Reviewer Sandra Shwayder Sanchez: Sandra is
a retired attorney and co-founder of a small non-profit publishing
collective: The Wessex Collective with whom she has published two short fiction collections
(A Mile in These Shoes and Three Novellas) and one
novel, Stillbird.
Her most recent novel, The Secret of A Long Journey is soon to be released by Floricanto Press in April 2012 and her first novel, The Nun, originally published by Plain View Press in 1992 is being reissued in a 2nd Edition with additional material by PVP in March 2012.
Author: Denise Skelton
Publisher: First Chance Publishing
ISBN: 978-0-9790977-4-5
Author: Denise Skelton
Publisher: First Chance Publishing
ISBN: 978-0-9790977-4-5
A Life of My Own tells the story of a woman doing exactly what the title implies: finding her own life on her own terms. She is young when she marries the good looking hunk who later squashes her self esteem under the heavy thumb of verbal abuse, so the mistake is understandable. When she almost makes the same mistake with another good looking hunk nearly a dozen years later, it doesn’t ring quite true that she wouldn’t have learned enough to see it coming in time to extricate herself more gracefully than she finally does. Then again her older sister tells her this so the author apparently gets that the protagonist needs to demonstrate some of the wisdom the reader comes to expect from her to come across as a credible character. Liz does seem to be more influenced by masculine good looks than other considerations when thinking about her next stop on the journey her life has become but she gets lucky in the end (in more ways than one) and all's well that ends well.
Actually she gets lucky
right from the beginning as she encounters the kindness of strangers
on her cross country drive from Pennsylvania to Oregon. Most of these
kind strangers are women, older, wiser, some of whom experienced
spousal abuse themselves, most of whom are able to point her in the
direction of a temporary job. The temporary jobs improve until she is
actually using some of the skills she had trained for prior to
settling down to be the subservient home-maker/stepmother she was for
eleven years and eventually she ends up, somewhat implausibly, as the
secretary/assistant to the president of a college. . . but life is
like that and we all know that truth is stranger than fiction so it
could have happened and maybe the plot is based on some actual real
life implausible events. In this last capacity, she has the
opportunity to use the self defense skills she learned from a trainer
(shades of Jennifer Lopez here?) when asked to escort a visiting
lecturer who turns out to be a visiting lecher, and she gets to meet
yet another good looking hunk who this time turns out to be Mr.
Right.
The first person narrative voice of Liz is excellent, you really think you are hearing this woman tell her story in person. I kept waiting for a bit more psychological depth but that is me. The narrator’s sense of humor and pacing make it a very easy and entertaining read.