Diane's Pick for Monday's Memorable Mention

For me a good book means you grow sad when the story is ending, and are dying for it to keep you in its fictive dream. That recent experience happened to me when I read The Lady's Slipper, by Deborah Swift. The characters are so vivid, and the story pulls you into life in a 17th century English village where a woman is obsessed with a rare flower. Her stealing it from her Quaker neighbor will unleash all sorts of ramifications, death, torture, and even love, for her and others in a town reawakening from the austure rule of the Puritans. I hated to put this book down, and can see why Ms. Swift won in the New Writing category of a recent major publishing contest. I strive to write as well as she does.

Diane Scott Lewis, author of The False Light and the newly released Elysium