A Letter from Danielle for May ’25
Hi Everyone,
May is such a pretty month!!! The weather is usually balmy and the month is at the heart of spring. In France, May Day on the 1st is Labor Day, and the tradition is for friends and loved ones to give each other sprigs of lily of the valley for good luck. There are vendors of the fragrant flower on almost every corner, and the delicious smell of lily of the valley is everywhere.
Right before May Day, my hardcover A Mind of Her Own came out, about a young woman who has just survived World War I in France and lost her parents, and tragedy strikes her family again when the Spanish Flu travels around the world. The young woman goes from Paris to Illinois to live with the grandfather she hasn’t seen in many years. He fosters in her an independent spirit and encourages her to follow her dreams. He owns a newspaper and she goes to work for him, and then for a major newspaper in Chicago. Her ideas about women are well ahead of her time, and she tackles all the challenges of a woman in the workforce in 1920. She’s a very courageous young woman, and the book follows her on the paths she chooses into a world that was changing dramatically for women. Women are still fighting those same battles today.
At the end of May, my book Joy is coming out in paperback. The two main characters in the book fall in love in their teens, he is a sweet young innocent boy who is transformed by the shocking experience of serving in U.S. Army Intelligence in Iraq. He comes back a different person she barely recognizes. The book follows her to California and an exciting job in the pursuit of a meaningful life. And in the course of the book, she discovers that joy comes from within, you can’t chase it, you just have to open your heart to it. Joy is in all of us if we let it happen and nurture it.
I hope you love both books and have a beautiful month of May.
Love,
Danielle