Author Spotlight: Roxanne Snopek Is Here with Holiday Fun!
We have a winner! Liz Flaherty, you will receive an ebook copy of a story from the Malones of Grand, Montana, series. Roxanne will be in touch with you. Thanks to everyone who stopped by!
What a pleasure to welcome my fellow Tule Publishing author, Roxanne Snopek back to the Spotlight!
USA Today bestselling author Roxanne Snopek writes award-winning contemporary women’s fiction and romance with an anti-patriarchal flair. Her characters have the same concerns we do about women’s rights, gender politics, tolerance and equality—but they get to fight their battles and win! Roxanne forces her characters (and occasionally herself) out of their comfort zones to do the right things, and they (and occasionally she) become better people for it.
Roxanne writes, rages, and ruminates from her lakeside home in southern British Columbia, where she lives with her partner of 36 years and two prescient poodles. She also bakes bread, battles weeds, and co-hosts the popular podcast Happy Hour with Ruth and Roxy, where she and her pal Ruth (surprise!) discuss how to get more happiness with less bull… you know.
Her list of favorite authors is ever changing and includes Barbara Kingsolver, Barbara O’Neal, Stephen King, Robyn Carr, Loreth Anne White, Elizabeth Berg, Terry Pratchett, Ann Patchett, Lucy Maude Montgomery and on and on. She loves to connect with other book lovers, so please look for Roxanne Snopek Author on the various social media platforms.
Website | Facebook | Instagram
Hello Dear Readers!
I’m delighted to share a bit about The Wrangler’s Christmas Gift! This is a book and a series about motherhood. It’s about lots more than that, but the underlying story of Heather (a.k.a. Honey) and JP Malone is primarily about how losing him and their children affected Heather’s life, how she found ways to become a mother despite her losses.
Five Stories in Four Books
The story of the Malones of Grand, Montana (the “Lost Malones,” as I call them) is told in a dual-timeline narrative, with each book containing two stories, the main one, set in present day, as well as the gradual unfolding of the thirty-year love story between Heather (a.k.a. Honey) and her mysterious cowboy JP Malone.
Why to Read Them in Order
The first three books tell the romantic journeys of their children, Brade Oliver (The Cowboy’s Lost Family), Leila Monahan (The Rancher’s Lost Bride) and Lucas Landry (The Maverick’s Surprise Family), but only contain pieces of Heather and JP’s story. The story of Heather’s foster daughter Em Garcia is told in The Wrangler’s Christmas Gift, along with the shocking conclusion to Heather and JP’s story.
Why I Wrote These Books
Heather, JP, and their adult children have become very close to my heart over the course of writing this series. While I’m not adopted, nor have I relinquished a child for adoption, I grew up in the time of purity culture, when there were heavy penalties—social, family, religious—for women who had sex outside of marriage. (Men rarely paid a price.) Sex was greatly feared and rarely talked about. Much of this attitude of shame stemmed from something I’d never heard of: the Baby Scoop Era.
Between the 1940s and the 1970s in America (to the end of the 1980s in Canada), many single pregnant women were told that if they really loved their babies, the best thing they could do was relinquish them for adoption by white married heterosexual couples. In the USA during these decades, an estimated 4 million mothers surrendered their newborns, half of those during the ’60s alone. Some women did this willingly; most were given no choice.
So, I had Heather and JP meet in the late 1980s, when society was still recovering from the Baby Scoop Era, when a pregnant woman without a ring on her finger could truly be “in trouble.” Then, I had JP Malone disappear.
We authors are mean that way.
Truth, Wrapped in Story
Today, the availability of DNA testing and genealogy research has resulted in a flood of real-life reunion stories. Women in their last decades of life are finally telling long-hidden truths and finding closure. This is what inspired me to write the Malones of Grand, Montana. Fiction is truth wrapped in story, and I wanted to tell the truth of many real women by wrapping it in the story of one imaginary woman who overcame this traumatic start to motherhood, and who didn’t just survive, but thrived, building herself a successful life and yes, even a family. I wanted to tell the story of the adopted infants and their search for identity. I wanted to show these different iterations of parents and children finding mature relationships built on honesty. And, of course, I wanted them all to find love.
I hope you enjoy the journey of my lost Malones of Grand, Montana as they form the family they were meant to be.
In case these kinds of stories fascinate you the same way they do me, here are just a few of the books I read while researching the Baby Scoop Era.
Gabrielle Glaser, American Baby: A Mother, a Child, and the Secret History of Adoption
Karen Wilson-Buterbaugh, The Baby Scoop Era: Unwed Mothers, Infant Adoption, and Forced Surrender
KelLee Parr, Mansion on a Hill
Ann Fessler, The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children in the Decades before Roe vs. Wade
Caroline Leavitt, Girls in Trouble
GIVEAWAY: Roxanne is giving away a winner’s choice digital copy of a book from the Malones of Grand, Montana series. So in the comments below, tell her your dream holiday. Quiet day at home? Noisy day with family? Vacation away from it all? What sounds perfect to you? We’ll draw a winner on Saturday morning.
The Wrangler’s Christmas Gift
When movie wrangler Colt Boone plans a Christmas visit to thank foster mom Honey Malone for being the one bright spot in his tumultuous childhood, he learns she’s spending the holidays with her recently discovered biological children. He agrees to join her in Grand and film the reunion she hopes will be a new beginning. One problem—Honey’s foster daughter, Emmet Garcia.
Em fears this season of joy will be anything but. She and Honey have been a team for so long, it’s crushing to watch Honey embrace these strangers. Worse, Colt—who has plenty of explaining to do—is prying into old secrets, without sharing his own. The boy she once loved has become a man she can’t trust.
When Honey learns the truth about her beloved JP Malone, the mysterious cowboy who disappeared, leaving her pregnant, Em and Colt must work together to help the woman they love finally face her painful past. In this season of miracles, when the lost are found and strangers become family, can Em and Colt overcome their own wounds and forge a future together?
6 Comments
Latesha B.
I’d like to go someplace where I can soak in the culture and architecture.
Glenda M
These days the perfect holiday is a relaxed one at home with the kids, their partners, and lots of food and fun.
bn100
Vacation away from it all
Roxanne Snopek
Perfect season for a vacation!
Liz Flaherty
What a fascinating series premise. Many of us have memories of that time. I’m anxious to read it.
Roxanne Snopek
I’d love to hear your thoughts on it, Liz… I’d known a bit before I wrote this series, but I had no idea the extent. There was so much secrecy, so much shame.