A Dream Within A Dream: Luanne Rice

The Beautiful Lost
Author: Luanne Rice
Release Date: June 27, 2017
Publisher: Point
Ages 12 and Up

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32467439-the-beautiful-lost

Description:

In The Beautiful Lost, Luanne Rice deftly uses her experiences with depression to craft a lilting and surprising story about the vagaries of the human heart. Maia has struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts ever since her mother left to follow her passion of studying ocean life in the Canadian Maritime provinces. Maia is convinced everything will be fine if she can only reconnect with her mother, meaning she won’t have to take her pills, she will never need to be institutionalized again. When Maia runs away from home in search of her mom, she gets unexpected help and companionship from Billy, her crush from school. On the roads through New England, Maia and Billy learn truths about each other that are equal parts enthralling and distressing.

Today I was ready. Last night I’d hidden the Volvo key on the ledge outside my window. I grabbed it and stuck it into my jeans pocket along with my cell phone.

Then I dove into my closet, rummaged for the duffle bag that I’d already filled with a fleece, my rain slicker, underwear, extra jeans, my diary, bottles of medication, my toothbrush, the packet of my mother’s letters, and all the birthday and Christmas money I had.

“Who’s there? Maia, is that you?”

I froze. Astrid had finished faxing and making her call, and her vigilance had kicked in. I heard her footsteps on the stairs and quickly locked my bedroom door, just as she began rattling the knob. That lasted exactly three seconds, and then she ran down the hall. I knew what she’d do next: call my father and try to head me off at the pass.

I had to move fast and couldn’t risk her grabbing me if I went through the house. I threw my duffle out the window and, just like yesterday, climbed out and shinnied down the pine tree.

Wind blew through the lilacs. They’d just bloomed, and their scent was stronger than perfume. Tiny purple flowers tossed overhead, mixing with the pine needles. I had lived here since birth; my parents had brought me home to this house, and the smell was as familiar to me as anything in my life. I tore through the trees, made it to the garage door, and hauled the door up in one wild motion.

I hadn’t started my mother’s car in a long time, but it was an indestructible Volvo station wagon and it fired right up. I backed out, my heart beating so fast it could have run the engine. Wheels squealing, I flew out of my driveway, leaving Astrid running after the car, yelling and waving.

My plan was to hit the highway and disappear, but I had a lump in my throat that made me turn right onto Shuttle Meadow Avenue. My phone buzzed in my pocket. I ignored it. I passed my old elementary school and Heckler Pond, where I had learned to ice-skate, and didn’t feel an ounce of sentimentality. Leaving home meant leaving home. You had abandon old things to the past. I was ready.

But Billy.

Martindale Street wound up the steep hill above the pond. Tall trees shaded it, but every so often I’d glance right, and through the branches could see the opposite rise where my house stood.

My phone kept buzzing, the different rhythms that meant that Astrid, and maybe by now my dad, were both calling and texting. I didn’t even look.

I pulled into the circular driveway. The massive brick building, gothic with spires, arched windows on the first floor, and oxidized green copper roof rose before me. This was a different perspective than I’d ever seen before; I scanned the upper stories, trying to locate Billy’s window, but everything looked different, being so close.

A bunch of kids my age were clustered in a play area full of swings, seesaws, picnic tables, and a jungle gym. I saw Mary Porter, Anna Jacoby, and Kevin Hernandez from school. I could ask them where Billy was. I could do that so easily, but I was frozen in the car.

How many times could I say a private goodbye? I had thought yesterday in English class was it, then in study hall today, and now here I was at the Home. I had to see him one last time.

The car running, I gripped the steering wheel hard with my elbows locked, just begging the stars to let him walk by. That’s when I spotted him sitting alone under a maple tree, leaning against the wide trunk. And, as if the stars had decided to answer, he looked up and saw me too. Then my heart had the biggest jumpstart ever—he leapt up and came toward me. I got out of the car.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I came to say…” I said, but I couldn’t get the words out.

He looked in the back seat and saw my duffle.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Away,” I said.

Our eyes burned into each other. I felt heat in my chest, knowing that this really was the last time. I wanted to reach over, touch his hand. I hoped he could read my mind and somehow know he was the only person I’d miss, that I’d come here today because he was, ineffably, mine.

“Away where?” he asked.

“To see my mother,” I said.

“Can I go with you?” he asked.

I stared at him. Had I heard right? No, I had to be dreaming.

“Will you take me?” he asked.

It was real. This was happening. His eyes were begging me. “But people will miss you. They’ll wonder where you are,” I said.

“I live in a group home,” he said, gesturing at the building. “They won’t wonder for long.” And then he touched me—just one finger on my wrist bone—so quickly I would have thought I’d imagined it if it didn’t tingle all through my body.

“I can help you,” he said.

“Help me?”

“Yeah, you’re running away, right? I know how to do that. No one will catch us,” he said. He was already hurrying around the car.

I didn’t think after that. I climbed into the driver’s seat, he got in beside me, and we sped off.

Luanne Rice is the New York Times bestselling author of over 30 novels for adults and the YA novel The Secret Language of Sisters. There are more than twenty-two million copies of her books in print across the world and five of her novels have been adapted into TV movies and miniseries. Luanne lives in coastal Connecticut with her family of cats.

Author Links:
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5076.Luanne_Rice
Website: http://www.luannerice.net
Twitter: LuanneRice

(10) finished copies of The Beautiful Lost - Open to US residents only!

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The Lemon Orchard

Author: Luanne Rice
Genre: Contemporary/Women's Fiction
Release Date: July 2, 2013
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books

Description:

From bestselling author Luanne Rice—a captivating and sexy novel of love, both enduring and unexpected.

Year after year, Luanne Rice’s fans eagerly await her next book. Their enthusiasm is soon to be rewarded with The Lemon Orchard, Rice’s romantic new love story between two people from seemingly different worlds.

In the five years since Julia last visited her aunt and uncle’s home in Malibu, her life has been turned upside down by her daughter’s death. She expects to find nothing more than peace and solitude as she house-sits with only her dog, Bonnie, for company. But she finds herself drawn to the handsome man who oversees the lemon orchard. Roberto expertly tends the trees, using the money to support his extended Mexican family. What connection could these two people share? The answer comes as Roberto reveals the heartbreaking story of his own loss—a pain Julia knows all too well, but for one striking difference: Roberto’s daughter was lost but never found. And despite the odds he cannot bear to give up hope.

Set in the sea and citrus-scented air of the breathtaking Santa Monica Mountains, The Lemon Orchard is an affirming story about the redemptive power of compassion and the kind of love that seems to find us when we need it most.

Roberto

September 2012

Before dawn, the air smelled of lemons. Roberto slept in the small cabin in the grove in the Santa Monica Mountains, salt wind off the Pacific Ocean sweetening the scent of bitter fruit and filling his dreams with memories of home. He was back in Mexico before he’d come to the United States in search of goodness for his family, in another huerto de limones, the lemon orchard buzzing with bees and the voices of workers talking, Rosa playing with her doll Maria. Maria had sheer angel wings and Roberto’s grandmother had whispered to Rosa that she had magic powers and could fly.
Rosa wore her favorite dress, white with pink flowers, sewn by his grandmother. Roberto stood high on the ladder, taller in the dream than any real one would reach. From here he could see over the treetops, his gaze sweeping the valley toward Popocatépetl and iztaccíhuatl, the two snow-covered volcanic peaks to the west. His grandmother had told him the legend, that the mountains were lovers, the boy shielding the girl, and tall on his ladder Roberto felt stronger than anyone, and he heard his daughter talking to her doll. In dream magic, his basket spilling over with lemons, he slid down the tree and lifted Rosa into his arms. She was five, with laughing brown eyes and cascades of dark curls, and she slung her skinny arm around his neck and pressed her face into his shoulder. In the dream he was wise and knew there was no better life, no greater goodness, than what they already had. He held her and promised nothing bad would ever happen to her, and if he could have slept forever those words would be true. Sleep prolonged the vision, his eyes shut tight against the dawn light, and the scent of limones enhanced the hallucination that Rosa was with him still and always.
When he woke up, he didn’t waste time trying to hold on to the feelings. They tore away from him violently and were gone. His day started fast. He lived twenty-five miles east, in Boyle Heights, but sometimes stayed in the orchard during fire season and when there was extra work to be done. He led a crew of three, with extra men hired from the Malibu Community Labor Exchange or the parking lot at the Woodland Hills Home Depot when necessary. They came to the property at 8 a.m.
The Riley family lived in a big Spanish colonial–style house, with arched windows and a red tile roof, just up the ridgeline from Roberto’s cabin. They had occupied this land in western Malibu’s Santa Monica Mountains since the mid-1900s. While other families had torn up old, less profitable orchards and planted vineyards, the Rileys remained true to their family tradition of raising citrus. Roberto respected their loyalty to their ancestors and the land.
The grove took up forty acres, one hundred twenty-year-old trees per acre, planted in straight lines on the south-facing hillside, in the same furrows where older trees had once stood. Twenty years ago the Santa Ana winds had sparked fires that burned the whole orchard, sparing Casa Riley but engulfing neighboring properties on both sides. Close to the house and large tiled swimming pool were rock outcroppings and three-hundred-year-old live oaks— their trunks eight feet in diameter—still scorched black from that fire. Fire was mystical, and although it had swept through Malibu in subsequent years, the Rileys’ property had been spared.
Right now the breeze blew cool off the Pacific, but Roberto knew it could shift at any time. Summer had ended, and now the desert winds would start: the Santa Anas, roaring through the mountain passes, heating up as they sank from higher elevations down to the coast, and any flash, even from a power tool, could ignite the canyon. It had been dry for two months straight. He walked to the barn, where the control panel was located, and turned on the sprinklers.
The water sprayed up, catching rainbows as the sun crested the eastern mountains. it hissed, soft and constant, and Roberto couldn’t help thinking of the sound as money draining away. Water was delivered to the orchard via canal, and was expensive. The Rileys had told him many times that the important thing was the health of the trees and lemons, and to protect the land from fire.
He had something even more important to do before his coworkers arrived: make the coastal path more secure. He grabbed a sledgehammer and cut through the grove to the cliff edge. The summer-dry hillsides sloped past the sparkling pool, down in a widening V to the Pacific Ocean. Occasionally hikers crossed Riley land to connect with the Backbone Trail and other hikes in the mountain range. Years back someone had installed stanchions and a chain: a rudimentary fence to remind people the drop was steep, five hundred feet down to the canyon floor.
He tested the posts and found some loosened. Mudslides and temblers made the land unstable. He wished she would stay off this trail entirely, walk the dog through the orchard, where he could better keep an eye on them, or at least use the paths on the inland side of the property. But she seemed to love the ocean. He’d seen her pass this way both mornings since she’d arrived, stopping to stare out to sea while the dog rustled through the chaparral and coastal sage.
He tapped the first post to set his aim, then swung the sledge- hammer overhead, metal connecting with metal with a loud gong. He felt the shock of the impact in the bones of his wrists and shoulders. Moving down the row of stanchions, he drove each one a few inches deeper into the ground until they were solidly embedded. The wind was blowing toward the house. He hoped the sound wouldn’t bother her, but he figured it wouldn’t. She rose early, like him.

Reprinted by arrangement with Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., from The Lemon Orchard by Luanne Rice. Copyright © 2013 by Luanne Rice

The Lemon Orchard is a captivating and exceptional novel that deals with love, loss, self discovery, and acceptance. It tells the story of Julia, the main character of the novel, whose life has been torn apart after the death of her husband and daughter. Julia travels to visit relatives in Malibu and to hopefully start fresh. While she's there, Julia will experience healing, growth, and the one thing she never expected - love.

This was the first novel I have read by the author and I was blown away. Her attention to detail, the vivid descriptions, and the intimate characteristics of the characters and the setting captured my heart and attention from the very first page. The story is heartbreaking at the beginning and slowly transforms itself into an uplifting story full of hope and love. Julia is a wonderful main character. She's completely broken after the sudden death of her husband and daughter - she doesn't believe her life will ever be worthwhile again. Once she meets the handsome caretaker of the lemon orchard, Roberto, the two immediately connect due to their shared grief and pain. It's an intense and powerful connection and I found it both intriguing and beautiful to watch their relationship develop. The story is told from varying viewpoints throughout, which made it really interesting to read. We get to experience the story from the stance of several characters and their individual insights and thoughts really gave the story more depth. The writing was phenomenal and the author's immense talent was evident with each page. This is a novel that overcomes labels and genre preferences - it is one that must be experienced and not merely read. Highly recommended for fans of contemporary literature, women's fiction, and those who wish to expand their reading into a new and beautiful experience.