HOW LONG MUST TWINS BE SEPARATED BEFORE THEY FORGET?

HOW LONG MUST TWINS BE SEPARATED BEFORE THEY FORGET?
Two new novels follow the separate lives of twins whose parents thought it possible.

The twins are fraternal, a boy and a girl, with very different personalities. What could be more natural when Mom and Dad divorce than for Mom to keep the girl and for Dad to take the boy? “And never the twain shall meet” is the parents’ decision for the four-year-old brother and sister.
Kyleah’s Tree, by Janet Muirhead Hill, begins when Kyleah is eleven years old. She lives in a foster home because her mother died when she was five, and the grandparents she was sent to live with moved to a retirement home a year later. “We’re sorry, they don’t allow kids,” she was told before someone took her to a family of strangers. Is it any wonder that Kyleah has trust issues and determines not to make close friendships? “If I love them, I lose them,” she believes.
Many hair-raising adventures ensue when she and a thirteen-year-old foster brother run away, trekking from Kansas to Canada in search of families they have lost.
Kendall’s Storm, the companion novel, begins when the boy is ten-years-old going on eleven. His dad takes him from town to town and state to state, leaving each without notice or any time for Kendall to gather up his belongings to take with him. He is the timid twin who fears both his father’s wrath and just about everything else. He longs for his sister and carries a faded photo of the two of them taken just days before their fourth birthday—and their separation.
When Kendall rescues a dog from a hail storm, his loneliness is somewhat abated, his courage begins to grow, but his fateful adventures are far from over. Kendall has learned that when he dares to ask his father questions, he might not get an answer, and that when Dad doesn’t answer, it’s bad news. Two questions he’s learned never to ask are whether or not his sister and mother are alive and, if they are, why can’t he see them?
When Dad decides to settle in southwest Washington on Long Beach Peninsula, Kendall is not happy. He hates the cold dampness and is afraid of the ocean. When he learns that his father’s job is not with the FBI as Kendall liked to believe, but rather a drug dealer, Kendall is devastated and runs away only to be lost in the rain forest. After he’s rescued, Dad is arrested, and Kendall goes to a foster home where he lives with three other boys until a typhoon sweeps the area.
Kendall and Kyleah, twins with different innate traits, travel journeys that have almost no similarity. They live in very different settings, experience different life styles, and are influenced by different kinds of people. The foster homes they each live in are opposite—one kind and responsible, the other abusive and negligent. Yet, they share a bond like no other, a bond formed before birth and strengthened in the first four years of life. Book reading groups will find fodder for lively discussion as they compare and contrast these children’s stories. The comprehensive discussion guides in the back of each book will stimulate thoughtful debates for adult readers as well as for middle-grade students in classroom settings.

Each of these novels is an exciting, stand-alone read and both are now available. A third book will be released next year, completing this trilogy of twins.

For more information about these novels or to schedule an interview or a school visit, please contact the author at 406-685-3545 or e-mail her at author@janetmuirheadhill.com. These books may be purchased for $12.00 each at www.ravenpublishing.net, www.amazon.com, or in many fine stores.

Write with passion to overcome fear

If an author is not passionate about his or her book or story, people will not be passionate about reading it.  All my favorite books were written by authors with a purpose and a passion for a cause. Khaled Hosseini’s passion for the plight of Afghanistan and compassion for Afghani women  fill his book, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and take the reader into the hearts, minds, and  emotional upheaval of the characters. He makes the reader care about them on a gut level. 

Barbara Kingsolver in each of her books, has a cause—and a passion for it—that is conveyed by the characters who lead the author and then us through the African jungle, the Cherokee nation, the Appalachian hills and valleys. In Prodigal Summer, we care about Deanna and the animal predators she wants to protect, about the dying mother, her children, the young widow, and each of the other characters as we learn what it is that drives them to be who they are. 

Marcus Stevens has us caring not only about a young white girl in love with an Indian, but also, the history of the Cheyenne girl whose body is accidentally exhumed in Useful Girl.  

In Jana McBurney-Lin’s My Half of the Sky, we empathize with the young Chinese woman whose life is controlled and mismanaged by her father who arranges a marriage in order to pay off gambling debts that threaten to get him killed.  Millions of books by authors who care about the plight of his or her characters, allow the reader to share their passions and convictions vicariously.

If you grew up in an age and similar culture as I did, you probably achieved the ability to mask and subdue emotions. Keep it all inside. Don’t let anyone see how you feel. Don’t cry. Don’t get mad! Be nice. Always. No matter how you feel. Never ever hurt anyone’s feelings. Feelings? Feelings became so taboo for me, that I grew up without the tools needed to identify any kind of emotion. And without emotion, it was very difficult to know what I wanted, or even who I was. As I grew older, I learned that it was easier for me to get in touch with how I felt about anything, and to express those feelings by writing, than it was by speaking. I was so afraid of emotion, that the more I felt, the less I could speak. The stronger the emotion, the more mute I became. That caused some very embarrassing situations. 

The first date I ever had was to  a hay ride put on by the FHA. Girls had to ask boys. I had a terrible, almost painful crush on a very cute boy in my class named Tad. I admired him from afar, never speaking two words to him. My older brother, determined to “help” me, insisted that I just call the guy and ask if he would go with me. “What’s the worst he can say?”  He initiated the call for me, and as soon as he had Tad on the line, stuck the phone to my ear. I gulped and somehow muttered the question. “Will you go to the FHA hayride with me?”  To my horror, he said, “Yes.” 

I was in no way prepared to deal with this situation. Fear paralyzed my vocal cords for the whole evening. Tad tried to start a few conversations. I wanted to answer but terror kept me from responding with more that a nod, a head-shake, a squeeze of the hand or a hug. Oh, yes. I wasn’t afraid to put my arms around him and hold on tight in a desperate effort to say, I’m sorry I can’t talk, but please love me anyway. 

It was our only date. I still idolized him from afar, knowing I had blown any chance that he would ever want to go out with me again. A few years later, I was informed that a car crash had taken his life. To this day I don’t understand my reaction. I giggled, an embarrassed and uncontrollable giggle. I was sad, shocked——and I laughed——an example of the confused emotional state I lived in then. 

I can think of dozens of other face-burning, spine-crawling, wishing-to-disappear-through-the-cracks-in-the-floor moments throughout my lifetime that resulted from my inability to say the right thing at the right time. The more I admired people, the harder it was to speak to them. The more I hated something, the more I avoided any subject that might require me to speak of it. The sadder I felt, the more I isolated myself. And if I couldn’t physically hide, I mentally withdrew, escaping behind a wall in my mind where no one could peek. 

Written words became a vehicle for me to explore the wilderness of my confused inner life. Words on paper took me places forbidden to my tongue. Through poetry and prose, I could begin to taste and try the suppressed emotions that haunted me. I could begin to find out what I valued; what disturbed me, what was important to me, and what was not. Why do I like to write fiction? I think it’s because a fictional character can take the passions and convictions and emotions that I hold deeply, and portray them in a real and meaningful way— a way in which I am still not capable of verbalizing orally, or fully understanding beyond the written page.