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
Jewels was written first as novella for a Space Opera anthology contest that Samhain Publishing put out a call for submissions. It didn't make it but I took the rejection as a stepping stone and expanded Jewels from a novella to a novel.
The idea for Jewels came from a blog post where I was experimenting with the use of first-person point of view.
Reviews
"If you are looking for a read that combines a variety of issues and
layers that will have you running through the pages, then JEWELS by
Lakisha Spletzer is just the right kind of book for you. At a time when
series like those created by Stephanie Mayer, J. K. Rowling and others
are dominating the bookstores and now the movie theaters, this is one
that I can see headed in that direction. When talent and skill are the
requirements for success, then you won't be able to go wrong with this
literary adventure." -- C.A. Webb "Conversations Book Club"
