when I do I like Sharon’s, ones by Bethany Turner, and others by Becky Wade.
Soon to be read:
A Line To Kill by Anthony Horowitz
An Assassination on the Agenda by T.E. Kinsey
The Deeds of the Deceitful by Ellery Adams and Tina Radcliff
LIttle Miss and I are reading Return to Gone Away Lake by Elizabeth Enright.
The Boy is reading a War Hammer book that I forgot the name of (he’s at a friend’s house and I don’t want to bug him and ask).
The Husband is reading With A Mind to Kill by Anthony Horowitz
What We watched/are Watching
I watched the last two episodes of the fourth season of All Creatures Great and Small on Thursday and Friday and had a good cry, which was a nice release after the week I had.
I also watched some episodes of The Dick VanDyke Show this week.
Last night The Husband and I watched The Rockford Files.
What I’m Writing
I am working on book three of the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries. I can’t wait to share it with you! I’m having fun!
What I’m Listening to
I am listening to Around the World in 80 Days on Audible. Yes, I’ve been listening to it a long time but I haven’t had a lot of time to sit and listen to it. I am really enjoying it and I would have given up and just read the book except I am really enjoying the narrator.
Photos from Last Week
Now it’s your turn
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
