Author Glenda de Vaney
on Tour
January 15-19
with
Journeys Through France and Life
(memoir)
Release date: March 23, 2013
at Journeys Press
296 pages
ISBN: 978-0615660875
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SYNOPSIS
Month-long trips to France twice a year – that was the life! Until real life intervenes and everything changes. Come on a journey through France with the author and her husband, eating delicious cuisine, seeing fabulous sights, mixing it up with the French. Stay on the journey as a crisis reveals that her son from a previous marriage has schizophrenia, and that her husband is not only unsympathetic, but something more.
Travel with the author as she faces her fears, and finds a way back to her true self. Through her experience, others may find insight regarding dark corners of their own lives. She puts a human face on the stigmatized illness of schizophrenia, while sharing her love of France, where she finds frustration, humor, and joy. [provided by the author]
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Smitten with France, Glenda de Vaney has traveled there
over thirty times to photograph châteaux, gardens,
villages and whatever is beautiful.
She presents slide shows on France and sells framed pictures.
The author is a former volunteer for the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill
and an advocate for those suffering from mental illness.
She is also an avid table tennis player
who strikes fear in her opponents’ hearts,
or at least wishes she did.
Glenda lives in a historic home
in a suburb of San Diego with the younger of her two sons.
Visit her website.
Buy the book | on Amazon
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TOUR QUOTATIONS
This is an unusual memoir. It combines vivid travel writing spanning a lifetime of visits to France with an account of de Vaney’s personal journey of self-discovery in the midst of crisis. She endows her memoir with the instinctive pacing of a thriller, and I read it in just two sittings, driven by the suspense generated by the two intertwined crises she faced.
I enjoyed touring France through the eyes and experiences of de Vaney.
An uplifting story exemplifying the power of positive thinking, a woman’s new found independent streak, embracing the future and sojourn of self discovery.
Combined with interesting descriptions of France, this memoir is a wonderful testimony of what a mother is ready to do to help her son suffering from schizophrenia. It contains very helpful advice if you have a friend or relative with this illness.
The author writes very well.
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