Sunday, January 17, 2010

LaVyrle Spencer's "That Camden Summer"

That Camden Summer
by LaVyrle Spencer

LaVyrle Spencer, known for her "heartrending slices of Americana" writes of how love can be more special the second time around...

It is 1916 and Roberta Jewett is surprised that her hometown of Camden, Maine, considers a divorced woman little more than a prostitute. She nonetheless perseveres in her struggle to forge a new and better life for her daughters there. Behaving like no "respectable" woman would, she gets a job as a county nurse, learns to drive, and buys her very own Model T.

Embittered by her painful marriage to an unfaithful husband, she has no intention of being any man's victim again. So Roberta is taken aback to find the widowed carpenter Gabriel Farley has somehow found his way into her heart. And in the ultimate test of will and devotion, she must depend on the man she has grown to love—and summon the courage to stand up to an entire town.


LaVyrle worked as a teacher's aide at Osseo Junior High School, when in her thirties, she read Kathleen Woodiwiss's novel "The Flame and Flower", which gave her the idea to become a novelist. She decided to try transferring to paper a recurring dream she was having about a story based on her grandmother's lifestyle on a Minnesota farm. Her story became her first manuscript, "The Fulfillment", and she sent it to Kathleen Woodiwiss. The bestselling author read the novel and promptly mailed it to her own editor at Avon. The editor purchased the novel, which was published in 1979. She was inducted into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame in 1988. She wrote 23 sweet historical and contemporany novels. Published around the world, her works had included 12 New York Times Bestsellers, and have been won 4 RITA Awards, 3 Golden Medallion Award and a Minnesota Book Awards. LaVyrle said: "the trademark of my books is mending relationships, showing people how to mend relationships."

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