YA Cover

I’m so excited to reveal my cover for my YA debut, THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF SISTERS (Scholastic, February 23 ’16)  I love these two sisters and feel the cover captures their amazing connection (as well as their separate secret inner worlds,) and I can't help turning it upside down to look into each of their eyes. Here is the announcement from Publisher's Weekly:

Bestselling adult author Luanne Rice sold her YA debut, The Secret Language of Sisters, to Aimee Friedman at Scholastic. Andrea Cirillo at the Jane Rotrosen Agency brokered the world rights deal for Rice, noting that the book, scheduled for 2016, was pitched as The Diving Bell and the Butterfly meets If I Stay. In the novel a girl enters a coma-like state known as locked-in syndrome (a condition in which the victim is conscious but cannot move or speak) after getting into a car accident. The accident was ostensibly caused by the fact that she was texting with her sister while driving. The “locked-in” state allows the victim, Cirillo explained, to be aware of her surroundings as well as “the story of her sister, who blames herself for the accident.”

The Lemon Orchard: Limited edition free gift

Pre-order The Lemon Orchard in paperback before May 27, 2014 — online or from your favorite local bookseller, send in a proof of purchase — and Luanne will send you a FREE tote bag featuring the cover art from the hardcover of THE LEMON ORCHARD.  You'll also receive a signed bookplate.  Shipping and handling are on Luanne! This offer is for U.S. and Canadian residents only. Please allow 6 to 8 weeks for the delivery of your tote bag. Already pre-ordered? Keep reading!

Send your name, mailing address,and proof of purchase via the form below. You can take a photo of the receipt with your phone, or scan it, and submit the jpeg!

*photo of tote bag by Luanne's reader Michele Collard

[gravityform id="1" name="Free Lemon Orchard tote bag"]

The Lemon Orchard: Reading Group Guide

The Lemon Orchard by Luanne Rice

READING GROUP GUIDE : INTRODUCTION

(You can also download the reading group guide as a PDF here)

“They sat in the kitchen, Julia so lost in the tale that when he said the word suerte, ’luck,’ she could almost believe that he’d had it, called it forth, that they were five years in the past and their daughters both still with them.”

Five years ago, Julia’s life was shattered when her husband, Peter, and their only child, Jenny, died in a car crash not far from their Connecticut home. Julia’s grief is compounded by the fact that the police believe that Jenny—who was only sixteen and nursing her first broken heart—intentionally drove into a wall. After the initial shock, Julia took what solace she could in her work as a cultural anthropologist. “It had been her passion, to keep the dead alive through learning how they had behaved, where they had trekked in search of food, water, love” (p. 15). And now that Jenny is gone, Julia continually replays the memories of their time together, wondering if there was something she could have done to prevent the crash.

When her aunt and uncle take an extended trip to Ireland, Julia goes to stay at their beautiful Malibu home with her dog Bonnie. She has been a regular visitor to Casa Riley and its adjacent lemon orchard since childhood, but this is her first visit following the accident. Walking on the cliffs high above the beach, Julia experiences a fleeting moment when she thinks about how easy it would be to just let go and escape into the sea.

Although the Riley’s are away, someone else notices how close Julia walks to the precipice. Roberto is the latest in a long line of orchard managers, all of whom had come from Mexico seeking a better life. At first, Julia is uncomfortable with Roberto’s concern until she recognizes that he’s burdened by a sorrow of his own. She tells him about Jenny, and learns that Roberto, too, has lost a daughter. Since he is in the United States illegally, Roberto only reluctantly reveals more. Human traffickers called coyotes took Roberto, six–year–old Rosa, and a group of others from Mexico to Arizona through the Sonoran Desert. Roberto and Rosa were briefly separated just before he was picked up by the Border Patrol. When he was finally able to return to look for her, Rosa was gone.

Without resources, in constant fear of deportation, in desperation, Roberto gave her up for lost. But Julia feels there is reason for hope—and looking for Rosa makes Julia feel closer to Jenny. Soon, her burgeoning romance with Roberto awakens feelings she thought were gone forever. As Julia combs the Southwest for conclusive evidence of any sort, she discovers help in a most unexpected place. Meanwhile, Lion Cushing, the Rileys’ movie star neighbor and old family friend, watches the pair warily. “Lion wanted Julia and Roberto to be happy in their Casa love nest, but unions between educated women and the help never lasted” (p. 229).

A captivating tale of unexpected love as well as a nuanced and profoundly moving examination of one of our nation’s most controversial issues, The Lemon Orchard is one of bestselling author Luanne Rice’s most powerful and compelling novels.

About Luanne Rice

Luanne Rice is the New York Times bestselling author of thirty–one novels, twenty–two of them New York Times bestsellers. There are more than twenty–two million copies of her books in print. A native of Connecticut, she divides her time between New York City and Southern California.

A Conversation with Luanne Rice

Julia has always felt close to the Mexican people, in part, because of her Irish ancestor John Riley, who fought for Mexican independence. Was there a real John Riley?

John Riley was born in Galway, Ireland and immigrated to America through Mackinac, Michigan in 1843. He and other Irish immigrants, fleeing famine and oppression at home, took jobs as soldiers in the U.S. Army. He defected to Mexico to form the San Patricio Battalion with other Irish–born soldiers. He was young, idealistic, charismatic, and saw Mexico as being the “side of right.”

You write very empathetically about Julia’s desire to be an anthropologist. Is this a field you ever considered going into yourself?

I studied anthropology with Professor June Macklin at Connecticut College. She was a wonderful teacher and ignited my lifelong interest in the subject. I’ve remained fascinated with migration, the movements of people in search of, always, a better life: more food, less hardship, opportunity.

The novel powerfully evokes the tensions of life along the Mexico-United States border and the horrors faced by Mexicans trying to cross the desert illegally. Did you spend a lot of time there while researching and writing the book?

I visited the border several times but did most of my research in Los Angeles, getting to know a family who crossed the desert much the way Roberto and Rosa did.

Are there organizations like The Reunion Project and the Found Objects gallery that are working to help undocumented immigrants who are separated from loved ones during their journey across the border?

There are forensic anthropologists who study human remains found in the Sonoran desert, and there are many people working to help immigrants during and after their crossings.

While Roberto and Rosa’s story ends well, you share the stories of others that did not. Did you feel hesitant about including some of the more graphic details?

I wanted to tell the story in the truest possible way. I spoke to people who nearly died on the journey. Others saw death along the way. These stories affected me deeply. They are a part of our national history, shocking and real, happening right now.

Malibu and Boyle Heights may only be a short distance apart in terms of miles, but they couldn’t be more different. What inspired you to bring these two disparate worlds together?

Living in Los Angeles has shown me how these worlds merge. You see workers waiting along the roadside, hoping to be chosen for a day’s work. How can we not look beneath the surface and see them as people? Oscar Mondragon has done that. He runs the Malibu Labor Exchange out of a trailer near the Malibu City Hall and the public library. It’s a place where workers are matched with employers, treated with dignity and respect.

Handsome, charming, and delightfully self–centered, Lion Cushing is a character straight out of Hollywood’s Golden Era. What movie star or stars did you base him on?

Lion is inspired by the same friend upon whom I based Harrison Thaxter in The Silver Boat. But I also think of him as Peter O’Toole meets Albert Finney and fast–forwards to George Clooney.

Immigration reform is one of today’s most hotly debated issues. Where do you see The Lemon Orchard fitting into the discussion? 

I hope that readers will see immigration as a human story.

Whichever side of the issue one might be on, your novel humanizes both the would–be immigrants and the law–enforcement officials charged with patrolling the border. Was this your intention?

My intention was to write a good story with real characters. Black and white thinking—all good versus all bad—makes me uncomfortable. It’s easy to blame one side or one group, but how realistic is that? I try to take a gentle approach, with compassion, not automatically shut down to ideas that make me feel uneasy. Everyone has a point of view, everyone has a story.

Discussion Questions

1.Julia and Peter’s marriage was strained long before Jenny’s death, but Julia felt guilty about the impending divorce because Jenny wanted them to stay together. Is staying in a marriage for the sake of your children ever a good idea?

2.Do you think Jenny’s death was a suicide? If so, why might she have decided to take her father’s life as well as her own?

3.How do Lion’s feelings for Graciela change the way you feel about him?

4.Roberto chose to take Rosa with him on the difficult desert crossing rather than leave her behind to grow up without him. In hindsight, he realized that he had underestimated the dangers they would face. Do you sympathize with his decision? What would you have done in his place?

5.Julia loves her dog, Bonnie, all the more because Jenny loved her, too. And Roberto is overjoyed to find Rosa’s beloved doll at Found Objects because she belonged to Rosa. Is there an object that you cherish because it belonged to a lost loved one?

6.Jack Leary decides to help Julia because he understands that it’s her way of staying close to Jenny, but he comes to feel that his late wife, Louella, would approve of his mission. How might Roberto and Julia’s story have turned out if Jack hadn’t become involved?

7.Ronnie sends Jack on a wild–goose chase to Tucson, hoping that he won’t come back and learn the truth about Rosa. Is she right to mistrust him? Do you condone Ronnie’s decision to make Rosa “disappear” from the system?

8.The Lemon Orchard ends on an ambiguous note with Roberto and Rosa reunited and Julia returning to California alone. Do you think that Roberto and Julia’s story will end here, too?

9.There are many Cinderella stories about women who are “rescued” from their less privileged lives by wealthier men. And—even in the twenty first century—relationships like Julia and Roberto’s give many people pause. Why is it more socially acceptable for the man in a given couple to have a better education and more money than the woman?

10.Have you ever been involved with someone who came from a radically different socio–economic background than your own? How conscious were you of your differences?

11.America is the land of immigrants. Did Roberto’s experience resonate with what you know about your family’s journey to America?

12.What is your opinion on the United States’ current immigration policies? Do you think that most would–be immigrants have a clear picture of what life in the States is really like?

The Lemon Orchard In Paperback

The Lemon Orchard

A heartrending, timely love story of two people from seemingly different worlds—at once dramatic and romantic. Luanne Rice is the beloved author of twenty-two New York Times bestsellers. In The Lemon Orchard, one of her most moving and accomplished works yet, Rice gives us an affirming story about the redemptive power of compassion, set in the sea- and citrus-scented air of the breathtaking Santa Monica Mountains.It’s been five years since Julia’s daughter died. When she arrives to housesit at her uncle’s home in Malibu, she longs only for peace. But to her surprise, Julia becomes drawn to Roberto, the handsome man from Mexico who oversees the lemon orchard. When Roberto reveals his own heartbreak, Julia recognizes his pain, but their stories have one striking difference: Roberto’s daughter was lost—and never found. What ensues is a page-turning search across the U.S. and Mexican border and a captivating novel of love, both enduring and unexpected. “Entrancing.” —People (***)

"Rice’s fans will appreciate the evocative setting and unconventional romance, as well as the harrowing . . . depictions of border crossing and the fascinating parallels drawn between Julia’s research interests (she studies the Irish who arrived in America over a century ago) and modern-day Mexican immigrants." —Publishers Weekly

EVERY MOTHER COUNTS Book Club Pick

Here is a note from Elizabeth Benedict: "I'm thrilled that Christy Turlington's fabulous organization EVERY MOTHER COUNTS chose WHAT MY MOTHER GAVE ME as its book club pick this week. Turlington writes about her favorite gift from her mother: 'While I am just grateful to still have my mother in my life, the gifts she gave me that mattered most were the ones she gave herself: Mothering my sisters and me, traveling the world and continuing her education. The fact that she was born in El Salvador provided me with an early connection to a larger world than the one I would have known otherwise...'  Shout out to Judith Hillman Paterson, Luanne Rice, Elinor Lipman, Caroline Leavitt, Karen Karbo, and all the other wonderful contributors to the anthology."

Liz edited and wrote for WHAT MY MOTHER GAVE ME.  My essay is Midnight Typing, about how my mother gave me the gift of...perhaps you'll read it.

I am touched by Christy Turlington's words about her favorite gifts from her mother, and about the important work she is doing. According to a story in The New York Times, the goal of her organization is to help "people understand that pregnancy and childbirth, even though it’s a joyous experience for so many women, really is a risky endeavor for millions of other women,” according to Erin Thornton, executive director, who happens to be expecting right now herself. “To this day, hundreds of thousands of women will die in pregnancy and childbirth, but 90 percent of those could be prevented just with basic, simple access to health care.”

PW Review of The Lemon Orchard

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Publishers Weekly review of The Lemon Orchard:

Still devastated by grief five years after the death of her husband and teenage daughter in a car accident, Julia hopes to find solitude and solace while house-sitting at her aunt and uncle’s California estate. Amid the lush landscapes and lemon groves of Malibu, Julia does find these things—in addition to an unexpected relationship with Roberto, who oversees the estate. Roberto, an undocumented immigrant, connects with Julia over her loss: he became separated from his young daughter during their crossing from Mexico and believes her to be dead. Julia, an anthropologist specializing in movements and migrations, thinks that the little girl is still alive and sets out to find her—even if doing so means potentially losing Roberto. The plot alternates from an initially tepid pace to moments of intensity—as when the estate is threatened—that seem largely irrelevant to the developing narrative. Nevertheless, Rice’s fans will appreciate the evocative setting and unconventional romance, as well as the harrowing, if familiar, depictions of border crossing and the fascinating parallels drawn between Julia’s research interests (she studies the Irish who arrived in America over a century ago) and modern-day Mexican immigrants. Agent: Andrea Cirillo, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (July)

Reviewed on: 06/03/2013

An American Dream I Couldn't Share

 

My essay, An American Dream I Couldn't Share, appeared in the New York Times Modern Love column on July 5, 2013.  It tells some of the story behind my novel The Lemon Orchard.

Excerpt From The Lemon Orchard

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Roberto

September 2012 Before dawn, the air smelled of lemons. Roberto slept in the small cabin in the grove in the Santa Monica Mountains, salt wind off the Pacific Ocean sweetening the scent of bitter fruit and filling his dreams with memories of home. He was back in Mexico before he’d come to the United States in search of goodness  for his family, in another huerto  de limones,  the lemon orchard buzzing with bees and  the voices of workers talking,  Rosa  playing  with  her doll Maria. Maria had sheer angel wings and Roberto’s grandmother had whispered to Rosa that she had magic powers and could fly.

Rosa wore her favorite dress, white with pink flowers, sewn by his grandmother. Roberto stood high on the ladder, taller in the dream than any real one would reach. From here he could see over the treetops, his gaze sweeping the valley toward Popocatépetl and iztaccíhuatl, the two snow-covered volcanic peaks to the west. His grandmother had told him the legend, that the mountains were lovers, the boy shielding the girl, and tall on his ladder Roberto felt stronger than anyone, and he heard his daughter talking to her doll. In dream magic, his basket spilling over with lemons, he slid down the tree and lifted Rosa into his arms.  She was five, with laughing brown eyes and cascades of dark curls, and she slung her skinny arm around his neck and pressed her face into his shoulder. In the dream he was wise and knew there was no better life, no greater  goodness, than  what  they already  had.  He held her and promised nothing bad would ever happen to her, and if he could have slept forever those words would be true. Sleep prolonged the vision, his eyes shut tight against the dawn light, and the scent of limones  enhanced the hallucination that  Rosa was with him still and always. When he woke up, he didn’t waste time trying to hold on to the feelings. They tore away from him violently and were gone. His day started fast. He lived twenty-five miles east, in Boyle Heights, but sometimes stayed in the orchard during fire season and when there was extra work to be done. He led a crew of three, with extra men hired from the Malibu Community Labor Exchange or the parking lot at the Woodland Hills Home Depot when necessary. They came to the property at 8 a.m.

The Riley family lived in a big Spanish colonial–style house, with arched windows and a red tile roof, just up the ridgeline from Roberto’s cabin. They had occupied this land in western Malibu’s Santa Monica Mountains since the mid-1900s. While other families had torn up old, less profitable orchards and planted vineyards, the Rileys remained true to their family tradition of raising citrus. Roberto respected their loyalty to their ancestors and the land. The grove took  up forty acres, one hundred twenty-year-old trees per acre, planted in straight lines on the south-facing hillside, in the same furrows where older trees had once stood. Twenty years ago the Santa Ana winds had sparked fires that burned the whole orchard, sparing  Casa Riley but engulfing neighboring properties on both  sides. Close to the house and large tiled swimming pool were rock outcroppings and three-hundred-year-old live oaks— their trunks eight feet in diameter—still scorched black from that fire. Fire was mystical, and although it had swept through Malibu in subsequent years, the Rileys’ property had been spared.

Right now the breeze blew cool off the Pacific, but Roberto knew it could shift at any time. Summer had ended, and now the desert winds would start:  the Santa Anas, roaring through the mountain passes, heating up as they sank from higher elevations down to the coast, and any flash, even from a power  tool,  could ignite the canyon.  It had been dry for two months straight. He walked to the barn, where the control panel was located, and turned on the sprinklers. The water sprayed up, catching rainbows as the sun crested the eastern mountains. it hissed,  soft and  constant, and  Roberto couldn’t help thinking of the sound as money draining away. Water was delivered to the orchard via canal, and was expensive.  The Rileys had told him many times that the important thing was the health of the trees and lemons, and to protect the land from fire.

He had something even more important to do before his coworkers arrived: make the coastal path more secure. He grabbed a sledgehammer and cut through the grove to the cliff edge. The summer-dry hillsides sloped past the sparkling pool, down in a widening V to the Pacific Ocean. Occasionally hikers crossed Riley land to connect with the Backbone Trail and other hikes in the mountain range. Years back someone had installed stanchions and a chain: a rudimentary fence to remind people the drop was steep, five hundred feet down to the canyon floor.

He tested the posts and found some loosened. Mudslides and temblers made the land unstable. He wished she would stay off this trail entirely, walk the dog through the orchard, where he could better keep an eye on them, or at least use the paths on the inland side of the property. But she seemed to love the ocean.  He’d seen her pass this way both mornings since she’d arrived, stopping to stare out to sea while the dog rustled through the chaparral and coastal sage. He tapped the first post to set his aim, then swung the sledge- hammer overhead, metal connecting with metal with a loud gong. He felt the shock of the impact in the bones of his wrists and shoulders. Moving down the row of stanchions, he drove each one a few inches deeper into the ground until they were solidly embedded. The wind was blowing toward the house. He hoped the sound wouldn’t bother her, but he figured it wouldn’t. She rose early, like him.

Reprinted by arrangement with Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., from The Lemon Orchard by Luanne Rice. Copyright © 2013 by Luanne Rice

Booklist Review of THE LEMON ORCHARD

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The Lemon Orchard.

Advanced Review – Uncorrected Proof

Rice, Luanne (Author) Jul 2013. 304 p. Viking/Pamela Dorman, hardcover, $27.95. (9780670025275).

Trust Rice (Little Night, 2012), known for fiction that explores the power of family, to find the humanity in illegal immigration, a topic too often relegated to rhetoric and statistics. The story centers on Julia and Roberto, both of whom have suffered the loss of a daughter. Julia’s was killed in a car accident. Roberto’s little girl went missing as the pair crossed into the U.S. from Mexico—a trek through punishing desert that Rice depicts with visceral, heartbreaking brutality. The pair meet at the Malibu home of Julia’s aunt and uncle, where Julia is housesitting and Roberto oversees the titular orchard. An unlikely friendship forms between the two, a bond born out of shared grief, which eventually grows into a tender romance. Though Rice acknowledges the cultural chasm between her lovers, she also imbues her characters with uncommon kindness and understanding. Initially weighed down with exposition, Rice’s novel picks up steam as Julia takes up the search for Roberto’s daughter. An unexpected plot turn will leave readers begging for a sequel.

— Patty Wetli

Road Odyssey

 

Here's a fascinating essay by Vanessa Veselka:   The Lack of Female Road Narratives and Why it Matters.

I thank my writing pal Joe Monninger for sharing it with me and therefore sending me on a remembrance-of-road-odysseys-past.    I went through a hitchhiking phase in my teens, and I sometimes have nightmares of a couple specific close calls.  One happened somewhere between Old Lyme CT and Hightstown NJ; it was early October, after a summer at the beach, and I missed one of my beach friends so much I decided to hitch down to visit him in boarding school.

In this space I normally write about the nature of summer friendships, the depth of love for my beach friends, but Vanessa's essay takes me to a different place, to the reality of what happened on the road.  There I was--17, maybe?--standing thumb-out on an I-95 entrance ramp, so convinced of my own invincibility that I climbed into the cab of an 18-wheeler.  I can't picture the driver, but I can see that truck--red cab littered with fast food wrappers and a dark curtain behind the seats.  "Check it out back there," he said.  "It's where I sleep."  That was the first moment my stomach flipped.

I felt brave, resourceful.  That made me reckless, but I only know that now, from the distance of many years.  If I think of my nieces doing what I did, I'd lose it.  Yet even after that ride in the big rig--and the driver's innuendo and invitation into the back and my opening the door and jumping out at a toll booth--I kept hitchhiking.  I got to Hightstown and later made my way back home.  When my younger sisters were visiting one of their boyfriends in Warren VT, I hitched north through thickly falling snow to meet them.

Right after our father died my sisters started hitching with me--great older sister, wasn't I?   The the three of us were heading back to Old Lyme from Newport RI and got picked up on Route 138 by some creep in a rattletrap who told us he had beagle puppies at home and would we like to see them?  We scrambled out at the next exit, climbed the ledge that bounded the ramp, and walked for miles along the crest until we got tired and called our mother to pick us up.

Nothing disastrous happened, except perhaps to our psyches.  Stepping so close to the edge, courting danger, has a serious half-life.  You might not be conscious of it, but the what-ifs visit your dreams.  When I was young I was searching for something--I'd push myself to do things that must have scared me at some level--when I think of them now I marvel that I survived, thrived, and wrote about them in short stories and novels.  I feel guilty for taking my sisters on that part of my own strange journey, but back then we were so inseparable it would have been unthinkable to leave them out.

Come to think of it, my new novel, The Lemon Orchard, is about journeys.  Traveling far from what is comfortable to find something you're not even sure you need...  Maybe that's just life; it's certainly been my life.

[Image: The Highwayman by Linden Frederick]

The Lemon Orchard

i am thrilled to give you a first look at the cover of my 2013 novel--THE LEMON ORCHARD. it will come out on July 2, but you can pre-order now if you like. it's never too soon to dream about summer reading!

Very thankful to my librarian friends for this lovely mention of THE LEMON ORCHARD in Library Journal: House-sitting for her aunt and uncle in Malibu, with only her dog for company, Julia seeks solitude so that she can quietly mourn her daughter's death. Then she befriends Roberto,who tends the nearby lemon orchard and has sorrows of his own: his daughter has disappeared, but he has yet to give up hope. Classic Rice and doubtless another best seller.