Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for BODY MAN: A THRILLER by Al Pessin on this Book Amplifier Tour.
Below you will find a book introduction, my book review, an excerpt from the book, an about the author section, and the author’s social media links. Enjoy!
Book Introduction
Loyalty can be a steady force—or a dangerous one—depending on where it’s placed and how far it’s pushed. When circumstances begin to shift, that loyalty is tested in ways that challenge both identity and purpose. In Body Man by Al Pessin, those tests unfold under mounting pressure.
A presidency marked by bold policy changes becomes the center of escalating national tension. When an assassination attempt fails, it triggers a chain reaction that spreads across the country.
Spencer, the president’s closest aide, steps into a position of influence that few others hold. As leadership becomes increasingly unstable, he must make decisions that carry significant consequences.
Carl, a disgraced Marine sniper, is recruited into a militant movement that believes decisive action is necessary. His mission begins with clarity but becomes increasingly uncertain as events spiral.
As unrest intensifies and institutions begin to fracture, both men are drawn deeper into conflict. Each believes he is acting to protect the country, even as the outcome remains uncertain.
BODY MAN: A Thriller by Al Pessin is a thought-provoking political thriller that could have come right from the present-day headlines. This story is told in dual POV alternating chapters by the two main protagonists who both believe they are saving the country.
Spencer is idealistic and fresh out of college when he lands a job writing speeches and press releases for the new freshman Senator Wade Brick from Michigan. As the Senator’s star rises and he runs for President, he focuses on gun control as his main issue. Spencer becomes Brick’s body man when the campaign goes national. The body man is the invisible person behind the President that makes his life as easy as possible. When tragedy strikes, Spencer believes in helping the President in any way he can, but will he feelings for and belief in the President have him crossing a line?
Carl is a high school graduate with no ambitions who goes into the Marines just to get away from his life in Michigan and for the pay. He takes to the discipline and discovers he is an exceptional shooter. He is drawn into a group that believes black people and immigrants are destroying the country and the libs are going to take away all guns. He is skeptical at first but slowly gets indoctrinated by the group. Carl gets accepted to Sniper School, but just as he graduates, he gets into a fight with a fellow sniper who is black and drinking and being friendly with a white girl and he is dishonorably discharged. At home, he finds himself pulled into local militia groups and they have a job for him that could change the terrible course he believes the country is on.
This thriller is so terrifying because it is so believable. Not taking political sides, you can watch the train wreck in real time that both young men are leading up to and understand that they truly believe that their views are the right ones. Even when I felt I knew where the story was going, the author would throw in a slight twist that would change the direction of both main characters’ lives right up to the end. With crisp intense writing and compelling realistic characters, I could not stop reading this story from start to finish.
I highly recommend this compelling political thriller.
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Excerpt
Chapter 1
Spencer
I’m the best person to tell you this story.
I was there. Saw the whole thing. I was the fly on the wall, the shadow, the potted plant. It was my job. I was the closest aide to the most powerful man in the world…
What I did, I did for the good of the country. There was no one else to do it. I stepped up and
did what needed to be done.
And that’s the reason you’re all living your lives like nothing happened.
Chapter 2
Carl
I woke up to what was really happening in America, and I did something. I defended it. I gave
everything.
Because that’s what American patriots do.
And that’s what I continued to do, no matter what you think, even when the Corps fucked me, even when the world turned upside down and inside out, even when “defend the Constitution
of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic” became more of a curse than an oath.
I’m Carl Reddy and this is my story.
I know you’ll remember my name. Everybody will.
But also remember that I’m an American patriot. Always was. Always will be.
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About the Author
Al Pessin is an award-winning author and veteran foreign correspondent whose decades of frontline reporting fuel his high-tension political thrillers. He’s covered war zones from Iraq to Afghanistan, interviewed militants in Gaza, and was once expelled from China for “fomenting counter-revolutionary rebellion.”
Before turning to fiction, Pessin spent nearly four decades with Voice of America, serving as a White House and Pentagon correspondent and reporting from global hotspots across Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. His debut thriller Sandblast launched the Task Force Epsilon series and was followed by Blowback and Shock Wave.
He lives in Florida with his wife and their Labrador, Rory.
In 1940, as the Nazis sweep towards Lithuania, Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara defies his government and secretly issues visas to fleeing Jewish refugees. After the war Sugihara is dismissed and disappears into obscurity.
Nearly three decades later, in Australia, Rachel Margol is shocked when her engagement reveals a long-held family secret: she is Jewish. As she grapples with this deception and the dysfunction it has caused, unspoken tragedies from the past begin to come to light. When an opportunity arrives to visit Chiune Sugihara, the man who risked his life to save the Margols during World War II, Rachel becomes determined to meet him. But will a journey to Japan, and the secrets it uncovers, heal the family or fracture them for good?
The Star on the Grave is inspired by the true story of Chiune Sugihara, and the thousands of people who owe him their lives. Sugihara is often referred to as the Japanese Schindler. It is estimated that he saved 6,000 people – the author’s father and grandparents among them, and as many as 500,000 people are alive today because of him.
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Elise’s Thoughts
The Star on The Grave by Linda Margolin Royal is a wonderful novel that explains the reasons why Holocaust survivors refused to talk about those horrific days and why some chose to no longer embrace their Jewish heritage, hoping future generations would never know the hatred and anti-Semitism that they had experienced.
The story begins with Rachel Margol, a twenty-year old nurse in 1968 Sydney who only learns she is Jewish after she becomes engaged to be married to a Greek Orthodox doctor. Her grandmother, Felka, decides to tell Rachel the truth about her heritage. Rachel feels like her whole world has fallen apart and cannot understand why she was not told sooner of her Jewish background. Why was she sent to a Catholic school? Why has she never set foot in a synagogue? After finding out her grandmother is going to attend a reunion in Japan to see Chiune Sugihara, the man who saved her dad and grandmothers’ lives from certain death at the hands of the Nazis, Rachel decides to go with her.
From 1938-1940, Chiune Sugihara was the Vice-Consul for the Japanese Empire in Kaunas, Lithuania, and he defied his own government’s orders and secretly issued thousands of transit visas to Jewish refugees desperate to flee. Sugihara is often referred to as the Japanese Schindler. It is estimated that he saved 6,000 people including the author’s father and grandparents. Because Sugihara defied the Japanese government and issued the visas anyway, he was dismissed and disappeared into obscurity. At the reunion in Japan, Rachel meets other families who have been saved by Sugihara and learns more about her heritage. Readers take a journey with Rachel as she discovers new strengths within herself. She begins to understand the sufferings her family and others experienced during World War II and why they kept so many
secrets. This story is very powerful, and the characters are very complex. Readers start to understand the trauma that Jews went through during the Holocaust and can relate the antisemitism that still goes on today. A bonus is learning about Jewish traditions, ceremonies and rituals.
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Author Interview
Elise Cooper: Idea for the story?
Linda Margolin Royal: My brother suggested we interview our dad on his 80th birthday. We knew they left Poland, went to Japan, and then came here to Australia. At first, when I heard about Sugihara saving our family from being murdered, I thought I would write it as a screenplay, but someone suggested I write it as a book as well. I gave it a try. I got it published in Australia. And now I have just secured a US publishing deal, and it is now available on Amazon. (https://www.amazon.com/Star-Grave-Linda-Margolin-Royal/dp/B0GRKKLTL2)
EC: Did you ever get the story from your dad?
LMR: He mentioned how he escaped and was helped by this man, Chinua Sugihara. I looked him up and found out he had saved 6000 Jews in the Holocaust. I found out he was the reason I am alive. I was able to get in touch with his son to tell me what happened. This book is the true story of my family’s escape although I did take some artistic license. I created a character, Rachel, based on me but not fully me.
EC: What happened to Sugihara?
LMR: He was found in Moscow in 1968 by a survivor who was living in Israel. He had issued him a visa that helped him survive the Holocaust. Sugihara was told he saved all these people. He was issuing visas but had no idea if anyone would survive. On his return to Japan, he was dismissed by the diplomatic corps, likely due to the fact Japan in WWII was an ally of Germany and he issued visas to 6000 Jews illegally. He had asked three times for permission to do it and each time his government said no but he defied orders.
EC: How would you describe him?
LMR: He challenged authority. He had a strong moral compass and did what was right. His father wanted him to be a doctor, but he left the entrance exam blank and walked out because he did not want to go into medicine. He enrolled and got a degree in International Studies. He was put in charge of the Manchurian Railway Project but resigned because of the brutality he witnessed inflicted on the Chinese workers by the Japanese.
EC: How would you describe Rachel’s grandmother, Felka?
LMR: She was based on my grandmother. Very intelligent, upbeat, positive, bold, brass, and funny. She had a huge presence and adored me and my siblings. She suffered privately, but lived and breathed for us. Both her parents perished in the Holocaust.
EC: How would you describe Rachel’s dad, Michael?
LMR: Michael was not based on my father, who was very loving. Michael conceals his own feelings from his family, non-compassionate, callous, uncaring, and avoids talking about the war. He denies his Jewish faith and makes his family do so as well. He did this because of his trauma.
EC: Were there any similarities between your dad and the book dad?
LMR: He had a loving family and a rich life. He was forced to flee Poland as an 11-year-old.
EC: How would you describe Rachel?
LMR: A deep thinker, courageous, direct, and lacks order in her life. Motherless, she lost hers when she was nine years old. Just as I did with mine, Rachel also has a strong bond with her grandmother who is the matriarch of the family. Felka was the rock of my and Rachel’s world. She was our go-to.
EC: The Japanese seemed to be very complex about the Holocaust?
LMR: There were those who did not want to give visas to the European Jews. Yet, the Jews who did come to Japan did not face antisemitism. They gave them free food, found ingredients to make Matzo. There was a synagogue there. My father and other survivors said they had a lovely experience in Japan. The Japanese people were welcoming. About twenty years ago Sugihara became a hero there.
EC: Did Rachel change once she found out she was Jewish?
LMR: She was brought up atheist. Then she finds out she has this rich heritage with a sense of belonging. This book is a mission for me to teach about the importance of faith.
EC: What do you want readers to get out of the story?
LMR: Intense generational trauma is at epidemic proportions. Hitler’s work had far-reaching consequences. It did not stop with the ones murdered but impacted second generation lives. For example, my husband’s father went through Auschwitz, survived, had terrible depression, and suicided when my husband was sixteen. This severely impacted my husband and his parenting.
Another point I wanted to make was that some people I met were brought up not Jewish only to realize in their late teens that their parents concealed they were Jewish in fear of persecution.
EC: Do you think the story has connections with what is going on today?
LMR: The book went to print the week of October 7th when 1200 Israelis were brutally murdered by Hamas. None of us could have imagined the antisemitism that followed all over the world, particularly in Australia. Here we have the largest population of Holocaust survivors other than Israel. No one ever thought anything could happen out here like the killing of Jews and then the Bondi Beach massacre happened during Hanukkah 2025.
I have this quote in the book, “Fear of being singled out as a Jew, of being hated and persecuted…people judge us. People hate us without reason.” This is happening today. I think about what is happening when I wrote this, pre-October 7th. What it means for me to be Jewish is the constant fear of persecution and being wiped off this planet but with the desire for my people to stay on it. We have been threatened with extermination and elimination from this world for thousands of years and have prevailed. In some gentiles there is this festering seed of antisemitism and given the right circumstances it rises to the top and bubbles over in all its horrific glory. So, when October 7th and the aftermath happened there were those who accused Israel of committing genocide and ignored what really took place. Then the Bondi Beach massacre happened even though Jews have been warning the government and the police for two years. There were attacks on synagogues and then what follows is attacks on Jews. We asked for 10 to 15 police at this event and were given three fairly untrained to deal with such brutality.
EC: Why the quote about the tattoos done by the Germans on the Jewish people?
LMR: You are referring to the quote, “They stripped away the identity. The numbers are for identification.” When people refer to numbers like 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust or 1200 people died on October 7th or 3000 people died on 9/11 that strips away people’s identity. Numbers – whether the tattooed numbers or the statistics strip away people’s faces and dehumanize them. This is why the posters of individual people on October 7th were so important. Statistics need to be personalized. 6 million cannot even be comprehended. When I do talks, I personalize by saying how “my father and Anne Frank were born weeks apart in 1929. My father died of natural causes at the age of 87 in Sydney Australia because one person with a moral conscious saved his life, while Anne was stripped of her life at the age of fifteen in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
EC: Next book?
LMR: It is a prequel. The backstory 1939-41. It touches on Rachel’s grandmother, Felka as a young woman arriving to Australia in 1941 and settling in Bondi Beach, a meeting place for the Jewish people. (deleted a sentence) Most, like her, are (deleted a sentence) refugees who found the beach provided comfort, safety and a place to gather and belong with their own. The whole last act of my prequel is the family, having escaped the Holocaust in 1940, settling there with Felka, (the grandmother from the first book in 1968) spreading her arms in the ocean saying, ‘this feels like freedom.’ The settings go from Warsaw, to Japan, to Australia, following the family’s flight. I am also considering writing a sequel book following Rachel’s journey in her future.
THANK YOU!!
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BIO: Elise Cooper has written book reviews and interviewed best-selling authors since 2009. Her reviews have covered several different genres, including thrillers, mysteries, women’s fiction, romance and cozy mysteries. An avid reader, she engages authors to discuss their works, and to focus on the descriptions of their characters and the plot. While not writing reviews, Elise loves to watch baseball and visit the ocean in Southern California, with her dog and husband.
After the double blow of divorce and her mother’s death, Emma Shrader receives an invitation to meet her estranged father for the first time. Alex Spencer is a wealthy, renowned author who had a brief fling with Emma’s mom, then disappeared. Now he’d like Emma to come stay at his beautiful home on Cheshire Lake in Maine.
The Spencer house is a towering Victorian steeped in history and lore, from its ornate turret to the little cemetery nestled in adjoining woods. It should be an inspiring place for Emma to finish working on her own novel, especially with Alex’s guidance. But when a neighbor is found dead under strange circumstances, the surroundings begin to feel less idyllic and welcoming. Not everyone is happy about Emma’s arrival, either—especially not Alex’s other daughter, Sunny.
There are things Emma keeps to herself about her chaotic childhood and ex-husband, but Cheshire Lake harbors secrets too—some recent, some decades old. What exactly has been going on in this quiet, close-knit community? And how much of it has to do with Emma’s arrival?
As Emma learns of other disappearances and mysterious deaths, what seemed like a fresh start begins to fill her with unease. Emma thought Cheshire Lake held the home and family she’s long been looking for. Now she wonders if she’ll ever be allowed to leave alive . . .
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Elise’s Thoughts
She Thought She Was Safe by Terri Parlato has the author venturing away from her series with Detective Rita. This is a stand-alone thriller shows how people are not whom they seem and monsters lurk behind facades.
The plot has Emma realizing she needs a new start. After the unexpected death of her mother and the collapse of her marriage, Emma is looking for a place to escape to. She discovers the identity of her father, something her mother had kept hidden. Emma contacts her biological father, Alex Spencer, a wealthy and famous author of historical mysteries. After a DNA test confirms she is indeed his daughter, he invites her to stay at his secluded Victorian home on Cheshire Lake in Maine. Emma is looking forward to getting to know her father better and enjoying the peacefulness of the lake.
But her arrival is anything but peaceful. Emma’s arrival is met with hostility from Alex’s other daughter, her half-sister, Sunny, who manages his career and is fiercely protective of him. Sunny makes it very clear; she isn’t thrilled about Emma’s sudden appearance. Then there is the mystery behind the death of her father’s sister Mary. Emma begins to feel a strange connection to her along with a growing curiosity about what really happened.
Then a neighbor is found dead and another one disappears. She also begins to experience buried memories, leaving Emma to question if she has stepped into a nightmare she may never escape.
The setting also plays a role with its isolation of the property. The setting around Cheshire Lake felt eerie and almost gothic at times, leaving readers to wonder if something is not quite right. She realizes her survival depends on recognizing red flags. Emma realizes she is in immediate danger because those around her want to make sure secrets are kept.
Readers will be hooked from page one. The tension created adds to the unease of Emma whodoes not know who to trust.
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Author Interview
Elise Cooper: Idea for the story?
Terri Parlato: My editor told me not to write a detective Rita book, so I went back to my family’s roots back in New England. I wanted to do a small-town murder mystery in Maine with some gothic vibes. My husband and I traveled to Boston and Maine. I thought I wanted to write a story about family, incorporating that with my love of history by having the main character, Emma’s father, a best-selling author of historical fiction. All these came together for the story.
EC: How would you describe Alex, the writer father?
TP: He is spoiled, people make excuses for him, self-centered, can turn his emotions off and on, strong-willed, spoiled, a narcissist, someone who enjoys money, and thinks himself as an optimist.
EC: How would you describe Emma?
TP: A librarian. Feels like an outsider to her new family. Faces adversity head on. She is somebody that is looking for some stability and a family.
EC: What about Sunny, Emma’s half-sister?
TP: I have stepsisters and brothers, half sisters and brothers, but none of them are anything like Sunny. She feels superior, is mean, confrontational, possessive of her dad, and wants everything to center around her and her family. She feels superior to Emma and is not supportive. She feels threatened by Emma and does not want her to have any relationship with her father. I see her as a villain through and through.
EC: What is the role of Emma’s ex-husband, Ben?
TP: He was the reason Emma left her life behind. There were some things that happened that she wanted to get away from. She is a woman in her thirties who recently lost her mother and has her husband turning out to be a total jerk. She needed a new start and here comes her dad who is willing to help her out.
EC: What was the role of Alex’s sister, Mary?
TP: Even though Mary is dead Emma feels a sense of kinship with her. She connected to her.
EC: Next book?
TP: It is not a Detective Rita book. I am writing it as we speak and sending portions to my editor to see if he likes it. The story is set in the Northeast, right outside of Boston. It is very different from this book. It is about a group of forty people who have been friends since elementary school. After this horrible thing happens, they are the only survivors. I try to write a different book each time.
THANK YOU!!
***
BIO: Elise Cooper has written book reviews and interviewed best-selling authors since 2009. Her reviews have covered several different genres, including thrillers, mysteries, women’s fiction, romance and cozy mysteries. An avid reader, she engages authors to discuss their works, and to focus on the descriptions of their characters and the plot. While not writing reviews, Elise loves to watch baseball and visit the ocean in Southern California, with her dog and husband.
Day in, day out, servant Rosalie is forced to aid in the harrowing medical selections at Auschwitz, marking prisoners as “fit” or “unfit” with trembling hands. She once thought “unfit” meant they’d get the help they needed. Now she knows the devastating truth: “Fit” means they live another day, “unfit” means they don’t…
Every day, her heart breaks further as she hopelessly scans the crowds for the face of the man she loves, torn from her a year ago simply for being Jewish. Praying that he’s still alive, Rosalie desperately tries to save as many other men as she can—risking everything by marking them as fit and hoping her act of rebellion isn’t noticed.
Then one icy morning, she looks up from her list into the stunning green eyes of the man in her line—the man her heart beats for. And now the real fight begins, as Rosalie risks her life to save Stefan’s again and again. But then one morning, Stefan isn’t there. Rosalie frantically searches for him, blood turning to ice. He’s gone. But how far will she go to find him? And can he stay alive without her until she does…?
THE GIRL WITH THE LIST by Shari J. Ryan is a heart wrenching, gripping, and emotional historical WWII fiction story featuring a young Polish midwife and a young Jewish man who fall in love before the Nazis come to their small Polish town and both ultimately end up in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Rosalie witnessed the death of her mother, the town’s midwife, and sister while giving birth alone in their cottage at the age of eight. She was determined to make up for not helping her mother by becoming a midwife herself and saving everyone she could. She helps a Jewish family delivering their youngest and falls in love with their eldest son, Stefan. When the Nazis come and takeover Stefan’s family’s factory, Rosalie gets scooped up by a Nazi officer who has heard of the amazing midwife and needs her for his wife in their home on the Auschwitz concentration campgrounds.
Rosalie is forced to aid the Nazi officer not only in their home, but in the camp deciding the fate of the lined-up prisoners as fit or unfit for work. Fit prisoners were sent to the factories and farms, while the unfit were eliminated. For a healer this was soul-stealing, but she was determined to help as many as possible while always watching for the eyes of the man she loved.
One morning she looks up and her nightmare comes true. Many times, she must make decisions to try and save Stefan but is his new determination better or worse. All the while her employer knows of their connection and is determined to torture Rosalie as much as Stefan. When Stefan disappears, Rosalie is determined to find him no matter what the cost.
This book was so difficult to read at times, but I also could not put it down because I was so invested in Rosalie and Stefan. Knowing from history how many people died in the camps and especially those that the doctors experimented on, had me on the edge of my seat every time Stefan disappeared from Rosalie’s lists. Rosalie was not only treated poorly physically by her Nazi employers, but the officer psychologically torments her using her morality, ethics, and compassion for others against her. I loved the continual references to time that a human has on this earth, the preciousness of every hour and minute, and Rosalie and Stefan’s belief in their love being able to transcend time. Make sure the tissues are close while reading this book.
I highly recommend this story of love, resilience, and bravery during a horrific time and in a horrific place.
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About the Author
Shari J. Ryan is an award winning USA Today and International Bestselling Author of over 40 novels, with more than 700,000 copies sold and translations in 13 languages. She writes emotionally evocative WWII fiction inspired by true stories that have resonated with readers around the globe. Her work has earned Top 100, Top 10, and #1 chart rankings, as well as two Rone Awards.
As the granddaughter and great-granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, Shari brings a deeply personal connection to her work. Her stories are rooted in truth and remembrance, written to ensure history is never forgotten.
For Shari, writing is more than a passion; it’s a way of expressing herself and connecting with others. She strives to share the emotions she experiences with every reader who picks up one of her books.
Shari holds a bachelor’s degree from Johnson & Wales University and began her career as a graphic artist and freelance writer until 2012, when she discovered her true calling in writing novels.
Some of Shari’s bestselling books include The Nurse Behind the Gates, The Stolen Twins, The Bookseller of Dachau, The Doctor’s Daughter, and The Last Words Series—gripping stories that keep readers on the edge of their seats.
A lifelong Boston girl, Shari now lives in a small town in the suburbs with her adored husband and two incredible sons, who make her feel like the luckiest woman in the world.
Theodore Copeland has created a fabulous life in the desert oasis of Palm Springs, where he shares a fabulous pink mid-century home with three fabulous friends: Barry, a former actor still clinging to his youth, his hair, and the memory of the dream role that killed his career; Ron, an uprooted Christian from the Midwest with a big heart but no one to give it to; Sid, who, after coming out late in life, has never found love. Teddy is the caustic, unspoken leader of “The Golden Gays”—the foursome’s monthly drag tribute to The Golden Girls. Despite their foibles and bickering, they have turned their golden years into a golden era.
But the harmony of their desert enclave becomes a carousel of emotional baggage when Teddy’s estranged sister, Trudy, shows up on their doorstep, her dramatic teenage granddaughter in tow. While Teddy keeps Trudy at arm’s length, she manages to wheedle her way into the lives of the Golden Gays, until the real reason for her visit is revealed and the secrets they’ve all been keeping from each other unravel faster than a hastily stitched hemline.
THAT’S WHAT FRIENDS ARE FOR by Wade Rouse is a wonderful look at a family made not born written also as a beautiful homage to the Golden Girls sitcom. This LGBTQ+ fiction novel takes you on a rollercoaster ride of emotions with witty and sharp dialogue and characters that could walk right off the page.
Teddy, Ron, Sid, and Barry are mature gay friends living together in a pink mid-century home in Palm Springs. The four came from different professions and parts of the country to make a safe home for themselves in their golden years. While they all get along, like any family, they have their problems, too. They perform together every month as The Golden Gays, which is based on a script written from an original episode from the Golden Girls sitcom but is also updated.
Teddy is Dorothy. He runs the mid-century vintage clothes store, Dorian Gay, and is a widower. He lost his husband to suicide. Ron is Rose. He is an exceptional interior designer and the mother hen of their home. Ron grew up in a Christian home and still deeply believes, he just does not go to a traditional church. Sid is Sophia. He is the oldest of the group, Jewish, and still practices as an attorney parttime. He lived his life hiding his sexuality and raised a family as expected in his time but came out and divorced once his children got older. Barry is Blanche. He is a very fit actor who is afraid of aging. He writes the episodes for their shows and has never emotionally dealt with having his character cut from the original Golden Girls pilot.
While each is dealing with their own mortality, they are also dealing with the changing society, not only in the general population, but in the gay community of as well. Teddy is hiding a secret and before he can even emotionally deal with that, his ultra conservative sister and her young, goth granddaughter show up at their home and shake everyone and everything up. Soon secrets begin to surface and relationships alter. Can this chosen family survive?
I loved this novel so much. There is so much love, caring, crying, anger, and perfectly cutting dialogue. Being of a certain age myself and having worked in the bar and restaurant industry my entire life, these characters are wholly and partial reminders of many of my friends and co-workers. This story made me laugh out loud, and feel rage at the injustices that still abound, but it ultimately is a story of love and family and left me with a smile on my face and a full heart.
I highly recommend this beautifully written LGBTQ+ fiction novel.
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About the Author
I am the USA TODAY, Publishers Weekly and internationally bestselling author of 18 books, including five memoirs and thirteen novels. I also write fiction under the pen name, Viola Shipman, as a tribute to my working poor Ozarks grandma, whose family stories, heirlooms and love inspire my novels. I was a finalist for the Goodreads Choice Awards in Humor (I lost to Tina Fey) and was named by Writer’s Digest as “The #2 Writer, Dead or Alive, We’d Like to Have Drinks With” (I was sandwiched between Ernest Hemingway and Hunter Thompson).
That’s What Friends Are For is inspired by The Golden Girls, and this novel is like the sitcom in that it lessens life’s pain with laughter, it breaks down walls and unites with humor. Moreover, it’s ferociously funny (money back guarantee you will laugh on the first page!), hopeful and heart wrenching, a story about what so many of us have endured in this life to find friendship, love and respect. The novel has already been praised by #1 New York Times Jodi Picoult “Hilarious, tender, devastating!), the New York Post (Full of heart, humor and friendship, quick witted and heartfelt … buy one for yourself and another for your BFF) and named a 2026 Most Anticipated Read by Zibby Owens.
This marks the twentieth book I’ve written and my twentieth year as a published author, and I feel as if this is not only the book I was meant to write but also the right moment for this story – inspired by The Golden Girls – of friendship, family, faith, aging and acceptance. This novel is a HUGE departure for me in in career – my first novel under my own name – and I wrote this story because it called to my soul, and I knew that I needed to follow my heart. I’ve learned that sometimes the greatest moments in our lives happen when we are most terrified – as writers and souls – and that if we can just corral that fear and walk through the fire to emerge on the other side – heart racing, a bit scorched –what we dreamed of and fought so hard to achieve has the chance to change the world. I believe this novel does. When you think of the show or hear the lyrics to the song, and smile, that is the spirit that this novel captures.
Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for THE RELUCTANTPIONEER by Julie McDonald Zander on this Black Coffee Book Tour.
Below you will find a book description, my mini book review, an about the author section, and the author’s social media links. Enjoy!
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Book Description
Matilda Koontz cherishes her life as a wife and mother on a Missouri farm, but her hardworking husband wants to claim free farmland in the Pacific Northwest. When he suggests selling the farm to trek two thousand miles across the Oregon Trail, she balks.
But in the spring of 1847, Matilda and Nicholas Koontz and their sons embark on a grueling journey westward. Fresh graves testify to dangers of disease, accidents, starvation, and a multitude of hazards threatening her family and her beloved’s dream.
With new struggles at every turn, Matilda wonders how she can protect her sons on such a perilous journey. Will they reach the trail’s end? Will the babe growing inside her womb survive?
When tragedy strikes, the question changes: How can she possibly continue?
This pioneer woman’s journey is inspired by a true story.
THE RELUCTANT PIONEER by Julie McDonald Zander is a Christian historical fiction novel featuring a woman and her family’s journey westward from Missouri on the Oregon Trail in 1847. The story draws from real events and thorough research, making each scene feel immersive.
This is such an emotional read as you experience every step of the journey. Matilda is courageous and resourceful through all the trials of this journey. All the secondary characters are fully developed and I loved Matilda’s boys. I did have a bit of trouble with the slow start, but it did eventually pull me in, and I was even disappointed when it ended. I enjoyed this author’s writing in a previous book, and I do realize this is a Christian historical and based on a religious woman, but this story had too many religious references for me to thoroughly enjoy.
Overall, though, I found Matilda compelling, the story historically interesting and well researched, and well worth reading.
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About the Author
Julie McDonald Zander, an award-winning journalist, earned a bachelor’s degree in communications and political science from the University of Washington before working two decades as a newspaper reporter and editor. Through her personal history company, Chapters of Life, she has published more than 75 individual, family, and community histories. Her debut novel, The Reluctant Pioneer, won a Will Rogers Medallion and was a finalist for the Western Writers of America’s Spur Award for Best Historical Novel. She and her husband live in the Pacific Northwest, where they raised their two children.
