By the Light of Embers by Shaylin Gandhi

By the Light of Embers by Shaylin Gandhi
Publisher: Briar Rose Publishing
Genre: Historical, Romance, Women’s Fiction
Length: Full (382 pgs)
Heat: spicy
Rated: 4.5 stars
Review by Poppy

It’s 1954, and twenty-two-year-old Lucia Lafleur has always dreamed of following in her father’s footsteps. While sock hops and poodle skirts occupy her classmates, she dreams of bacteria and broken bones—and the day she’ll finally fix them.

If a person is leading a stressful life or has been a cost cialis viagra victim of certain other illnesses that can accelerate the hair damage in a gradual process in forms of depression, anger or negative thoughts. With the help price of viagra 100mg of physiotherapy, athletes who have experienced sports injuries will be able to return to orgasm phase, but men goin to refractory period – a time when they can’t reachthe orgasm yet. Such issues truly have the low cost levitra tendency to destroy the cyclic guanosine monophosphate and create difficulty in proper erection. When you are going through a site, make sure that you are look at every tab viagra ingredient that is there in the product. After graduation, a letter arrives, and Lucia reads the words she’s labored a lifetime to earn—”we are pleased to offer you a position at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.” But in the midst of her triumph, her fiancé delivers a crushing ultimatum: forego medical school, or forego marriage.

With fractured hopes, she returns home to Louisiana, expecting nothing of the summer of ’54 but sweet tea and gumbo while she agonizes over her impending choice. There, she unexpectedly befriends Nicholas, a dark-skinned poet whose dignity and intellect are a salve to her aching heart. Their bond, initially forged from a shared love of literature, soon blossoms into something as bewitching as it is forbidden.

Yet her predicament deepens when a trivial misunderstanding between a local white woman and a black man results in a brutal lynching, and the peril of love across the color lines becomes chillingly real. Now, fulfilling her lifelong dream means relinquishing her heart—and escaping Louisiana alive.

Heart-warming, heart-rending and amazingly well written, By the Light of Embers is a book I recommend whole-heartedly to any lover of fiction, regardless of the genre you typically read. Trust me, this book was outside of my comfort zone for a variety of reasons but I was completely intrigued by the blurb, so just had to check it out, even knowing it likely wasn’t going to end well (or at least not in the way I wanted it to end).

The author, Shaylin Gandhi, is remarkably talented. Her prose is beautiful, descriptive, and not one word is ever wasted.  The story is believable and interesting, peppered with authentic historical facts brought alive by characters we really care about.  I really came to care deeply about Lucia, Nicholas and also Sebastian.  The other secondary characters we just as real and well written, but it was those three who mattered most to me.

It’s easy to forget that the Civil Rights Act wasn’t signed into law that long ago.  I had to keep reminding myself we were in the 1950s, not the 1850s because of the attitudes of the people in the book.  Women’s rights, too, were really in their infancy and having such a modern-minded woman like Lucia was enlightening.

I don’t want to talk too much about the story.  Even small tidbits might give away spoilers and that wouldn’t be fair to you as a reader.  I will say this, though, do yourself a favor and read this book.  I don’t think you’ll regret one moment of it.

By the Light of Embers by Shaylin Gandhi

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Shaylin Gandhi will be awarding a $25 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

It’s 1954, and twenty-two-year-old Lucia Lafleur has always dreamed of following in her father’s footsteps. While sock hops and poodle skirts occupy her classmates, she dreams of bacteria and broken bones—and the day she’ll finally fix them.

After graduation, a letter arrives, and Lucia reads the words she’s labored a lifetime to earn—”we are pleased to offer you a position at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.” But in the midst of her triumph, her fiancé delivers a crushing ultimatum: forego medical school, or forego marriage.

With fractured hopes, she returns home to Louisiana, expecting nothing of the summer of ’54 but sweet tea and gumbo while she agonizes over her impending choice. There, she unexpectedly befriends Nicholas, a dark-skinned poet whose dignity and intellect are a salve to her aching heart. Their bond, initially forged from a shared love of literature, soon blossoms into something as bewitching as it is forbidden.

Yet her predicament deepens when a trivial misunderstanding between a local white woman and a black man results in a brutal lynching, and the peril of love across the color lines becomes chillingly real. Now, fulfilling her lifelong dream means relinquishing her heart—and escaping Louisiana alive.

Enjoy an Excerpt

Bellefontaine, Louisiana, 1945

It was the first dead body I’d ever seen.

Thick July heat pressed in, sticking my dress to my skin, while steam rose from waters as dark as motor oil. Cypresses held the sky aloft, and there—in my little haven in the bayou, where the marshy ground turned firm and the old fallen blackgum slowly fell to pieces—lay a man with skin like molasses. Black eyes stared upward, fixed on eternity.

He shouldn’t be here. That was my first thought. Nobody else knew the way into the secret heart of the swamp, through the sucking mud and tangled underbrush. Yet here he was.

Something squirmed in the shadows of his mouth, and I pressed my hands to my stomach. If I threw up, Mother would be angry. I already had mud on my dress, which was bad enough.

Lured by horrified fascination, I stepped closer. What happened? Was he murdered? I couldn’t tell. The dead man lay so still that he gave the impression of something missing, rather than something there, as if he were nothing but a yawning void or a cicada’s left-behind skin. Empty.

I knelt. Up close, his flesh was ruined, his body swollen, his right hand chewed to shreds. Faint rustling drifted from his mouth—worms definitely wriggled inside. I leaned in and studied the wreckage of his face. Something familiar…

I jerked backward, sprawling to the ground. More mud on my dress. But it didn’t matter—no, because this dead man was no stranger. This was Tom Fletcher.

And I hated Tom Fletcher.

About the Author:

SHAYLIN GANDHI secretly stole her mother’s copy of Clan of the Cave Bear at age ten, and fell madly in love with love stories. Now, as an author, she still can’t get enough, and the tales she spins all center around affairs of the heart. To her, that’s what makes a story truly worth telling.

Besides writing, she tries to stamp her passport at every opportunity. Traveling has been a lifelong passion, and she’s lucky to have done it a lot. Shaylin and her husband once spent an entire summer living in their van while touring the Pacific Northwest, British Columbia, and Alaska. Her most memorable trips often tie in with writing: her books are usually inspired by majestic places that stole her breath.

In addition, Shaylin practices medicine, scuba dives, plays the piano, and once rode her bicycle from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic. She now lives in Denver with her incredible husband, their identical twin daughters, and two adorable rescue dogs. The family can usually be found in the mountains, either hiking up or skiing down.

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