CFBA Book Tour…..A Wedding Invitation… by Alice Wisler
This week, theChristian Fiction Blog Allianceis introducingA Wedding InvitationBethany House (October 1, 2011)byAlice WislerABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Alice was born in Osaka, Japan in the sixties. Her parents were Presbyterian career missionaries. As a young child, Alice loved to walk down to the local stationer’s store to buy notebooks, pencils and scented erasers. In her room, she created stories. The desire to be a published famous author has never left her. Well, two out of three isn’t bad. She’s the author of Rain Song, How Sweet It Is, Hatteras Girl and A Wedding Invitation (all published by Bethany House).
Alice went to Eastern Mennonite University after graduating from Canadian Academy, an international high school in Kobe, Japan. She majored in social work and has worked across the U.S. in that field. She taught ESL (English as a Second Language) in Japan and at a refugee camp in the Philippines. She also studied Spanish at a language institute in San Jose, Costa Rica.
She has four children–Rachel, Daniel, Benjamin and Elizabeth. Daniel died on 2/2/97 from cancer treatments at the age of four. Since then, Alice founded Daniel’s House Publications in her son’s memory. This organization reaches out to others who have also lost a child to death. In 2000 and 2003, Alice compiled recipes and memories of children across the world to publish two memorial cookbooks, Slices of Sunlight and Down the Cereal Aisle.
ABOUT THE BOOK
After returning home from teaching English at a refugee camp in the Philippines, Samantha Bravencourt enjoys her quiet life working at her mother’s clothing boutique in Falls Church, Virginia. When she receives an invitation to a wedding in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, she looks forward to reconnecting with her college friend. Instead her life collides with Carson, a fellow teacher and the man who broke her heart, and a young Amerasian refugee named Lien who needs Samantha and Carson’s help to find her mother before Lien’s own wedding. When the search for Lien’s mother reveals surprising secrets from the past, Samantha must reevaluate her own memories and decide whether to continue to play it safe or take a risk that could change her life.
If you would like to read the first chapter of A Wedding Invitation, go HERE.
Watch the book trailer:
My Thoughts
A Wedding Invitation By Alice Wisler
Samantha now works in her mother’s clothing store in Washington, DC after returning from the Philippines. Samantha moved to the Philippines to help with young Amerasian children. I really haven’t heard about these Amerasian children that are a result of relationships that didn’t last with American Soldiers and Vietnamese women during the Vietnam War. These children are really treated badly, pretty much as outcast because their dads didn’t bother to support them, but instead leaving them and their moms to fend for themselves. I appreciate the author researching this issue and writing to educate readers about this horrible issue. Those poor kids, suffering for what someone else did. How can those dads do that to their innocent child?
Carson was also in the Philippines working with the Amerasian children and Samantha finds herself very attracted to him. The problem is, he has a high school sweetheart that he will remain faithful to, so Samantha doesn’t have a chance.
That is, until seven years later she finds herself at a wedding in NC she thought was an old high school classmate, only to find out she knows no one at the wedding. Being in NC, she finds out that Carson is now living there as well as a family they both worked with in the Philippines. And of course everyone wants Samantha and Carson together since they are both still single but Samantha wants no part of it.
This was a wonderful story and I enjoyed Samantha and Carson’s somewhat rocky journey in the Philippines and in North Carolina after meeting up with each other again. Alice Wisler creates a cast of characters that are so unique and fit the story she tells so well. A contemporary story that takes place in the early 1990’s and all that went on at that time of life. I encourage you to grab a copy of this wonderful book to read. It will be well worth your time and money! And as for the name of the book, it will be more fun if you find out when you read it! And oh….I love the cover too!
This book was provided by Bethany House through Christian Fiction Blog Alliance. I was not required or expected to give a positive review. The opinions in this review are mine only.
splashesofjoy 