Miner’s new release offers an in depth, first person glimpse at an era that Baby Boomers look to with nostalgia and young adults look to with curiosity
Though many people today think of the Sixties as a bygone era,Boomers hold these years dear within their hearts and minds. Baby Boomers now make up a very large percentage of the US population. And, much like the generations before them, they have fascinating stories to tell. One of those stories has been released by award winning author Erica Miner. FourEver Friends, Erica Miner's latest novel tells the tale of four teenage girls set in 1960s Detroit.
"Originally," stated Ms. Miner, "I wrote the book as a love letter to my four ‘BFFs’ and to the school that gave us all an astonishing foundation that we were able to draw on for our musical lives. Now, with the impending retirement of Baby Boomers and the ongoing fascination with the 1960’s era, I realize just how timely the book will be."
In FourEver Friends, Ms. Miner takes us back to an era that Baby Boomers look to with nostalgia and young adults look to with curiosity. The 60s were a time of new hope and idealism that ultimately dissolved into volatility and violence. In a specialized inner city Detroit high school, four teenage girls have established the roots of lasting friendship. Their backgrounds are different, but their passion for classical music and angst over raging hormones link them irrevocably. The girls' school is a cultural melting pot of race and ethnicity in which students are judged by their intellect and talents, not the color of their skin or religious upbringing.
As the four friends negotiate the turbulent waters of adolescence and bond through their music performances throughout Detroit, forbidden loves and jealousies mar their closely-knit friendship. But they always remain loyal and true to each other. In the end, poised for the leap into their post-high school lives, they question their ability to maintain their closeness in future years, when increased possibilities of separation may threaten the sanctity of their group. Nonetheless, they swear lifelong loyalty as they set off on their new paths.
FourEver Friends is now available at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble and at Erica Miner’s website.
FourEver Friends
Erica Miner
Nightengale Press
ISBN - 9781933449739
Profile:
Violinist turned author Erica Miner has established a reputation as an award-winning screenwriter, author, lecturer and poet.
A native of Detroit, she studied music at Boston University, the New England Conservatory of Music, and the Tanglewood Music Center. After experiencing a variety of highs and lows in her quest to forge a career in New York City, Erica won the coveted position of violinist with the Metropolitan Opera Company. When injuries from a car accident spelled the end of her musical career, she drew upon her lifelong love of writing for inspiration and studied poetry and screenwriting, winning awards in both categories.
After moving to the west coast, Erica honed her screenwriting skills with author and script guru Linda Seger of "Making a Good Script Great" fame and with Ken Rotcop, the author of “Perfect Pitch.” Erica’s ten screenplays, one of which is based on her award-winning debut novel, Travels with My Lovers, have won awards and/or placed in such competitions as WinFemme, Santa Fe and the Writer’s Digest. She was a prizewinner in the Damas Gracias Poetry Competition in Upstate New York, and her essays and articles have appeared in Vision Magazine, WORD San Diego and numerous newsletters and E-zines. She is the author of Travels with My Lovers and FourEver Friends. Erica has completed the screenplay of her new novel, Murder in the Pit, scheduled for release in 2010.
In addition Erica has developed a number of writing lectures, workshops and seminars on writing. Erica is available for interview and can be reached by using the information below.
Contact:
Erica Miner
www.EricaMiner.com
emwriter@earthlink.net
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
In FourEver Friends, Award Winning Author Erica Miner Describes Growing Up In The 1960s In Detroit MI
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
My Mothers House - Mother Daughter Relationship Culminates In Tragedy In A Broken Health Care System
In MY MOTHER’S HOUSE, A Memoir, Alexa Wolf depicts a mother-daughter relationship which undergoes radical transformations during their shared half-century. Ms. Wolf’s mother combines conventional and holistic medicine to become a cancer survivor. Through that event, the hatred between the two women that began in Wolf’s teens turns to love and shared humor.
When Ms. Wolf contracts a mysterious virus, her mother extends her support. When Ms. Wolf’s mother shows signs of early Alzheimer’s, Wolf becomes her protector. But their story ends tragically when a common hip replacement surgery catapults Wolf’s mother into our for-profit health care system, specifically, in her case, the long term, skilled nursing care system, where she suffers unnecessarily and terribly, finally dying, due to the neglect and elder abuse endemic to that system.
“One of my goals with this book,” states Ms. Wolf, “is to illuminate what my mother and I had to endure, in the hopes that others might learn and avoid a similar catastrophe.” Those “others” include the majority of the elderly already in the system as well as many of the seventy million Boomers both looking after their parents now and coming up behind them.
At the beginning of her time in the hospital, Ms. Wolf’s mother referred to it as a metaphorical prison. A few months later she believed she was about to be executed for murdering her husband, and begged her daughter to believe in her innocence. Her metaphor had dissolved into her interior reality as she lay awash in drugs, infections, dementia and pain.
Ms. Wolf offers her own metaphor. “In archetypal symbolism, the dragon represents the system of power under which we live, in this case, for-profit health care. In the old stories, the dragon steals gold and eats virgins. Today, the for-profit health care system devours the innocent and steals the wealth of the nation.”
Coping with her grief, Wolf reveals the tragic mistakes she made and the knowledge she gained when trying desperately to save her mother from that system.
“But this memoir is unlike any other,” Ms. Wolf states, “because of its scope. There are many mother-daughter memoirs. There are books about the adult children of emotionally abusive parents, adult children of narcissistic parents, reconciliation between mothers and daughters, cancer survivor parents, taking care of elderly parents, and even memoirs about parents in the nursing care system. However, there are no memoirs about a mother and daughter whose 55-year relationship includes all of the above in an arc of profound change which occurs as a result of the health crises the mother and daughter face.”
"A heart-wrenching story of a daughter's struggle to care for her dying mother while coping with her own debilitating illness,” says Eve La Salle Caram, award-winning editor, novelist, Senior Instructor in Fiction Writing, The Writers' Program, UCLA Extension. “An indictment of our health care system. Powerful. Moving. Beautifully written."
Michael Connors, of California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform (CANHR), calls Wolf’s book “very moving.” He adds, “Unfortunately... (on) a daily basis we hear heartbreaking tales of neglect and abuse...”
Author Alexa Wolf began her writing career by winning first place in a poetry contest for her age group and a fellowship to the MacDowell Colony. She has written for the L.A. Weekly, Psychological Perspectives and The New York Native. She has appeared on The Today Show, a Dan Rather special, Oprah! in Time Magazine, and elsewhere. This is her first book. She is available for interview by contacting her at the address below.
My Mother's House – A Memoir
Infinity Publishing
ISBN 0-7414-3520-9
Available at AlexaWolfOnline.com
Contact:
Alexa Wolf
Web: www.AlexaWolfOnline.com
866-242-4541
Email: alexawolf@AlexaWolfOnline.com
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