LaVyrle Spencer
Autore di Un'estate per cambiare
Sull'Autore
LaVyrle Spencer was born in Browerville, Minnesota on July 17, 1943. While working as a teacher's aide at Osseo Junior High School, she started writing her first novel, The Fulfillment, which was published in 1979. She has written more than a dozen novels that have hit the New York Times bestseller mostra altro list, and many of her works have been condensed for Reader's Digest and Good Housekeeping. She has won five Romance Writers of America RITA Awards for her novels The Endearment, Hummingbird, Twice Loved, The Gamble, and Morning Glory. In 1988, she was inducted into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame. Many of her novels have been made into television movies including The Fulfillment, Home Song, and Family Blessings and the major motion picture Morning Glory. She retired from writing in 1997. (Bowker Author Biography) mostra meno
Opere di LaVyrle Spencer
Day Late and A Dollar Short, A 2 copie
Separate Beds #, Forsaking all Others #, A Promise to Cherish #, — Autore — 1 copia
O triunfo do amor (70) 1 copia
A Fountain Filled with Blood 1 copia
The Brethern 1 copia
Přísahy 1 copia
a braccia aperte 1 copia
Opere correlate
Reader's Digest Condensed Books: Straight • Morning Glory • Touching the Void • The Negotiator (1990) — Collaboratore — 8 copie
Livros Condensados: O Sócio | O Céu Na Terra | Jogo Mortífero | Laços De Sangue (1998) — Autore — 4 copie
Reader's Digest Condensed Books: Come to Grief • Coming Home • Oscar: The True Story of a Husky • That Camden… (1996) 3 copie
Kirjavaliot: Pelikaanimuistio, Onnen sirpaleet, Paluu, Kuin kulkisi pimeässä (1994) — Autore — 3 copie
Het Beste Boek 161: De koning van het meer / Een tweede kans / De genadeloze nacht / Parels voor Anna — Autore — 3 copie
Het Beste Boek 182: Het alibi / Die zomer in Camden / Het vierkant van de wraak / De vlucht van de valk (1997) — Autore — 2 copie
Time Life Book Digest: The Burden of Proof / Bitter Sweet / The Longest Tunnel / The Gold Coast (1990) 2 copie
Livros Condensados: Furacão em Nova Iorque | Bracken| O Triunfo do Amor | O Peregrino do Estuário (1992) 2 copie
Reader's Digest Condensed Books: Night Over Water • Bygones • Search Dog • Doctor on Trial — Collaboratore — 2 copie
Reader's Digest Condensed Books: Tiebreaker, Morning Glory, Her Name Will Be Faith, Johnnie Alone 1 copia
Readers Digest Select Editions (The Final Judgement, Icebound, That Camden Summer, Wildfire) (1997) — Autore — 1 copia
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Data di nascita
- 1943-07-17
- Sesso
- female
- Nazionalità
- USA (birth)
- Luogo di nascita
- Browerville, Minnesota, USA
- Luogo di residenza
- Browerville, Minnesota, USA
Stillwater, Minnesota, USA - Attività lavorative
- Teacher's aide
Novelist - Relazioni
- Spencer, Dan (husband)
Spencer, Amy (daughter)
Spencer, Beth (daughter) - Breve biografia
- LaVyrle was born on July 17, 1943 in Browerville, Minnesota, USA, where she grew up. Married with her high school sweetheart Dan Spencer, shortly after her graduation, they had two daughters, Amy and Beth (d. 1990).
LaVyrle worked as a teacher's aide at Osseo Junior High School, when in her thirties, she read Kathleen E. Woodwiss's novel "The Flame and Flower", which gave her the idea to become a novelist. She decided to try transferring to paper a recurring dream she was having about a story based on her grandmother's lifestyle on a Minnesota farm. Her story became her first manuscript, The Fulfillment, that she sent to Kathleen E. Woodiwiss. The bestselling author read the novel and promptly mailed it to her own editor at Avon. The editor purchased the novel, which was published in 1979. She was inducted into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame in 1988. She wrote 23 sweet historical and contemporary novels. Published around the world, her works included 12 New York Times Bestsellers, and have been won 4 RITA Awards, 3 Golden Medallion Award and a Minnesota Book Awards. LaVyrle said: "the trademark of my books is mending relationships, showing people how to mend relationships."
LaVyrle was a founding member of the Midwest Fiction Writers (MFW), chapter 24 of the Romance Writers of America. Four of LaVyrle's novels were produced as television movies: The Fulfillment in 1989 (She and her husband appear as extras in the film), Morning Glory in 1993, Home Song in 1996 and Family Blessings in 1999.
LaVyrle and her husband are grandparents. Her husband was a retired estimator for a general contractor, and she also decided to retire from writing in 1997, after 18 years of career. They live in a Victorian house in her native Minnesota, where she enjoys gardening, cooking, playing bass guitar and electric piano, and photography.
Utenti
Discussioni
Found: Historical romance, old west setting, hero owns a saloon, heroine of story has a limp in Name that Book (Marzo 2022)
Romance in Name that Book (Novembre 2014)
romance novel about a one stand betwwen a rich guy poor girl that ends in pregnancy in Name that Book (Dicembre 2013)
Romance-possibly Harlequin-Female photographer falls for male model in Name that Book (Agosto 2012)
Recensioni
I’ll try to form clearer thoughts later, but right now I know I loved this book. Even though there could have been significant cuts. All the sighs.
LaVyrle Spencer is a joy to read and Emily Sutton-Smith does an excellent job of narrating. The hero and heroine are two people who have never really had much love in their lives and when Elly is widowed with two young sons, another baby on the way, and no real family or friends to support her, she advertises for a husband. Will just needs to find a place to restart.
FROM AMAZON: In town, they called her "Crazy Widow Dinsmore". But Elly was no stranger to their ridicule - she had been an outsider all her life, growing up in a boarded-up old house under the strict eye of her eccentric grandparents. Now she was all alone, with two little boys to raise, and a third child on the way.
Will Parker drifted into Whitney, Georgia, one lazy afternoon in the summer, hoping to put his lonely past behind him. He yearned for the tenderness he had never known, the home he'd never had. All he needed was for someone to give him a chance.
Then he saw her classified ad: WANTED - A husband. When he stepped across Elly Dinsmore's cluttered yard, Will knew he had come home at last....… (altro)
FROM AMAZON: In town, they called her "Crazy Widow Dinsmore". But Elly was no stranger to their ridicule - she had been an outsider all her life, growing up in a boarded-up old house under the strict eye of her eccentric grandparents. Now she was all alone, with two little boys to raise, and a third child on the way.
Will Parker drifted into Whitney, Georgia, one lazy afternoon in the summer, hoping to put his lonely past behind him. He yearned for the tenderness he had never known, the home he'd never had. All he needed was for someone to give him a chance.
Then he saw her classified ad: WANTED - A husband. When he stepped across Elly Dinsmore's cluttered yard, Will knew he had come home at last....… (altro)
FROM AMAZON: Eighteen years ago, Tess McPhail left her tiny hometown of Wintergreen, Missouri, for the bright lights of Nashville and never looked back. Now, one of country music's biggest stars, "Mac" is a hardworking woman with little time for a personal life - until her sister insists she come home to help care for their widowed mother.
The welcome Mac receives is less than warm, especially from her former next-door neighbor Kenny Kronek. With a teenage daughter to raise, the handsome divorce refuses to give Mac the time of day. But when Mac discovers that Kenny's daughter is a promising country talent, she begins mentoring the girl in the music of love - and opening her own hardened heart to a man who makes her soul sing....… (altro)
The welcome Mac receives is less than warm, especially from her former next-door neighbor Kenny Kronek. With a teenage daughter to raise, the handsome divorce refuses to give Mac the time of day. But when Mac discovers that Kenny's daughter is a promising country talent, she begins mentoring the girl in the music of love - and opening her own hardened heart to a man who makes her soul sing....… (altro)
Liste
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Autori correlati
Statistiche
- Opere
- 80
- Opere correlate
- 27
- Utenti
- 11,141
- Popolarità
- #2,120
- Voto
- 3.8
- Recensioni
- 217
- ISBN
- 557
- Lingue
- 13
- Preferito da
- 19
*This is a #TBRChallenge review, there will be spoilers, I don't spoil everything but enough, because I treat these reviews as a bookclub discussion.
WANTED—A HUSBAND. Need Healthy man of any age willing to work spread and share the place. See E. Dinsmore, top of Rock Creek Road
April's TBRChallenge theme was No Place Like Home, so I chose Morning Glory, a book on my tbr for decades. A drifter who's never had a home but works hard to make one with a widow, sounded like a perfect fit to the theme. The first half of this, I raced through. There's a prologue of a young mother bringing her baby home and her parents locking her up in the house because they're ashamed of her “sin”, it's 1917 and unwed mother's are not looked upon kindly. The story then quickly jumps to 1941 and to a drifter named Will about to be fired from a sawmill because it's found out that he served five years in prison for murdering a woman. I had to pause to imagine one of those graphics with arrows pointing at the book listing tropes, “Murderer!” “Shut-in recluse!”.
Will Parker's eyes were drawn to her stomach as she rested a hand on it. He thought about how maybe there was more than one kind of prison.
Will starving and having no money, decides that he will check out the widower at the edge town “Crazy Elly” and her newspaper ad asking for a husband. When I tell you, the pain of these two, gah. Will's constantly thinking, please let me stay, knowing he looks like a half-starved vagabond, who Elly knows, because he told her, that he served jail time for killing a woman but drawn to something warm in Elly's aura. The house and property are run down but Elly and her two small boys seem happy and for someone who was abandoned as a baby and on his own his whole life, Will can't help but want to be welcomed into that magic, even if Elly is pregnant with a third child. Elly for her part knows she needs help and is constantly thinking, please stay, even though she knows she's not pretty, has children and pregnant, run down farm, and is called “Crazy Elly” because of her past. They're both yearning for what the other can give and I honestly felt like a voyeur reading their relationship this first half as they slowly grew to trust one another.
She was a good mother, a fine woman who'd been locked in a house and called crazy, and if he didn't tell her she wasn't, who would?
The first half also gives a pov from a woman in town called Lula, who is said to run “hot” and wants Will but he rebuffs her because he knows those kind of women can lead to trouble because of his past. Readers do learn about the murder he went to jail for and it's, probably of course, nothing that makes him nonredeemable. Lula is that classic “other woman” villain that makes you uncomfortable reading because she's backed by a whole lot of slut-shaming, but it's, pretty obvious, why she's included and while she disappears for the majority of the middle of the story, her set-up comes into play for the last half. There's also a Miss Beasley, librarian, that was a great character (Mentally, I've given her a novella HEA with the lawyer) but, geez, yeah for women with facial hair being talked about but did the hair on her upper lip have to be mentioned, SO MANY times? Like, damn, give the gal a break. Anyway, by midpoint, Will and Elly have decided to marry and they have grown to the I love yous. I can say, even if it didn't feel over-the-top passionate (which can be considered better by some romance readers) I did believe they loved each other. Elly growing up locked up in her home, constantly being told she's a sin, until the law forced her grandparents (side question: I thought it was going to be directly said but am I the only one who thought her grandfather raped her mother and that was what was with the “drawn shades” business?) to let her go to school, but she was considered “crazy” because of her lack of socialization, and only getting befriended by her first husband (he died a'la Bridgerton, bee stings) had never really had a man care for her the way Will did, or turn her on. Will was never cared for either and had no one to care for, so when they meet, it's a pretty simple scenario of two people deserving love and finding the person that connects with them to give it. It felt real their feelings and why I said it gave a voyeuristic feeling for me.
She smiled into the bluebird's painted eye, her own shining with delight. "A bluebird...imagine that." She pressed it to her heart and beamed at Will. "How did you know I like birds?"
He knew. He knew.
The second half is where things really slowed down for me. Pearl Harbor gets bombed and Will gets drafted. There's a couple chapters of letter writing between Will, Elly, and Miss Beasley and then a really great scene where Elly has to rush to see Will before he gets shipped to the Pacific. She's had the baby by now (the birth scene was something else with Will playing doctor) and while they managed to have sex once before he left for boot camp, these two are ramped up. I love how the author described their attraction, from how Will was sitting in the chair and Elly eyeing him up and Elly breastfeeding with Will seeing her exposed boob, could definitely feel the tension in the air. Will gets injured and he's eventually sent home after being medically discharged because of shrapnel in his leg. The townspeople view him differently and he gets the respect he's craved but he's also suffering from PTSD and that delivers some strain between him and Elly until he eventually opens up to her. We're at around 80% when Lula comes back into the picture and Will's suddenly arrested for her murder. The ending was the court case and Elly trying to help prove him innocent until the last 5% gives us the HEA.
He wanted to take her close, cradle her head and rub her shoulder and say. "Tell me...tell me what it is that hurts so bad, then we'll work at getting you over it."
The first half, a slower moving but pulling you in with these two and their hurts and pains, learning to come together but the second half was a slower moving left me kind of disinterested ending. I read this in almost one shot and kind of glad I did, because even though slower moving usually calls for savoring, pacing out, I feel like this would be one that would be hard to pick up again, so my two cents of advice. These two will linger with me because of how real they felt but I'm not sure I could recommended, maybe just the first half and that meet-up in Augusta. Hope springs eternal for a Donald Wade, Thomas, and Lizzy P. spin-off series! (Elly's kids)
Guess what I'm watching tonight? (Hint: check out what's on Tubi)… (altro)