May 2016: Cindy L. Rodriguez, Isabel Allende

Join Las Comadres around the world for an interview with Cindy L. Rodriguez author of When Reason Breaks published by Bloomsbury Children's Books and Additional Conversation With Isabel Allende author of The Japanese Lover published by Atria Books

May BoM Outside Links: Book Author Publisher
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May ACW Outside Links: Book Author Publisher

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About the Book:

When Reason Breaks

When Reason Breaks

By Cindy L. Rodriguez
Published by Bloomsbury Children’s Books
ISBN-13: 978-1619634121
bloomsbury-childrens-books
A Goth girl with an attitude problem, Elizabeth Davis must learn to control her anger before it destroys her. Emily Delgado appears to be a smart, sweet girl, with a normal life, but as depression clutches at her, she struggles to feel normal. Both girls are in Ms. Diaz’s English class, where they connect to the words of Emily Dickinson. Both are hovering on the edge of an emotional precipice. One of them will attempt suicide. And with Dickinson’s poetry as their guide, both girls must conquer personal demons to ever be happy.

About the Author:

Cindy L. Rodriguez

Cindy L. Rodriguez

Cindy L. Rodriguez is a former newspaper reporter turned public school teacher. She is now a middle school reading specialist, but previously worked for the Hartford Courant and the Boston Globe. She lives in Connecticut with her daughter and rescue mutt. When Reason Breaks is her debut novel.


About the Book:

The Japanese Lover

The Japanese Lover

By Isabel Allende
Published by Atria Books
ISBN-13: 978-1501116971
atria-books-logo
In 1939, as Poland falls under the shadow of the Nazis, young Alma Belasco’s parents send her away to live in safety with an aunt and uncle in their opulent mansion in San Francisco. There, as the rest of the world goes to war, she encounters Ichimei Fukuda, the quiet and gentle son of the family’s Japanese gardener. Unnoticed by those around them, a tender love affair begins to blossom. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the two are cruelly pulled apart as Ichimei and his family—like thousands of other Japanese Americans—are declared enemies and forcibly relocated to internment camps run by the United States government. Throughout their lifetimes, Alma and Ichimei reunite again and again, but theirs is a love that they are forever forced to hide from the world.

Decades later, Alma is nearing the end of her long and eventful life. Irina Bazili, a care worker struggling to come to terms with her own troubled past, meets the elderly woman and her grandson, Seth, at San Francisco’s charmingly eccentric Lark House nursing home. As Irina and Seth forge a friendship, they become intrigued by a series of mysterious gifts and letters sent to Alma, eventually learning about Ichimei and this extraordinary secret passion that has endured for nearly seventy years.

Sweeping through time and spanning generations and continents, The Japanese Lover explores questions of identity, abandonment, redemption, and the unknowable impact of fate on our lives. Written with the same attention to historical detail and keen understanding of her characters that Isabel Allende has been known for since her landmark first novel The House of the Spirits, The Japanese Lover is a profoundly moving tribute to the constancy of the human heart in a world of unceasing change.

About the Author:

isabel-allende

Isabel Allende

Born in Peru and raised in Chile, Isabel Allende is the author of a number of bestselling and critically acclaimed books, including The House of the Spirits, Eva Luna, Stories of Eva Luna, Of Love and Shadows, and Paula. Her latest novel is The Japanese Lover. Her books have been translated into more than thirty-five languages and have sold more than 65 million copies worldwide. She lives in California.