Lemmon, Christine
Christine Lemmon
Christine Lemmon was born in Chicago, Illinois. When she was eight years old her family moved to Saugatuck, Michigan where together they worked their family businesses. Her schooling was in Holland, Michigan, where she also graduated from Hope College, a private, liberal arts college. Christine lives on Sanibel Island with her husband and three children. Ideas for her novels come to her while bike riding, hiking through preserves, and watching sunsets with her family.
It's 1953 in sunny Florida, and 15-year-old Lydia Isleworth thinks her ultimate life goal, like that of every woman she knows, is to marry a respectable man and raise a family. Then, she meets an aspiring Hollywood actress Marlena DiPluma, who says four life-changing words -- YOU CAN DO ANYTHING -- and gives her a journal to read. The journal, written by Ava, a defiant girl of Lydia's age, becomes the catalyst for Lydia's awakening and new life adventure.
A story of parallel lives, Portion of the Sea follows two young women in passionate pursuit of their independence -- Lydia during the cultural revolution of the 1950s and 1960s, and Ava during the late-1800s when a few pioneering American ladies set the course for women's freedom.
In this stirring follow-up to her debut novel Sanibel Scribbles, Christine Lemmon offers a trademark story of how women can inspire each other to pursue bold dreams, make courageous choices, and reclaim lost treasures.
Twenty years ago, Anna Hott thought she could control everything -- her crumbling marriage, her demanding children, her hectic life -- by quitting her high-placed job in New York City and moving her family to tranquil Sanibel Island, Florida. But she brought her untamed emotions, her rage toward her cheating husband, and her yearning to write a novel with her. When her husband and children left the house for a week, Anna thought at last she would get her household, her novel, and her mind in order. Instead, her elderly neighbor Fedelina Aurelio knocked on her door bearing flowers and homespun wisdom, and when Fedelina's recently divorced son arrived, Anna had a test of passions and a test of truth. Now, at 56 with an empty nest, Anna Holt pulls out the incomplete manuscript she started that memorable week and -- to find closure for her life and a conclusion for her novel -- travels to Indiana to visit Fedelina who lives in a nursing home.
A novel framed within a novel, Sand In My Eyes is both a story about the tension between motherhood and personal dreams as well as a story about women across generations inspiring one another to let beauty persist despite ugly circumstances.
"Spend a semester in Spain." "Acquire the world's largest shoe collection." "Lose five pounds." These are some of the life dreams young Vicki Brightman and her best friend Rebecca giddily scribble on a paper tablecloth one night at the Till Midnight Cafe. A charmed childhood and a semester of college behind her, Vicki thought she had all the time in the world to pursue her own sweet pleasures. But a single event later that night shocks Vicki into putting aside her "to-do" list and confronting her mortality.
The ensuing six-month journey—at times harrowing, uplifting, and enlightening—send Vicki to a remote island, Spain, and deep into her soul. Her experiences and the colorful strangers she meets—a happy-go-lucky Spaniard named Nacho, the ever-charming but mysterious Rafael, a courageous matador, a saucy senora—challenge her views and alter the dreams she once held dear on her list.
This novel has all the elements that readers have come to love from Christine Lemmon, namely life-changing moments that demand women re-examine their priorities and live life with gusto.
We all hope for peace and happiness in our lives. But as women living in a fast-paced world of productivity, we rarely have time to stop and listen to our inner selves, to the wants and desires we once had for our lives or to new ideas still forming within us--as abundant as the waters of the ocean, but quieted over time--into more of a whisper. A collection of treasured quotes pulled from the pages of Christine Lemmon's novels, Whisper from the Ocean, is more than a book. It's like Lemmon is handing us a pail by the seashore, filled to the rim with revitalizing pearls of womanly wisdom, glistening bits of heart and mind, and thought-provoking illuminations related to solitude and inspiration; spirituality and creativity; passion and productivity; marriage and motherhood; sacrifice and identity; contentment and joy.