SWEET JANE,
JUST ONE LOOK,
&
I’LL BE SEEING YOU
by
Joanne Kukanza Easley
SCROLL DOWN FOR GIVEAWAY!
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Sweet Jane
Joanne ACKukanza Easley’s debut novel
2019 Wisdom-Faulkner Award finalist
2020 Adult Fiction winner Texas Author Project
A drunken mother makes childhood ugly. Jane runs away at sixteen, determined to leave her fraught upbringing in the rearview. Vowing never to return, she hitchhikes to California, right on time for the Summer of Love. Seventeen years later, she looks good on paper: married, grad school, sober, but her carefully constructed life is crumbling. When Mama dies, Jane returns for the funeral, leaving her husband in the dark about her history. Seeing her childhood home and significant people from her youth catapults Jane back to the events that made her the woman she is. She faces down her past and the ghosts that shaped her family. A stunning discovery helps Jane see her problems through a new lens.
Family Saga / Women’s Fiction / Historical Fiction
Publisher: Red Boots Press *** September 17, 2022 *** 279 pages
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Just One Look
May 2022 Pulpwood Queen Book Club Pick
Shelf Unbound 2021 Notable 100 Best Indie Books
Recommended by the US Review of Books
In 1965 Chicago, thirteen-year-old Dani Marek declares she’s in love, and you best believe it. This is no crush, and for six blissful years she fills her hope chest with linens, dinnerware, and dreams of an idyllic future with John. When he is killed in action in Viet Nam, Dani’s world shatters. She launches a one-woman vendetta against the men she seeks out in Rush Street’s singles bars. Her goal: break as many hearts as she can. Dani’s ill-conceived vengeance leads her to a loveless marriage that ends in tragedy. At twenty-four, she’s left a widow with a baby, a small fortune, and a ghost—make that two. Set in the turbulent Sixties and Seventies, Just One Look explores one woman’s tumultuous journey through grief, denial, and letting go.
Family Saga / Women’s Fiction / Historical Fiction
Publisher: Red Boots Press *** September 17, 2022 *** 293 pages
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I’ll Be Seeing You
The new release from Joanne Kukanza Easley, the multi-award-winning author of Sweet Jane and Just One Look
A saga spanning five decades, I’ll Be Seeing You, explores one woman’s life, with and without alcohol to numb the pain.
Young Lauren knows she doesn’t want to be a ranch wife in Palo Pinto County, Texas. After she’s discovered by a modeling scout at the 1940 Fort Worth Stock Show Parade, she moves to Manhattan to begin her glamourous career. A setback ends her dream, and she drifts into alcohol dependence and promiscuity. By twenty-four, she’s been widowed and divorced, and has developed a pattern of fleeing her problems with geographical cures. Lauren’s last escape lands her in Austin, where, after ten chaotic years, she achieves lasting sobriety and starts a successful business, but happiness eludes her.
Fast forward to 1985. With a history of burning bridges and never looking back, Lauren is stunned when Brett, her third husband, resurfaces, wanting to reconcile after thirty-three years. The losses and regrets of the past engulf her, and she seeks the counsel of Jane, a long-time friend from AA. In the end, the choice is Lauren’s. What will she decide?
Family Saga / Women’s Fiction / Addiction & Recovery / Historical Fiction
Publisher: Red Boots Press *** August 28, 2022 *** 227 pages
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In some ways this is a typical story of a young girl growing up on a farm or ranch going to the big city of Manhattan and not being ready for what she finds there. Lauren is convinced she can handle life in the big city, in the glamorous world of fashion and modeling, but that doesn’t prove to be true. That leads to some bad choices on her part that eventually take her deep into alcohol abuse, even though she tries to pretend she doesn’t have a problem.
Lauren is influenced greatly by her Aunt Imogene who has a lavish and free lifestyle that her wealth provides, and for a while Lauren is totally caught up in that. Why not? If it works for this woman whom Lauren admires so much, certainly it can work for her, and she can spend her days comfortable and happy.
I’ll Be Seeing You covers several decades of Lauren’s life where she faces new challenges in her modeling career that doesn’t always go the way she expected it, nor does her love life. Then, when she thinks maybe she has found the one person that she can spend the rest of her life with, it all gets derailed again.
It takes many years but with the help of AA she is eventually able to at least put some parts of her life back on track again.
The story takes an honest look at what can happen to young people who are ill prepared for a life so drastically different from their rural hometown. It’s not always pretty, and I didn’t always like Lauren for the choices she made and some of her behavior, but I was always rooting for her to turn her life around.
If you like that kind of redemption story, you’re sure to enjoy this one.
Each of the books has an absolutely stunning cover.
Kudos to the designer, Erin Cronin Pearson.
A retired registered nurse with experience in both the cold, clinical operating room and the emotionally fraught world of psychiatric hospitals, Joanne lives on a small ranch in the Texas Hill Country, where she writes fiction about complicated, twentieth-century women.
Her multi-award-winning debut, Sweet Jane, was named the adult fiction winner at the Texas Author Project and shortlisted for the Sarton Award and Eric Hoffer Award, among others. Just One Look, Joanne’s second novel was a May 2022 Pulpwood Queen Book Club Pick. I’ll Be Seeing You, her third novel, features characters from Sweet Jane. Her prize-winning short stories and poetry have appeared in several anthologies.
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GIVEAWAY! GIVEAWAY! GIVEAWAY!
THREE WINNERS!
Each receives an eBook of:
SWEET JANE or JUST ONE LOOK or I’LL BE SEEING YOU
(U.S. only; ends midnight, CDT, 11/17/22.)
CLICK TO VISIT THE LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE TOUR PAGE FOR PARTICIPATING BLOGS.
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Redemption stories are sometimes so hard to read, but it sounds like this one is rewarding. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
You’re welcome, Kristine. Glad you found the review worth reading. The story is difficult at times, but the resolution is satisfying. Stories have to end on a satisfying note, even if it isn’t the “happy ever after” ending.
Thank you for the review. Lauren definitely isn’t always easy to like. I’m glad you found the resolution satisfying. I’m writing a follow up called Higher Love, in which Lauren is again challenged by the past. I appreciate you acknowledging my very talented niece who designs my covers.
Thanks for letting me know about the follow-up to this story as well as about the artist. I looked all over for the name on the Internet to link to a webpage or FB, but never was sure I found the right person as info was spotty. She is very talented. Does she paint in oil or somehow able to create this graphically? My daughter is a graphic artist and has done some of my bookcovers, but none of them look like an actual painting like yours does.
I’m not sure of her medium, but I asked for an impressionistic cover and she delivered. Erin is on Instagram and Facebook an today is her birthday.