ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Laura Jensen Walker is an award-winning writer, popular speaker, and breast-cancer survivor who loves to touch readers and audiences with the healing power of laughter.
Born in Racine, Wisconsin (home of Western Printing and Johnson’s Wax—maker of your favorite floor care products) Laura moved to Phoenix, Arizona when she was in high school. But not being a fan of blazing heat and knowing that Uncle Sam was looking for a few good women, she enlisted in the United States Air Force shortly after graduation and spent the next five years flying a typewriter through Europe.
By the time she was 23, Laura had climbed the Eiffel Tower, trod the steps of the Parthenon, skied (okay, snowplowed) in the Alps, rode in a gondola in Venice, and wept at the ovens of Dachau. She’d also learned how to fold her underwear into equal thirds, make a proper cup of English tea, and repel the amorous advances of a blind date by donning combat gear and a gas mask.
Laura is a former newspaper reporter and columnist with a degree in journalism who has written hundreds of articles on many subjects ranging from emu ranching and pigeon racing to goat-roping and cemetery board meetings. However, realizing that livestock and local government weren’t her passion, she switched to writing humor, which she calls a “total God-thing.”
Her lifelong dream of writing fiction came true in Spring 2005 with the release of her first chick lit novel, Dreaming in Black & White which won the Contemporary Fiction Book of the Year from American Christian Fiction Writers. Her sophomore novel, Dreaming in Technicolor was published in Fall 2005.
Laura’s third novel, Reconstructing Natalie, chosen as the Women of Faith Novel of the Year for 2006, is the funny and poignant story of a young, single woman who gets breast cancer and how her life is reconstructed as a result. This book was born out of Laura’s cancer speaking engagements where she started meeting younger and younger women stricken with this disease—some whose husbands had left them, and others who wondered what breast cancer would do to their dating life. She wanted to write a novel that would give voice to those women. Something real. And honest. And funny.
Because although cancer isn’t funny, humor is healing.
A popular speaker and teacher at writing conferences, Laura has also been a guest on hundreds of radio and TV shows around the country including the ABC Weekend News, The 700 Club, and The Jay Thomas Morning Show.
Another book in this series is Daring Chloe
She lives in Northern California with her Renaissance-man husband Michael, and Gracie, their piano playing dog
ABOUT THE BOOK
At 35, Paige Kelley is feeling very "in between." She's still working her temp job after two years, still not dating three years after her divorce, and still melting at every chubby-cheeked toddler she sees while her biological clock ticks ever louder. Paige even moves back home to help her ailing, high-maintenance mother.It's not exactly the life she'd dreamed of!
When her Getaway Girls book club members urge Paige to break free and get on with her life, she's afraid. How will her mother react? How can Paige honor her widowed mother and still pursue her own life? The answers come from a surprising source.
A trip to Scotland and a potential new love interest help launch an exciting new chapter in her life, and lead Paige to discover that God's plan for her promises to be more than she ever imagined.
This latest release in the Getaway Girls collection delivers a smart, funny, and warm account of one woman's challenge to reconcile who she is - a dutiful Christian daughter - with the woman she longs to be.
If you would like to read the first chapter of Turning The Paige, go HERE
MY REVIEW:
“Some people go through life trying to find out what the world holds for them only to find out too late that it’s what they bring to the world that counts.” – Anne of Green Gables
Paige Kelly is a 35-year-old woman who, like the quote from Anne of Green Gables suggests, waited too late to figure out she had a lot to offer the world around her. Well – she was almost too late. She is a single divorce whose life has been dominated by her mother. While I admired her faithful, loving care of her only living parent, I felt sad for her, because she could never see past her mother’s point of view long enough to develop her own.
I could relate to Paige in some ways, because I spent a lot of years trying to please my parents. I can totally relate to how damaging it can be to a marriage when the apron strings are never severed. Truly, there is a fine balance between becoming your own person while respectfully loving and caring for your aging parents. Paige is searching for that balance.
To my knowledge, I’ve never read anything by Laura Jensen Walker. Turning the Paige was certainly a powerful introduction! Laura Walker develops a lot of strong, realistic characters throughout her novel, and she presents real-life issues from several points of view. If you enjoy a character driven story with a touch of hidden romance, you will enjoy Turning the Paige. I wound up kind of envying the Getaway Girls book club! What a perfect idea! And I desperately hope we get to see more of Marc!!
It is very easy for me to give Turning the Paige a hearty recommendation! I look forward to reading the rest of the series!!
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