Review of Coming Up For Air by Patti Callahan Henry

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I was asked to participate in the announcement that with the release of the paperback version of the novel the author was also giving readers the very first app developed from a scene in a novel and so I said yes of course I'll blog about it. A few weeks later I received in the mail a box containing a hat planter, seeds and a copy of the novel. So I read the novel and planted the seeds. Here is the result of the seeds, now they must be magic seeds because I only planted them 4 days ago.Go to Patti's website here for the app.                                     










And this review is the result of the novel

Coming Up For Air
Patti Callahan Henry
St. Martin’s Press
ISBN13:9781250007841
272 pages
Patti Callahan Henry is a new author to me but that won’tlast for long because she’s already become a trusted friend. Her novel is apoignant and fragile story of love loss, love gained and what the brokenness ofa heart does to a person’s perspective on life, whether they learn from thatloss, wallow in it or close their heart to it. It’s one woman’s search for somethingshe didn’t know she was looking for. It was a glimpse of the present and thefuture by looking to the past. Her narrative is a smooth placid lake withintermittent eddies and crashing waves that brought the sights, smells and scenesstraight from her pages onto a view screen in my mind. Her dialogue is thepoetry of the south and it resonated in me with every ya’ll and hey she said.Her characters though, those are the stars of her tale, her Ellie and Hutchdemanded attention and I breathlessly waited to see what would happen, plus themystery that was Ellie’s mother hooked me. It is a love story and yet it’s more,it’s a story of life and how the choices made effect it.
If you love the work of Karen White or Dorothea Benton Frank give this author atry and I believe like me you’ll come back for more.
 Little didEllie Calvin know that her mother’s death would be a catalyst to her findingsecrets hid deep. That when her old love Hutch O’Brien contacts her for helpwith her mother’s part in his exhibit on Atlanta’s Women of the Year in the60’s she’d learn that the woman she knew her mother to be was once someone verydifferent. That when she opened the Pandora’s box that is her mother’s journalshe would find between the pages a spirited and righteous woman who put herselfsmack dab in the middle of the civil rights movement in Alabama, she’d find awoman who had a secret love, one who wasn’t her father. And this was a mysterybecause Ellie has followed in her mother’s footsteps with her own methodicallife, she used the doubt her mother planted about Hutch’s inappropriateness asa husband to turn in another direction. She didn’t know that working with Hutchwould open up ancient wounds that never really closed. She didn’t know thatdigging around in her mother’s past would somehow dictate her future. But she’sabout to discover not only who her mother was, but who she, Ellie, is as well. Elliewill have to make some decisions about what she wants from now on and some ofthose decisions will have irrevocable effects on those closest to her. She’llwonder if trying her wings is worth the fall it may bring.
Buy the book here visit the author's website here