This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Emelle will be awarding a $50 Amazon GC to a randomly drawn commenter, and three other commenters will receive digital copies of Molly Harper. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.
My Most Memorable Day….August 14, 1982
This is the day I became a mother for the first time. My beautiful girl was born in a hospital in Southern California. The sun was shining, the hills were glorious, my husband was smiling like he was about to collect his winnings from the Lotto.
After a ten hour induced labor (that’s it for the gory details, except let me say this to all the Lamaze teachers in the world who say, “It’s not pain, it’s discomfort”… “You Lie” – HA!) Olivia Rose was laid on my stomach. She was perfect and pink and wrinkly, shiny and thoughtful from her first breath. Her eyes met mine and I fell completely in love. Forever. And my very first coherent thought was, “It wouldn’t matter at all if she was adopted…”
Yes, that’s what I’m saying.
My mom, Lorraine, married a wonderful man, Richard, when I was six. He legally adopted me and they went on to have two children together. We were a solid, happy family, complete with summer trips and giggly Christmas eves and support every day of our lives from two parents who brought us up with optimism and love. We weren’t perfect, in fact, we had some very dysfunctional attributes related to my adoption, but we were good with a capital G.
However, despite this Leave It To Beaver kind of family life, I felt (for the most part subconsciously), that because I was not my Dad’s ‘natural’ child, that I might be loved in a different or lesser way than he loved his other two children. I thought that for a long, long time. Until August 14, 1982.
But in that second that I reached out and touched my daughter, and the doctor said, “it’s a healthy baby girl” and Phil-the-fist and I were given this child to cherish for the rest of our lives, I understood parenthood, and family, and love like I never had before. And I knew my Dad had never loved me less, and that the children one adopts grow in your heart the same way the ones you birth do, because they are yours from that first moment.
That day was the beginning of the novel MOLLY HARPER. I didn’t conceive of or plan on writing that book until about twenty-five years after that day my daughter was born. But that’s writers for you. One day something happens, a seed is planted in our minds and then a story begins to grow. We weave real life, personal issues, ‘what if’ and our view of the world into a story that is uniquely ours, but one we hope will touch readers who feel the truth in it.
I hope you get a chance to meet the mothers and daughter and sons and lovers in MOLLY HARPER, and that your life is enriched a little by my most memorable day. While adoption is not the biggest theme in this book, it is an important one underlying many of the character’s lives, and I’d love to hear from any reader what they thoughts are on how I handled it.
Movie star Molly Harper has it all, beauty, success in her field, and a loving family and marriage to actor Ben Delmonico. Norma Wintz, Molly’s mother, has it all, a lovely life style and two children who adore her, and a respite from the battle against cancer she’s been fighting. Anne Sullivan, at age fifty, is optimistic that her move to sunny Santa Barbara, California, will allow her to be closer to her youngest son and his family, and help her start her life anew after the death of her beloved husband.
But all three of these women, despite their considerable blessings, are plunged into turmoil when the most intimate of secrets that ties their lives together is revealed. At this same time, Molly Harper is confronted with the news that her marriage to actor Ben Delmonico is over. As she navigates this heartbreak and tries to keep the personal details of the drama off the front pages of the newspapers, Molly must also find a way to once and forever negotiate a way forward with her ex- lover and best friend, the volatile and compelling Cruz Morales.
How each of these characters handles the resulting upheaval in their own life, and in their relationships with one another, forms the compelling story of family, secrets and trust in the romantic women’s fiction novel, Molly Harper.
About the Author:
Once and Forever, an anthology which includes the novella Duets, came out on November 1st. Molly Harper, a full length novel starring the characters from Duets 3 years later was released by Posh Publishing in January.
Emelle lives in suburban Washington D.C. with her husband, ‘Phil-the-fist’, her hero of thirty years, and two orange cats, Lucy and Bella. These girls, like all good villains, have their reasons for misbehaving. Her daughter, Olivia, and son, Allen, are happily launched on their own and contributing great things to society, their mother’s fondest wish.
