“She rose from the ashes of her childhood to light a path for others.”
That tag line from Dolores Durando’s debut novel, BEYOND THE BOUGAINVILLEA (March 2011) echoes, in some small ways, the author’s own early 1900’s childhood on the plains of North Dakota.
Mrs. Durando didn’t live the cruel life to which Bougainvillea’s MARGE GARRITY was subjected as a girl—indeed, Mrs. Durando had a happy childhood being raised by her blacksmithing grandpa–but she does know whereof she speaks when describing the isolated and rough-hewn conditions of Dakotas life.
BEYOND THE BOUGAINVILLEA
She found her place in a turbulent era of deep passions, heartbreaking sacrifices, and grand dreams.
When scholarly, smart Mary Margaret is sixteen her father marries her off to a drunken neighbor in return for a tract of land. The year is 1929, and Mary Margaret’s childhood has already been hard as a farm girl on the desolate prairies of North Dakota. Abused and helpless, the new Mrs. “Marge” Garrity seems destined for a tragic fate.
But Marge is determined to make her life count, no matter what. Her escape from her brutal marriage takes her to California, where she struggles to survive the Great Depression and soon answers the lure of the state’s untamed northern half. There, embraced by the rough-and-ready people who built the great Ruckachucky Dam on the American River, she begins to find her true mission in life and the possibility for love and happiness with an Army Corp engineer of Cherokee Indian descent.
This vivid saga of one woman’s life in the early decades of a turbulent century is told from the heart of a true storyteller in the grand tradition of women’s sagas.
Look for BEYOND THE BOUGAINVILLEA at Amazon.com and elsewhere in trade paperback and ebook. PDF review copies now available. Email Editor Deb Smith at editor@bellebooks.com
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