ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Lisa Samson is a Christy Award-winning author of 19 books, including the Women of the Faith Novel of the Year, Quaker Summer. Lisa has been hailed by Publishers Weekly as "a talented novelist who isn't afraid to take risks."In Embrace Me, the latest novel by acclaimed author Lisa Samson, readers are privy to the realization that regardless of outward appearances…hideous, attractive, or even ordinary…persons are all looking for the same things: love, forgiveness, and redemption.
This story explores a world that is neither comfortable nor safe, a world that people like Valentine know all too well. Masterfully crafted by Samson and populated by her most compelling cast of characters yet. It is a tale of forgiveness that extends into all spheres of life: forgiving others, forgiving oneself, forgiving the past.
She lives in Lexington, Kentucky with her husband and three kids.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Biting and gentle, hard-edged and hopeful...a beautiful fable of love and power, hiding and seeking, woundedness and redemption.When a "lizard woman," a self-mutilating preacher, a tattooed monk, and a sleazy lobbyist find themselves in the same North Carolina town one winter, their lives are edging precariously close to disaster...and improbably close to grace.
Valentine, due to her own drastic self-disfigurement, ahs very few friends in this world and, it appears as if she may be destined to spend the rest of her life practically alone. But life gives her one good friend, Lella, whose own handicap puts her in the same freakish category as Valentine. As part of Roland's Wayfaring Marvel and Oddities Show, a traveling band of misfits, they seem to have found their niches in an often curiously cruel world.
Residing in a world where masks are mandatory, Valentine has a hard time removing hers, because of her disfigured face but more so because of her damaged soul. It is much easier for her to listen endlessly to different versions of a favorite song, Embraceable You, and escape reality. Yet, life has more in store for her when she meets Augustine, replete with the tattoos, dreadlocks, and his own secrets. With his arrival, Valentine's soul takes a turn.
If you would like to read the first chapter, go HERE
MY COMMENTS
While I probably wouldn't have picked this book up on my own, I'm glad I read it. It forced me out of my comfort zone and made me look beyond the superficial to see folks for who they are inside, rather than judging them based on the outside package the world sees. The book expanded this lesson beyond the usual level of loving the unlovable to humanizing those who are generally outcast and ogled. It was also a sobering reminder of how daughters can bear long-term emotional and physical scars from the emphasis their mothers place on that outside package.
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Your blog is fabulous :o) It's refreshing and fun! Thank you so much for your comments on my Saturday post :o) I'm adding you as a link to my sidebar so I remember to visit often!
Blessings to you...
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