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Dayna VonThaer

Dayna VonThaer

About

Born and raised in Ohio, I've lived up and down the east coast and in England before going to Texas. My first novel Tuatha and the Seven Sisters Moon was published in 2009 and the second book, Serpentine Souls is due winter 2011. 2012 is scheduled to be a busy year with four books planned for release: Niles, Blue Moon, Dragoste and I Didn't Do It.

A Shadow in Yucatan

A Shadow in Yucatan

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Description

<p>A mythical jewel of a story… A true story told on a beach in Yucatan, A Shadow tells Stephanie's story but it was also the story of the golden time. Its nostalgia sings like cicadas in the heat.</p><p>An American ‘Under Milkwood’, this distilled novel of the Sixties evokes the sounds, music and optimism on the free-wheelin streets and parks of Coconut Grove. You can hear Bob Dylan still strumming acoustic; smoke a joint with Fred Neil; and Everybody’s Talkin is carried on the wind.</p><p>Stephanie, a young hairdresser living in lodgings finds herself pregnant. Refused help from her hard Catholic mother in New York, unable to abort her baby, she accepts the kindness of Miriam, her Jewish landlady, whose own barren life spills into compassionate assistance for the daughter she never had.</p><p>The poignancy of its ending, its generosity and acceptance, echoes the bitter disappointment of those of us who hoped for so much more, but who remember its joy, and its promise, as though untarnished by time.</p>

Story Behind The Book

It started as a short story about a witch living alone in Ireland. For my 30th birthday, my husband gave me the gift of travel. I visited London alone and met up with friends one night for dinner at their parent's house. The dad is an old Irish guy; so smart and clever. He and the sons started going back and forth about my name, Dayna. He then told me stories of the Tuatha De Danaan and how I am named after the mother Goddess, Danu. It stuck with me and the short story about the Irish witch blossomed into 800,000 words. My husband urged me to turn it into a book, and so I did. At least seven books are written. The first of them is Tuatha and the Seven Sisters Moon and how their story is reborn in the new modern world.

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Reviews

This book has surprises around every corner. Nothing is what it appears to be at first. Characters we grow to love and know die, they hurt, they experience true pain. The book is also surprisingly humorous, the dialogue is realistic and fresh. The best part is the writing is superb. VonThaer's world is vivid and exciting, her characters are well-rounded and deep, and her style is unique. The book is 418 pages, but you breeze through it because the story is so rich and entrancing. I've read it a few times now and each time I find bits and pieces I've missed the previous time around. DT Sullivan