Big love to all the women who are reflected in the composite character Andra: Terrie Fishman Birndorf, Patty Blumberg, Jone Bouman, Louise Davis, Julie Finkel, Cynthia Lapporte, Janet Lombardi-Perwerton, Patti Weston Vandersteel, and Penny Wolf. I am so fortunate to have such great female friends.
I am grateful for the team of experts who helped bring this mess of a book together: Samantha Strom and my publisher Brooke Warner, She Writes Press; copyeditor Annie Tucker; and especially my proofreader Anne Durette, who not only understood my voice, but she cleaned up my French, as well! Thank you also to Pam Cangioli, my developmental editor for her enthusiasm, encouragement and guidance. Special thanks to Leah Lerner, my friend, whose opinion I trust.
Inspiration for the final chapter, “Get Loud,” came from Esther Perel’s TED talk “Rethinking Infidelity: A Talk for Anyone Who Has Ever Loved.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
© Daniel Reichert
Marcie Maxfield’s voice is fierce, authentic, and personal. Her debut novel, Em’s Awful Good Fortune, is based on her experiences living overseas as a tagalong wife. Her play Girls Together Always—a collection of coming-of-age stories about “growing up girl”—won the ENCORE! Producer’s Award at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. Maxfield lives in Los Angeles. She is married with two kids, a French bulldog, and two rescue cats named Hunky and Dory.
Marcie Maxfield is available for readings and book clubs. For more information or to join her mailing list, please visit her website: www.marciemaxfield.com
SELECTED TITLES FROM SHE WRITES PRESS
She Writes Press is an independent publishing company founded to serve women writers everywhere. Visit us at www.shewritespress.com.
A Wife in Bangkok by Iris Mitlin Lav. $16.95, 978-1-63152-707-4
After moving with her husband and children from a small Oklahoma town to 1975 Thailand, Crystal is confronted with a strange culture and a frightening series of events. She finds beauty in Thailand but also struggles to fight loneliness, depression, and, ultimately, betrayal, even as she tries to be the good wife she thinks she ought to be.
The Trumpet Lesson by Dianne Romain. $16.95, 978-1-63152-598-8
Fascinated by a young woman’s performance of “The Lost Child” in Guanajuato’s central plaza, painfully shy expat Callie Quinn asks the woman for a trumpet lesson—and ends up confronting her longing to know her own lost child, the biracial daughter she gave up for adoption more than thirty years ago.
The Moon Always Rising by Alice C. Early. $16.95, 978-1-63152-683-1
When Eleanor “Els” Gordon’s life cracks apart, she exiles herself to a derelict plantation house on the Caribbean island of Nevis—and discovers, with the help of her resident ghost, that only through love and forgiveness can she untangle years-old family secrets and set herself free to love again.
As Long As It’s Perfect by Lisa Tognola. $16.95, 978-1-63152-624-4
What happens when you ignore the signs that you’re living beyond your means? When married mother of three Janie Margolis’s house lust gets the best of her, she is catapulted into a years-long quest for domicile perfection—one that nearly ruins her marriage.
Center Ring by Nicole Waggoner. $17.95, 978-1-63152-034-1
When a startling confession rattles a group of tightly knit women to its core, the friends are left analyzing their own roads not taken and the vastly different choices they’ve made in life and love.
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