In the Mirror
Author: Kaira Rouda
Author: Kaira Rouda
Publisher: Real You Publishing Group
Pages: 214
Genre: Women’s Fiction
Format: Paperback/Kindle
What choices would you make if
you knew you might die soon?
From the multi award-winning,
best-selling author of four books, including Here, Home, Hope, a gripping
and heart wrenching novel about a young mother who has it all. The only problem
is she may be dying.
In her previous works including
All the Difference, Rouda's characters "sparkle with humor and
heart," and the stories are "told with honest insight and humor"
(Booklist). "Inspirational and engaging" (ForeWord),
these are the novels you'll turn to for strong female characters and an
"engaging read" (Kirkus).
In the Mirror is the story of Jennifer
Benson, a woman who seems to have it all. Diagnosed with cancer, she enters an
experimental treatment facility to tackle her disease the same way she tackled
her life - head on. But while she's busy fighting for a cure, running her
business, planning a party, staying connected with her kids, and trying to keep
her sanity, she ignores her own intuition and warnings from others and
reignites an old relationship best left behind.
If you knew you might die, what
choices would you make? How would it affect your marriage? How would you live
each day? And how would you say no to the one who got away?
For More Information
- In the Mirror is available at Amazon.
- Pick up your copy at Barnes & Noble or Kobo.
- Download your copy at iTunes.
- Discuss this book at PUYB Virtual Book Club
at Goodreads.
- Read chapter one here.
- Watch the trailer here.
Book Excerpt:
Rolling over to get out of
bed, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and cringed. My reflection said
it all. Everything had changed.
I looked like death.
I blinked, moving my gaze
from the mirror, and noticed the calendar. It was Monday again. That meant
everything in the real world. It meant groaning about the morning and getting
the kids off to school. It meant struggling to get to the office on time and
then forcing yourself to move through the day. It meant the start of something
new and fresh and undetermined. But Mondays meant nothing at Shady Valley. We
lived in the “pause” world, between “play” and “stop.” Suspension was the
toughest part for me. And loneliness. Sure, I had visitors, but it wasn’t the same
as being surrounded by people in motion. I’d been on fast-forward in the real
world, juggling two kids and my business, struggling to stay connected to my
husband, my friends. At Shady Valley, with beige-colored day after
cottage-cheese-tasting day, my pace was, well –
I had to get moving.
I supposed my longing for
activity was behind my rather childish wish to throw a party for myself. At
least it gave me a mission of sorts. A delineation of time beyond what the
latest in a long line of cancer treatments dictated. It had been more than 18
months of treatments, doctor’s appointments, hospitalizations and the like. I
embraced the solidity of a deadline. The finality of putting a date on the
calendar and knowing that at least this, my party, was something I could
control.
I noticed the veins standing
tall and blue and bubbly atop my pale, bony hands. I felt a swell of gratitude
for the snakelike signs of life, the entry points for experimental treatments;
without them, I’d be worse than on pause by now.
I pulled my favorite blue
sweatshirt over my head and tugged on my matching blue sweatpants.
Moving at last, I brushed my
teeth and then headed next door to Ralph’s. He was my best friend at Shady
Valley—a special all-suite, last-ditch-effort experimental facility for the
sick and dying—or at least he had been until I began planning my party. I was
on his last nerve with this, but he’d welcome the company, if not the topic. He
was paused too.
My thick cotton socks helped me shuffle across
my fake wood floor, but it was slow going once I reached the grassy knoll—the
leaf-green carpet that had overgrown the hallway. An institutional attempt at
Eden, I supposed. On our good days, Ralph and I sometimes sneaked my son’s
plastic bowling set out there to partake in vicious matches. We had both been
highly competitive, type-A people in the “real” world and the suspended reality
of hushed voices and tiptoeing relatives was unbearable at times.
“I’ve narrowed it down to
three choices,” I said, reaching Ralph’s open door. “’Please come celebrate my
life on the eve of my death. RSVP immediately. I’m running out of time.’”
“Oh, honestly,” Ralph said,
rolling his head back onto the pillows propping him up. I knew my time in Shady
Valley was only bearable because of this man, his humanizing presence. Even
though we both looked like shadows of our outside, real-world selves, we
carried on a relationship as if we were healthy, alive. I ignored the surgery
scars on his bald, now misshapen head. He constantly told me I was beautiful.
It worked for us.
“Too morbid? How about:
‘Only two months left. Come see the incredible, shrinking woman. Learn diet
secrets of the doomed,’” I said, smiling then, hoping he’d join in.
“Jennifer, give it a rest
would you?” Ralph said.
“You don’t have to be so
testy. Do you want me to leave?” I asked, ready to retreat back to my room.
“No, come in. Let’s just
talk about something else, OK, beautiful?”
Ralph was lonely, too.
Friends from his days as the city’s most promising young investment banker had
turned their backs—they didn’t or couldn’t make time for his death. His wife,
Barbara, and their three teenage kids were his only regular visitors. Some
days, I felt closer to Ralph than to my own family, who seemed increasingly
more absorbed in their own lives despite weekly flowers from Daddy and dutiful
visits from Henry, my husband of six years. Poor Henry. It was hard to have
meaningful visits at Shady Valley, with nurses and treatments and all manner of
interruptions. We still held hands and kissed, but intimacy—even when I was
feeling up to it—was impossible.
So, there we were, Ralph and
I, two near-death invalids fighting for our lives and planning a party to
celebrate that fact. It seemed perfectly reasonable, at least to me, because
while I knew I should be living in the moment, the future seemed a little hazy
without a party to focus on.
“Seriously, I need input on
my party invitations. It’s got to be right before I hand it over to Mother. I
value your judgment, Ralph; is that too much to ask?”
“For God’s sake, let me see
them.” Ralph snatched the paper out of my hand. After a moment, he handed it
back to me. “The last one’s the best. The others are too, well, self-pitying
and stupid. Are you sure you can’t just have a funeral like the rest of us?”
I glared at him, but agreed,
“That’s my favorite, too.”
Mr. & Mrs. E. David
Wells
request your presence at a
celebration in honor of
their daughter
Jennifer Wells Benson
Please see insert for your
party time
Shady Valley Center
2700 Hocking Ridge Road
RSVP to Mrs. Juliana Duncan
Wells
No gifts please—donations to
breast cancer research appreciated.
#
At first, I had been incredibly angry about
the cancer. Hannah’s birth, so joyous, had marked the end of my life as a
“normal” person. Apparently, it happened a lot. While a baby’s cells
multiplied, the mom’s got into the act, mutating, turning on each other. Hannah
was barely two weeks old when I became violently ill. My fever was 105 degrees
when we arrived in the ER. I think the ER doctors suspected a retained placenta
or even some sort of infectious disease, although I was so feverish I can’t
remember much from that time. All I remember was the feeling of being cut off
from my family—Henry, two-year-old Hank, and newborn Hannah—and marooned on the
maternity ward, a place for mothers-to-be on bed rest until their due dates.
That was hell.
At 33, I was a pathetic
sight. My headache was so intense the curtains were drawn at all times. I
didn’t look pregnant anymore, so all the nurses thought my baby had died. That
first shift tip-toed around me, murmuring. By the second night, one of them
posted a sign: “The baby is fine. Mother is sick.” It answered their questions
since I couldn’t. It hurt my head too much to try.
By the third day, my
headache had receded to a dull roar. Surgery revealed that there was no
retained placenta after all. I was ready to go home to my newborn and my life.
So with a slight fever and no answers, I escaped from the hospital and went
home to a grateful Henry and a chaotic household. I was weak and tired, but
everyone agreed that was to be expected. I thanked God for the millionth time
for two healthy kids and my blessed, if busy, life.
And then, not two weeks
later, I found the lump.
Review:
Afer many months of pain, illness and lonliness, Jennifer wonders at her absence from her own life. Despite his obvious dedication, Henry, finds himself left behind and feeling helpless where Jennifer is concerned but still juggling the children, his career and the day-to-day chores that keep a home running. When Henry and Jennifer do have a moment where romance might break the horror of her illness, her bodily needs force stark reality into even the most delicate moment.
Jennifer feels trapped in her traitorous body, while her yound mind longs for the closeness and love she has found with Henry. While she is feeling desire that has no way to be fulfilled, her old flame, now newly divorced Alex Thomas, comes back to town and she finds herself remembering those steamy moments she had with him when they were lovers. Her problems, as if possibly dying isn't enough to deal with, really begin when Alex comes to visit. He is still carrying the torch that the two had lit years before.
I liked this story and suggest you have a box of tissues nearby when you read In The Mirror. ~JoEllen
About the Author:
Kaira Rouda is an award-winning
and bestselling author of both fiction and nonfiction. Her books include: Real You Incorporated: 8 Essentials for Women Entrepreneurs;
Here, Home, Hope; All the Difference; In the Mirror; and the
short story, A Mother's Day. She lives in Southern
California with her husband and four children and is at work on
her next novel.
Her latest novel is the women’s
fiction, In the Mirror.
For More Information
- Visit Kaira Rouda’s website.
- Connect with Kaira on Facebook and
Twitter.
- Follow her on Pinterest and connect on Goodreads.
- Visit Kaira’s blog.
- More books by Kaira Rouda.
- Contact Kaira.
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