Two Novellas, Special International Edition
by Eve La Salle Caram and Cecilia Manguerra Brainard
PALH, 2018, softcover with illustrations, 166 pages, ISBN 9780971945883
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Delightful Stories That Take You Away to Italy and France
Eve La Salle Caram and Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, awarded authors and long-time teachers of Creative Writing, team up in writing two novellas for the Special International edition published by PALH (Philippine American Literary House). The book is beautifully illustrated by Nina Lim-Yuson and designed by C. Sophia Ibardaloza. Caram’s and Brainard’s protagonists are women who journey to Rome and Paris and find creativity, love, and healing.
Praise
“In Eve La Salle Caram’s Please, San Antonio!, an emotionally isolated American woman’s trip to Rome becomes a powerful quest to find what she has lost: her creativity, identity, and “an open place in her heart.
“In Cecilia Manguerra Brainard’s Melisande in Paris, a young seamstress from the French countryside comes to Paris to assist her dressmaker aunt, and rediscovers her talent, strength, and a precious “feeling of wholeness” in her new lover’s arms.
“Together, Caram’s Beatrice and Brainard’s Melisande cross geographical borders and borders of the heart with vitality and spirit, and will inspire those who believe in the possibility of heaven on earth.” (Linda Venis, Ph.D., Former Director, UCLA Extension Depart of the Arts and Writers’ Program; Editor of Inside the Room and Cut to the Chase)
“Two delightful novellas written by two award-winning authors, Eve La Salle Caram and Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, who write about women in search of love and connections – lost and found, real and imagined. Their journeys draw us into worlds richly shaped by light and darkness, textures and colors that enrich our awareness of emotions shared in common across generations, nationalities, and gender.” (Akemi Kikumura Yano, Ph.D., Anthropologist and Curator; Author of Through Harsh Winters and Promises Kept; Former President and Chief Executive Officer of the Japanese American National Museum; Current Affiliate Graduate Faculty at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa.)
About the Authors
Eve La Salle Caram is the author of five novels, those in her book Trio, A Corpus Christi Trilogy, and the interconnected duo of The Blue geography and Wintershine. She is also the editor of Palm Readings, Stories from Southern California, a multicultural anthology of stories by Southern California women.
For over thirty years she has taught Literature and Writing at California State University, Northridge, and Fiction Writing at UCLA Extension’s renowned Writers’ Program where she won the Outstanding Instructor in Creative Writing in 2006. She also teaches at Los Angeles City College whose students helped inspire her novel, Rena, A Late Journey, and who asked her to write Looking for Johnny, the short novel that completes Trio. All of her books have been used in Literature and Writing classes in California and in Texas.
Cecilia Manguerra Brainard has written three novels: When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, Magdalena, and The Newspaper Widow. She has also written and edited eighteen other books.
Cecilia has received a California Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction, a Brody Arts Fund Award, a Special Recognition Award for her work dealing with Asian American youths, as well as a Certificate of Recognition from the California State Senate, 21st District. She has also been awarded by the Filipino and Filipino American communities she has served. In 1998, she received the Outstanding Individual Award from her birth city, Cebu, Philippines. She has received several travel grants in the Philippines, from the USIS (United States Information Service). In 2001, she received a Filipinas Magazine Award for Arts. Her books have won the Gourmand Award and the Gintong Aklat Award.