Blog Archives
The Art of Quilting
My Sister’s Quilt is a collection of interwoven stories where generations of women, connected through quilts and memory, discover how love, loss, and legacy are sewn into every stitch of their lives. What first inspired you to connect quilting with storytelling and memory?
Quilts have been in my life since I was a child, from my grandmother to my sister, who is a quilter. I spent time in the Amish community, where women still gather together to finish quilts by hand.
Each story feels both distinct and interconnected. How did you approach structuring the collection to maintain that balance?
The book had to be connected story to story and quilt to quilt to make the book work. I have to admit it was not an easy thing to accomplish, and I spent a lot of time with rewrites to make the book and stories flow for the reader.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
I want to show the readers how far back the art of quilting could be found, how quilts were used in the Underground Railroad. Quilting tells a story; it is art, and its beauty is unbelievable. If you own a quilt, you hold history.
The book spans different time periods. Was there one era that was particularly meaningful or challenging to write?
Each time period was meaningful, and it was so much fun to tell a story, including a piece of history often ignored or forgotten.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Instagram | Website | Amazon
My Sister’s Quilt: A Collection of Short Stories presents quilts as silent witnesses to history, identity, and resilience. Each story is stitched with meaning-threading together lives across generations and continents.
From a quilt that crosses oceans to return to a woman who had forgotten it existed, to coded patterns aiding the Underground Railroad, these stories span eras of struggle and strength. Some pieces honor those who never returned from war. Others raise awareness through the artistry of AIDS memorial quilts or share quiet lessons passed down by grandmothers. A young entrepreneur reimagines quilting with a gothic twist, while a devoted sister supports her famous author sibling from the background.
My Sister’s Quilt is a moving tribute to love, loss, and the unbreakable threads that bind us-where the past and present live in every stitch, and history still speaks. In every square, a story unfolds. In every quilt, a legacy lives on.
You Are Always in My Heart
You Are Always in My Heart, by Rebecca Choy, is a tender and honest children’s book about love, loss, and the power of memory. It’s told from both a grown-up’s and a child’s perspective, showing how they each face the idea of death and saying goodbye. Through gentle words and warm illustrations, it explains that while death means someone can’t come back, love never goes away. The story also gives children comforting ways to remember someone, by writing, drawing, hugging a favorite toy, or looking at photos. It’s bilingual, too, written in both English and Cantonese, which adds a special cultural touch.
This is a heartfelt children’s book. The language is simple, but the feelings are big. I found myself tearing up more than once, especially when the child wonders if the parent will die and how they’ll cope. The way the author handles that fear is so real and compassionate. There’s no sugarcoating, just honesty mixed with comfort. I also loved how it quietly teaches emotional resilience, reminding both kids and adults that it’s okay to cry, to be angry, to be scared. The writing feels like a soft hug during a hard talk.
What really stood out to me was the cultural layer about Cantonese traditions and how death is often not talked about. That part felt so important. It makes the story not just about love and grief, but about breaking the silence and giving children permission to ask tough questions. It’s thoughtful and brave, but still full of warmth. And the illustrations, crafted by Choy and her daughter Bella, are full of heart. They draw young readers into the story with a beautiful simplicity.
I’d recommend You Are Always in My Heart to parents, teachers, or anyone who wants to help a child understand loss in a gentle way. It’s not just for kids who have experienced grief, but for any family that wants to build openness and empathy. This is the kind of picture book you keep close, maybe even read together when life feels a little too big. It’s tender, healing, and full of love.
Pages: 48 | ISBN : 978-1-7389652-1-2
Reach Out with Acts of Kindness: A Guide to Helping Others in Crisis
Letitia E. Hart’s Reach Out with Acts of Kindness is a heartfelt and practical guide born from personal loss and the deep desire to help others in pain. The book begins with Hart’s devastating story of her husband John’s brain cancer diagnosis and the emotional, physical, and spiritual toll that followed. From there, she expands outward, offering compassionate and straightforward advice on how to support people facing illness, grief, or crisis. Divided into clear, accessible sections, the book mixes personal storytelling with tangible suggestions, from cooking a meal and writing cards to simply showing up when someone is hurting. It reads like a friend pulling up a chair to tell you what to do when you don’t know how to help.
Reading this book felt like sitting across from someone who has lived through the storm and wants to help you keep your footing when it’s your turn. Hart’s writing isn’t fancy or polished for effect, but that’s what makes it so honest and moving. She doesn’t hide behind flowery words or abstract theories. She writes straight from the gut, with empathy, humor, and a kind of raw clarity that only comes from living through the unimaginable. I found myself touched by her humility and her insistence that kindness doesn’t need to be grand. She shows how simple gestures like a note, a meal, or a quiet presence can hold people together when everything else is falling apart. Some sections broke my heart, others made me pause and think about how often I’ve stayed silent out of fear of saying the wrong thing.
What stood out most was the emotional honesty. Hart admits when she struggled, when she was angry, when she didn’t know what to do. She gives readers permission to be human while encouraging them to act anyway. The advice is practical without ever feeling clinical. The way she weaves her story into the guidance makes it feel real and attainable. You can sense her grief, but also her purpose. The tone stays steady and compassionate, not preachy or sentimental. There’s an undercurrent of resilience that made me feel both sad and hopeful. I could feel her love for John in every line, and that love radiates outward, asking readers to keep it going through their own acts of kindness.
I’d recommend Reach Out with Acts of Kindness to anyone who’s ever felt helpless watching someone they care about suffer. It’s also for those learning to rebuild after loss. This isn’t just a book about grief, it’s about community, empathy, and what it means to be there for one another. It’s comforting without sugarcoating reality. For me, it was a reminder that kindness doesn’t always need words, only intention and heart.
Pages: 239 | ASIN : B0CZWGJLHR
Resiliency and Strength
All She Knew follows a twelve-year-old girl who loses her mother suddenly, leaving her with chaos, confusion, and grief as she tries to navigate a new world in a new place she has no connection to. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The inspiration for the story is my own. I lost my mother at a young age, and All She Knew is loosely based on my story. I didn’t have the opportunity to connect with other kids who had experienced a loss at that time. I wanted to provide a story that other children and those young at heart can relate to; to connect with the challenges the character goes through; to know they are not alone and can be ok through their journey.
What were some ideas that were important for you to personify in your characters?
I wanted to show the range of emotions Charity goes through and the different experiences she has. I wanted to show that it’s ok to laugh, cry, feel uncomfortable, angry and unsure as you go through grief. Grief isn’t linear, it has ups, downs, and sideways turns. I wanted to normalize this for children experiencing loss and different ways of navigating through it.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
It was important for me to highlight the loneliness, sadness and confusion Charity goes through. When anyone loses a loved one, they can feel isolated and alone. For a child, those feelings are more confusing, hard to understand and work through. I wanted to connect and explore the different dynamics and struggles Charity goes through. The various ranges of her grief journey and trying to understand her new reality, who she is and will need to become after her loss. It was important for me to show all the different angles to her. I wanted the reader to connect with the character; to see themselves in what Charity is experiencing.
What is one thing that you hope readers take away from All She Knew?
I hope readers take away that they aren’t alone in their grief and they can get through it. I want readers to know, as is written in the synopsis of the book, “while tragedy can feel like a pit of turbulent emotions, resiliency and strength are always within us.”
Author Links: GoodReads
Charity’s life becomes a roller coaster. She’s lonely. She has to go through a grieving process she doesn’t understand. And in all of this she has to leave her home and move to a place she doesn’t feel connected to. It’s overwhelming. How is a young girl supposed to get through this?
In this powerful story, All She Knew looks at the human spirit to remind us of this important truth; while tragedy can feel like a pit of turbulent emotions, resiliency and strength are always within us.
A Finalist in American Book Fest 2025 American Fiction Awards which honors literary excellence.
All She Knew
All She Knew tells the story of Charity, a twelve-year-old girl whose world turns upside down after the sudden death of her mother. In a voice that feels both tender and raw, the book walks us through her grief, the disorienting changes of moving in with relatives, and the awkward navigation of friendships and school life in the shadow of loss. The narrative is intimate, almost like leafing through Charity’s private diary, showing her memories of her mother, her inner thoughts, and her small moments of joy and sadness as she tries to make sense of a life she didn’t choose.
The writing is simple but honest, which makes the emotional weight even heavier. There’s no filter on Charity’s feelings, her anger, her loneliness, her confusion, and it hit me how rarely we allow young people that kind of space in real life. I found myself protective of her, frustrated with the adults who clearly cared but sometimes didn’t know how to show it, and touched by the fleeting, sweet moments that gave her hope. The book doesn’t rush her healing, and I liked that. Grief is messy, and the author lets it stay messy.
Some scenes linger in places that are uncomfortable, but those moments are often the most truthful. I appreciated how the book showed the push and pull between wanting to hold on to the past and needing to step into something new. It’s not a dramatic, twist-heavy story. It’s a quiet one, built on small shifts in emotion, and that’s where its strength lies.
All She Knew is for anyone who has had to start over after losing someone they love, especially teens and young adults trying to figure out who they are without that person. It’s heartfelt, gentle, and painfully real. This isn’t a book you race through. It’s one you sit with, maybe with a box of tissues close by, and let it remind you that even when the shape of your life changes completely, the love you carry stays with you.
Pages: 157 | ASIN : B0CZJT6HDT
Forever Fly Free: One Woman’s Story of Resilience and the Power of Hope and Love
Forever Fly Free is the gripping, raw, and deeply human story of Jenny Brandemuehl’s life turned upside down after her husband Mark is severely burned in a horrific plane crash. Told in five parts that span panic, heartbreak, healing, and rediscovery, the book chronicles the emotional and physical toll of trauma, not just on the person injured but on the entire family. Jenny lays bare the sleepless nights, medical jargon, ICU beeps, and gut-wrenching decisions, all the while weaving in threads of love, humor, and a whole lot of grit.
Jenny’s voice is steady and clear, and even when she writes about the most painful moments like her husband’s bandaged, unrecognizable body, or the moment her son learns about the accident. There’s a grace in the way she keeps moving forward. Her writing flows naturally, like a close friend confiding in you. It’s not fancy, and thank God for that. It’s real. There’s also unexpected beauty tucked in the folds like a stranger’s prayer, a nurse’s quiet courage, or a joke Mark cracked in the ER that made me laugh through tears.
What I loved most was how this book is as much about healing as it is about survival. It’s not just medical updates and hospital visits. It’s about rediscovering hope when everything falls apart. Jenny lets us witness the mess of it all, like family tension, career stress, and the fear of the unknown, but she also shows how small acts of kindness and love carry her through. I was especially touched by the moments of spiritual reflection and how Jenny manages to hold space for both science and mystery. Her faith isn’t preachy; it’s personal and quietly powerful.
Forever Fly Free left me with tears, yes, but also with warmth. It reminded me how resilient people can be when they are fueled by love. I’d recommend this book to anyone facing loss, anyone caregiving for a loved one, or anyone simply looking for a true story that stirs the soul. It’s not just about burn recovery or trauma, it’s about the big stuff like love, family, and what it means to keep going when you’d rather not. I finished the last page and sat still for a while, grateful that Jenny let me into her story.
Pages: 352 | ASIN : B0F281H16L
The Opioid Epidemic
Flirting With Extinction is a raw and unapologetic mosaic of personal essays and stories that chart a life punctuated by grief, recklessness, resilience, and searching. Why was this an important book for you to write?
I needed to process my grief in some way, and I thought that by analyzing it and finding the life lessons in all that had transpired and writing about it would help me navigate my pain as well as the pain of others who have lost cherished loved ones to the opioid epidemic sweeping America’s youth.
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
My love for my sons was not as powerful a motivating force in their lives as the cultural zeitgeist they lived with. They had moved away from their Land Before Time and Pokémon mindset into what their peers were doing in the Seattle music scene in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The 1960s bohemian fashion was in style along with designer drugs I had never heard of until one of my sons died after using the latest drug on the scene, fentanyl. And then even after rehab, the other one followed suit several years later, killing himself on meth. I was absolutely devastated.
I appreciated the candid nature with which you told your story. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?
The deaths of my sons, I cried every time I worked on that aspect of the story. It took multiple edits with my tears running into my coffee and ruining the taste.
What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your story?
If you value life, and even if you believe in an afterlife, after experiencing the death of a loved one, it’s important for one’s sanity to find the positive in the negative and nurture those seeds of positivity in everything, to make the pain more bearable. In my sons’ memory, I wear the Jewish Chai symbol that serves as a reminder to embrace life’s inherent beauty, to cherish the present moment, and to recognize the profound interconnectedness of all life.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
After converting to Judaism and adopting her new husband’s name, she moved to Washington state and together with her husband, Joanna helped create a utopia on their island home, far from family feuds. As a family they explored the Pacific Northwest wilderness and played sports. Their children thrived in an environment filled with art, music, and freedom. But the idyllic life they built took a dark turn when their teenage son Micah, along with his friends, defaced a yeshiva, with one drawing swastikas and the chilling message, “this way to the gas chambers”—a reckless joke that would lead to devastating consequences.
As the law came down hard on Micah, the family faced the unbearable loss of their other son, Seth. In Flirting with Extinction, Joanna Kadish explores the deep-rooted trauma inherited from Holocaust survivors. Micah’s great-grandfather was killed in a German labor camp, and Micah’s grandfather, with his mother and sister, fled Germany shortly before Kristallnacht. Decades later, that trauma continues to haunt the family, proving that the wounds of history are not so easily healed.
These are Joanna’s stories of survival, loss, and the enduring impact of generational trauma.
Where Eagles Fly Free
David A. Jacinto’s Where Eagles Fly Free is an immersive historical novel that whisks readers back to 1868, following Tom Wright and his family as they embark on a grueling transatlantic journey from England to America. Their story is one of resilience, hope, and unyielding determination as they flee the oppression of the British aristocracy in pursuit of a dream to live freely on their own land. Throughout, the narrative teems with vivid imagery, from the breathtaking Irish Sea to the cramped, unsanitary ship conditions, and highlights the toll of physical and emotional hardships faced by immigrants.
Jacinto’s writing made me feel present in every scene. His descriptions of the Colorado ship, the swaying wooden masts, the pungent smell of mildew, and the ever-present threat of the Atlantic’s fury were so vivid I felt seasick myself. One standout moment was when the ship endured a violent cyclone, complete with cracking masts and desperate sailors. It was heart-pounding and terrifying, yet it highlighted Tom’s courage under pressure. At the same time, the book’s pacing allowed for reflective moments, particularly during the extended inner monologues about America’s promise, which offered a hopeful and idyllic vision of the future that added depth to Tom’s dreams.
The novel shines brightest in its portrayal of human relationships. Annie, Tom’s pregnant wife, was a standout character for me. Her compassion and sheer grit stole the spotlight repeatedly. I found myself rooting for her during the scene where she faced off with the ship’s detestable cook, Mr. Bunnings, over the rotten food being served to sick passengers. Her determination to improve conditions for everyone, even as she battled her own exhaustion, was inspiring. Tom’s interactions with his wife left me conflicted. While his dreams for America were noble, his occasional dismissiveness of Annie’s struggles added a layer of tension that felt unresolved.
The bonds of family and the pain of loss are central themes. Tom and Annie’s shared grief over their son Henry’s death added a poignant layer to their relationship. Scenes like Annie comforting her ill nephew or witnessing a mother and child being buried at sea were gut-wrenching. These moments grounded the story in raw emotion and reminded me of the immense sacrifices immigrants made for the hope of a better life.
Where Eagles Fly Free is a deeply evocative tale of perseverance, filled with memorable characters and stirring imagery. While it occasionally leans into idealism, the novel’s focus on family, faith, and the pursuit of freedom will appeal to readers who enjoy richly detailed historical fiction. I’d recommend it to anyone with a taste for emotionally charged narratives, particularly fans of stories about immigration or survival against the odds.
Pages: 400 | ASIN : B0DZY69F2J
LITERARY TITAN 