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WHAT MAKES YOU WANT TO READ THIS BOOK?*

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**HONOR SYSTEM**
ONE WINNING BOOK PER HOUSEHOLD
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As lovers of books, don’t you wish there was some way, we had the time and could read each and every book on our TBR and Wish lists?  I know I do.  And this is one of those books.  When Jaime from Media Connect/Finn Partners contacted me, I knew I had to share this with all of you.  So please help me welcome Judith Sanders to our group!

JUDITH SANDERS

Judith Sanders received her BS from Graceland College and worked as a registered nurse for many years, including serving the military as a nurse in Maryland and Texas. Sanders, a mother of three boys, now makes writing her full time career and divides her time between her homes in New Hampshire and North Carolina.

GUEST POST

“More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all wars.”

(Who said this? Find out at the end of this blog!)

I’m a Jersey girl, the youngest child of parents of the “Greatest Generation.” As a kid, Sunday’s revolved around three things: A visit to my grandmother’s house, eating the best fried chicken in the world, and gathering around the television to watch “Meet the Press’ hosted by moderators like Martha Roundtree, Ned Brooks, and Lawrence Sivak. Other than this painful ritual (we were forced to sit and watch by our mother), I was busy being a tomboy, riding my horse, fishing, and playing baseball.

I didn’t think much about anything other than having fun. I took for granted the memorabilia of WWII surrounding me; photos of people in uniform, American Flags waving on front porches, and movies like, “The Halls of Montezuma, “When Willie Comes Marching Home”, and the “Flying Leathernecks” on the Cort Theatre marquee. I do remember briefly thinking, there is always a war. It was not a depressing thought just a reality of that period.

But in the 50’s, war inched a little closer, adjusting my viewpoint. My brother joined the Air Force and was sent to Japan. It loomed closer in the 60’s when my brother in-law went to Vietnam as an Army Ranger sniper. He was a different person when he returned. High school friends were drafted, many I never saw again. War was no longer a movie with heroes marching home in a ticker-tape parade.

The outcome of war threw its shadow over me when my father who served in a defense plant during WWII fell ill. He died prematurely from a form of lung cancer caused by exposure to asbestos.

Fortunately my three sons were born at a time when the draft had been abolished. Divorced and nine years later when I remarried, I had no idea of becoming a military wife. But that was exactly what happened when my husband, proud of his own father’s service in the Navy, joined the Army shortly after medical school. I remember thinking, “I can handle this…this is peacetime.” Wrong! Operation Desert Storm erupted and the Middle East became a new ‘hot zone’. He served in Iraq as a physician with the United Nations. During that time I worked for the Army as a civilian nurse and had numerous opportunities to meet many of the men and women who put their feet on the ground, stand on a wall, or serve in supportive military services for me and for you.

Three years ago one grandnephew and later another, faced with uncertain futures, joined the military. Both have just completed their first tours in Afghanistan. So I guess I have come full circle and I am still asking, ‘will there always be a war’. The United States has had an unprecedented thirteen-year presence in the Middle East. The results are that we are seeing sons following their fathers and brothers following brothers into the same Persian battleground.

So how does this lend to my latest novel, In His Stead?

Well, these courageous women and men voluntarily leave their families and against all their natural instinct, for self-preservation, walk forward to protect you and me. It prompts me to ask what I would be willing to do to protect them. Thomas Lane, the main character in my novel makes his answer very clear. Anything!

(Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) Thirty-second President of the USA.)
Connect with Ms. Sanders at her website and on Facebook.

ABOUT THE BOOK

In His Stead explores the tension, devastation, strength, and love of service families during wartime through the story of one man, Retired Army Ranger Thomas Lane, as he attempts to make the greatest sacrifice for his son.

Lane once burned for the taste of gunpowder and thrill of the battle. But as he struggles to cope with his own PTSD and the death of his eldest son who was killed by an IED in Afghanistan, Lane learns that the price of war is far too dear. Now the National Guard is calling on Lane’s youngest son to serve. Consumed with sorrow, Lane knows he will do anything to save his child—even if it means going in his place.

In His Stead follows the tumultuous battle of Thomas Lane as he navigates the United States Army, its JAG corps, a vengeful officer, the very son he is desperate to save, and his own wife, who has the Solomon like choice of losing either a husband or a son. Capturing the essence of family life in wartime—the good, the bad, and the hopeful—In His Stead explores what it means to be a father and a man.

THANKS TO JAIME AT FINN PARTNERS, I HAVE TWO (2)
BOOKS TO GIVE AWAY. U.S. AND CANADA RESIDENTS ONLY

CLICK HERE TO BRING YOU TO
THE GIVEAWAY ENTRY PAGE.

DISCLAIMER
No items that I receive
are ever sold…they are kept by me,
or given to family and/or friends.

*USE THE RAFFLECOPTER FORM BELOW
IN ORDER TO BE INCLUDED IN THE GIVEAWAY*
BE SURE TO INCLUDE YOUR EMAIL

ADDRESS IN THE RAFFLECOPTER FORM
SO THAT I CAN CONTACT YOU IF YOU WIN
*LEAVE COMMENT: DO YOU KNOW A FAMILY,

THAT HAS LOST A LOVED ONE, DUE TO A WAR?*

*U.S. AND CANADA RESIDENTS ONLY*
*NO P.O. BOXES*

**HONOR SYSTEM**
ONE WINNING BOOK PER HOUSEHOLD
PLEASE NOTIFY ME IF YOU HAVE
WON THIS BOOK FROM ANOTHER
SITE, SO THAT SOMEONE ELSE MAY
HAVE THE CHANCE TO WIN
AND READ THIS BOOK.
THANK YOU.

YOUR JAVA SCRIPT MAY NEED TO BE UPDATED
IF YOU AR EXPERIENCING DIFFICULTY
USING THE RAFFLECOPTER ENTRY FORM

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Hosted by Miz B at Should Be Reading

Today’s question:
Do you have a favorite series? Do you have a favorite book out of that series?

My response:
If you follow this blog, then you probably know what I’m going to say.  No thinking needed with this week’s question. at least for me.  The series is The Left Behind Series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, a 13 book series written as a contemporary fictional story based on The Revelations in the Bible.  It was such a page turner that I went through all 13 books within a month or so.

What is your favorite series?  Have you read The Left Behind Series?  If so, what were your thoughts on the series?

October is being hosted by Parchment Girl 

Mailbox Monday was created by Marcia of A girl and her books and is now on tour.
According to Marcia, “Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week. Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.”

                        Simon & Schuster                  Author

Facebook link

Hello Sunday Saloners!!  It’s been a while since I have posted but due to being in a reading slump and busy with PICT and PBP tours, there hasn’t been much to report.  But this week is  different.  I started reading again and also had an event take place that I wanted to share.

Reading:  As I mentioned, I have been in a slump, reading just one book in September.  And   after spending so much time in front of a computer, working on tours for Partners In Crime Tours (PICT) and the newly launched Providence Book Promotions (PBP), my eyes are too tired to read.   I had even signed up to participate in Seasons of Reading Read-A-Thon, hoping that would help, but unfortunately I didn’t make it.  But then I knew just how to jump start my reading, and that’s reading one written by a favorite author, Vincent Zandri.  He is touring with PICT this month with one of his newly published books, The Disappearance of Grace.  Yup!!  That’s what I needed!!!  And now, I am looking forward to the Dewey Read-A-Thon this coming weekend. 

Blogging:  Besides working on tour to-dos, I have, also,  fallen behind on my blog.  A few weeks ago, during a 2 week span, I had spent time away from the computer for long periods of time due to RL issues, and have been trying to catch up on my posts.  I like to draft up my guest author showcases and giveaways in advance so that they are ready to go and not have to scramble at the last minute, which is what I have been doing and not liking it. 

Real Life:  This was definitely the highlight of my week!!!!!  Months ago, I had read and reviewed a book for WOW!, Ragdoll Redeemed: Growing Up in the Shadow of Marilyn Monroe by Dawn Novotny.

The book, a memoir, blew me away!!  It left quite an impression on me!!.  I had read it way in advance of my scheduled tour date, and knowing this was the first time the author was on tour, I sent her my drafted review to let her know what I thought.  From there we corresponded through emails and a friendship developed.  Dawn, in one email asked where I lived and when I told her, she responded that she was coming to RI in October for a conference.  We instantly made plans and was so looking forward to meeting her.  This past Tuesday, the day was finally here.  I picked her and an associate up from the airport, which was kind of funny, because they loaded the car with their luggage and jumped in, since it was raining and it was like I was picking up an old friend who just returned home.  The conversation just started to flow on the way to their hotel.  Once at the hotel, they checked in and Dawn and I met at the restaurant.  Again, without missing a beat, the conversation started and didn’t stop.  She is as beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside.  Absolutely beautiful!!!!

We talked about anything and everything.  Unfortunately, due to her long flight and the time difference, we called it a night.  I am just amazed by her story, her life, her outlook, her accomplishments.  She is a true inspiration!   Matter of fact, a couple of things we talked about, were so powerful, that I sat back and just took it in.  But knew from that moment on, I would be using her philosophy on life.  On Wednesday night, I had just finished eating, the husband had left on a business trip, and I was just relaxing and waiting for the Presidential debate to start and the phone rang.  It was Dawn, and again without missing a beat, the conversation started and continued, talking about dinner the night before, politics, her conference, etc.  She was, like me, resting from her day and waiting for the debate to air.  I know that this friendship will continue via phone, emails and hopefully another night out in the future!!

Hosted by An Island Life

From An Island Life:
In Hawaii, Aloha Friday is the day that we take it easy and look forward to the weekend. So I thought that on Fridays I would take it easy on posting, too. Therefore, I’ll ask a simple question for you to answer. Nothing that requires a lengthy response.
If you’d like to participate, visit An Island Life answer the question and then post your own question on your blog and leave your link below. Don’t forget to visit the other participants! It’s a great way to make new bloggy friends!

MY QUESTION:
Do you watch a morning news show? If so, which one?

MY ANSWER:
The Today Show.

If you visit often, then you know, the ladies of WOW always stop by with the most amazing female authors.  Well today is no different.  Robyn is going to introduce us to another talented writer.  So I ask that you help me give them a warm welcome to CMash Reads!

SONIA KORN-GRIMANI

Sonia Korn-Grimani earned her doctorate in French literature and the teaching of foreign languages, and directed a multi-cultural language program at UNESCO. With her husband John, and their children Anthony and Renee, Sonia traveled and lived all over the world. She taught foreign languages at the university level, and performed frequently to the delight of audiences worldwide. In her album Cantos al Amor, Sonia sings in 16 languages.

In 1989, Dr. Korn-Grimani was knighted Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques, and in 1996 she was decorated Officier des Palmes Académiques. These decorations were awarded in recognition of her lifelong dedication to and promotion of French culture and language.

Sonia continues to sing regularly at UNESCO events inFrance, and is also frequently invited to share her Holocaust experiences as a guest speaker in high schools, universities, synagogues and churches.

GUEST POST

On the Power of Love and Forgiveness

 In the spring of 1961, shortly after we moved to Malaysia, UNESCO called my husband John to Paris. The prospect of visiting my mother, giving her time with baby Renee—her new grand-daughter, and sightseeing around Paris was too great a temptation to refuse. Those days in Paris are perhaps the happiest days of my life, walking around arm-in-arm with Mother.

We sit down at a café, and she tells me that she is planning to stay in Germany for a few months. Would Renee and I go with her? I want to be with her, but the thought of confronting our past of persecution and anguish, our lost youth, our lost family, makes me very anxious. So much is lost there—wouldn’t it be better to just leave it be?

Something in me wanted to go if only for mother’s sake. So we all went for a few days to Wuppertal-Elberfeld, the city from which we had to flee twenty-two years earlier, after my brother, mother and I were declared enemies of the German State. We walked the sunny streets and picnicked on potato-herring and meat salads in the parks, the parks which I remember well, before we were banned from them for being Jewish. We visit our street and our building—the last address in Germany before we were forced to leave. The building has aged, appearing grey and sad.

I have no desire to enter and do not wish to be confronted with our ex-Nazi neighbors, some of whom now remember their treatment of us altogether differently from how we experienced it. War and time have a way of altering memory. Some neighbors had now justified their treatment of Jews in general, and of us in particular to themselves, but now, twenty-two years later, the only person I would like to see is Frau Rohland, the only one of our neighbors who stayed friends with us until the end, who comforted us when mother was arrested; who had slipped us butter sandwiches that would sustain us all night long on our arduous journey on foot to the Belgian border. Alas, her family was away on vacation.

But we are close to Belgium, and I want to visit the orphanage where I had under a false identity for the second half of the war. Perhaps it was having my own children that made me want to revisit one more part of my past, to find closure with one more part of my life. I wanted to visit the one person whom I felt I could never forgive, Madame J.

She was the proprietress of the orphanage. I was 11 when I arrived with my brother at her doorstep, and Madame J took us in, but only after my mother had begged on her knees and agreed to have the resistance pay her twice times the amount she usually took in foodstuffs. Surely the separation from my mother was difficult, but Madame J.’s spartan guardianship of the children in her care did not make the adjustment any easier.

But there was another part of the story that I found out after almost two years of living at the orphanage. I had discovered that Madame J. hoarded food given to her by the resistance that was supposed to go for the orphan’s care—she was hiding the food in her bedroom and selling it on the black market, probably for a very hefty profit.

I remember when she coolly met my eyes after I had discovered her secret. Even though I was only thirteen at the time, I understood her game, and I also understood the dire consequences if I were to reveal her secret—all of us orphans hiding under her care would have been exposed. I concealed my anger and kept my emotions in check, but never in my life had I felt such revulsion, such sadness. We are all so hungry and some of us suffering from malnutrition, which we thought was because we were living during wartime, but there were boxes and boxes of food in her room, just sitting there!

All of these emotions were swirling in my head as baby Renee and I took the train to Ottignies, and made our way to the orphanage to see Madame J. I needed, more than anything, to find peace with what happened within myself, to find closure within my heart.

As I approach the orphanage, I remember my first arrival in 1942 as a young naive girl; I feel a similar anxiety, but for other reasons. All is too familiar. The sights of the past dredge up the feelings of the past.

I knock, just as I had knocked then, and am greeted by a smiling face and trembling hands. Madame J. sweeps me into her arms and seems truly moved to see me again.

“Come into my parlor, my darling Sonia. So nice that you have not forgotten me who was once your godmother! Come and sit down.”

I sit on the very same couch where my mother had sat during her first interview, that is, until she knelt to beg Madame J. to take my brother and me in and save our lives. I recoil at the thought and lean back into the couch for support.

“Would you like some tea or coffee?” Madame J. inquires pleasantly, oblivious to the pain I am feeling.

In a daze, I accept her offer; glad to have her occupied while I try to sort out my recollections, without being overpowered by their weight. Madame J. serves me on very delicate china. Her cakes are delicious.

She brings out photo albums and proudly shows me pictures of us. “How I enjoyed having you and the other Jewish children, all so refined, so bright, so obedient—particularly you, Sonia.”

I then remember how she had shown me albums of the Spanish War orphans who preceded us at Le Joli Coin, and how she had compared us unfavorably to them, offering them as intangible standard of an excellence we could not possibly attain.

I listen to her reluctantly. This is 1961! I feel like shouting. So much has happened in the intervening years and yet you are still fixated on the past. I remain mute.

She breaks into my reverie. “Would you like to visit the home? I am now taking care of a group of young delinquent, homeless boys.”

I follow her and see the familiar navy-blue uniformed, thin and pale bodies of her new charges. They look as forlorn as we had looked so many years before. Although the war is not even in their memories, it seems clear that Madame J. has not changed her tactics in dealing with this new group of children.

It took me years of reflection after this visit to come to terms with my desire to forgive her, and not being able to.  I remember watching Renee and my son Anthony, now an infant, as they played in the dappled sun of the coconut tree in our yard in Kuala Lumpur.

“She did save your life and at great personal risk, Sonia,” argued my husband John. “You might have perished during the war if it weren’t for her, so you need to recognize her for that.” And I do feel lucky to have survived the war at all.

When I think back to my discovery of the boxes in her room—I keenly remember my shock and certainty that she was hoarding food for her personal gain. As an adult, I cannot be certain. I try to be fair. Perhaps she used the contents, which were unavailable on the open market, to buy silence from people who would have otherwise exposed us.

And I try to live up to the nickname given to me at the orphanage: La Tourterelle Généreuse, the generous dove. “Yes, we went hungry. No, she was not a nurturing guardian. But she saved more than 20 children and several adults. Looking at it now, as an adult, I feel gratitude towards Madame J.”

I would never wish the experiences of living under her care in wartime, or the harrowing and constricted life we had before, on anyone. Yet Madame J. was an honorable person who despite the danger saved many lives. And just perhaps, the very trials of my youth forged that strength of character which has allowed me to sing—both literally and metaphorically—in my adult life.

And for the closure in my heart, I feel grateful. I watch Renee and Anthony giggle and play on the blanket in the warm sunshine, and I feel alive and happy in the present. Whatever has happened to you in your past for better or for worse, this has made you who are and gives you the strength to do what you are destined to do. When we harness the energy from love and not from anger and resentment or things we cannot change, we are capable of doing great things.

ABOUT THE BOOK

At the age of eight, little Sonia Korn is declared an enemy of theGermanState. She and her family are given a grim option; either find a way to disappear, or be rounded up and sent to certain death. After a perilous escape to the Belgian border, and becoming caught in the chaos and carnage of war-torn France and Belgium, Sonia finds that she must give up everything she knows and loves just to survive. This is the complex true story of one girl, who rises from war’s ashes to sing the songs of hope and love world-wide. A heart-wrenching and poignant memoir, by internationally renowned singer Sonia Korn-Grimani.

THANKS TO AUTHOR, SONIA KORN-GRIMANI, I HAVE ONE (1) SIGNED
COPY OF THIS MEMOIR TO GIVE AWAY.    INTERNATIONAL.

CLICK HERE TO BRING YOU TO
THE GIVEAWAY ENTRY PAGE

DISCLAIMER
No items that I receive
are ever sold…they are kept by me,
or given to family and/or friends.

*USE THE RAFFLECOPTER FORM BELOW
IN ORDER TO BE INCLUDED IN THE GIVEAWAY*
BE SURE TO INCLUDE YOUR EMAIL

ADDRESS IN THE RAFFLECOPTER FORM
SO THAT I CAN CONTACT YOU IF YOU WIN
*LEAVE COMMENT:  DO YOU SING?  HOW GOOD ARE 

YOU ON A SCALE OF 1-10.  TEN BEING AMERICAN IDOL GOOD.*

*INTERNATIONAL–OPEN TO ALL*
*NO P.O. BOXES*

**HONOR SYSTEM**
ONE WINNING BOOK PER HOUSEHOLD
PLEASE NOTIFY ME IF YOU HAVE
WON THIS BOOK FROM ANOTHER
SITE, SO THAT SOMEONE ELSE MAY
HAVE THE CHANCE TO WIN
AND READ THIS BOOK.
THANK YOU.

YOUR JAVA SCRIPT MAY NEED TO BE UPDATED
IF YOU AR EXPERIENCING DIFFICULTY
USING THE RAFFLECOPTER ENTRY FORM

a Rafflecopter giveaway