The Reading Frenzy: #GIVEAWAY Review Finding Light in a Lost Year by Carin Fahr Shulusky a Providence Book Promotions tour

Finding Light in a Lost Year

by Carin Fahr Shulusky

May 16 – June 10, 2022 Virtual Book Tour

Synopsis:

Finding Light in a Lost Year by Carin Fahr Shulusky

Roni Wright thought she had everything; huge home, successful husband, kids, and a brilliant career. That is until the worse pandemic in 100 years swept away the shallow façade of her life and she nearly lost it all. This is the story of how a broken family navigated the most difficult year of their lives and found hope in the middle of so much loss. You will recognize many of the things that nearly broke us all as we struggled with pandemic restrictions and the new normal. But you will cheer as they work their way out of darkness into a better world.

Book Details

Genre: Family & Relationship, Biographical Fiction Published by: Fossil Creek Press Publication Date: May 2022 Number of Pages: 170 ISBN: 978-1-7362417-2-1 Purchase Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Read an excerpt:

April 2020 – When It Rains, It Pours

On April 1, I picked up my calendar, as I did at the beginning of every month—usually to see what we had coming up and to schedule more—and started crossing off everything. I had already crossed off the March trip to Paris. Now I crossed off this month’s planned trip to the banking conference in San Francisco. I slashed through the conference in New York. And with a little more pain, I crossed off the two Broadway shows to which I had tickets. An old college girlfriend was going to go with me to one and Dan the other. Broadway closed. New York closed. All crossed off, as was the St. Louis Symphony concert to which we had tickets. Canceled. Hockey, canceled. Three birthday parties, canceled. My appointment at the nail salon, canceled. Hairdresser, canceled. Canceled, canceled, canceled. April was looking so gloomy. The only exercise I was getting was walking through one of our beautiful parks with the kids. Sometimes, we took bikes and rode a trail. But with April came gloom and rain and even that little bit of escape became impossible. Then the St. Louis County Executive closed all county parks. We were now required to wear a mask if we were out in public, especially indoors, and to stay six feet apart wherever we were. The gloom was growing daily. My life had no order. We were in free fall. On April 9, we got a big shot in the arm, as it were, when $2,400 appeared in our checking account—a gift from the U.S. government. Officially the money was part of the Economic Impact Payment, but the payments were more often called stimulus checks. We just called it salvation. Like many families, we weren’t sure how we would make ends meet. This money was a gift from heaven—or the government, depending on your point of view. By the second week of April, our school district was making an effort at learning. They asked parents to pick up “home learning packets” from the school. When I drove up to the school, someone handed me the packet for our kids’ grade levels. But when I got home, there was little explanation about the work. It was terribly disorganized and made little sense to me. Katlin wanted to learn more, and Oliver wanted to learn less. I just wanted more alcohol. Lots more. I decided hard times called for hard alcohol. Wine was OK now with lunch, but by dinner time, I needed a cocktail. I set up a place in the basement family room for the kids to study. I tried hard to make Oliver work on letters and sight words. He would work with me for maybe thirty minutes, then he’d start disrupting everything I did. He’d rip papers and run away. Meanwhile, Katlin was trying to figure out her lessons with great frustration. She didn’t know what was wanted of her, and I couldn’t figure it out either. Oliver did everything in his considerable ability to disrupt our efforts. Most sessions ended with all three of us crying. Not only was I failing at trying to teach my kids, I was failing at keeping them out of Nathan’s living room office. Every time Oliver ran away from me, he ran right into one of Nathan’s meetings. No order. No peace. No joy. --- Excerpt from Finding Light in a Lost Year by Carin Fahr Shulusky. Copyright 2022 by Carin Fahr Shulusky. Reproduced with permission from Carin Fahr Shulusky. All rights reserved.

My Review:

Finding Light in a Lost Year
Carin Fahr Shulusky

Carin Fahr Shulusky’s latest endeavor, Finding Light in a Lost Year, is an absolute gem, a faith based, mix of fact and fiction, a cautionary tale about the seemingly perfect upwardly mobile Wright family told in the first person in chronicle form through the POV of Roni the family’s matriarch. Readers will laugh and cry and want to shake a character or two as this family traverses a global pandemic, career obstacles, personal tragedies and triumphs. A real stand out in this novel is the realistic perspective of just how difficult it has been to navigate the pandemic for families with children from no school to virtual learning and finally back in the classroom plus the plethora of good and bad newsworthy things that happened in the States and around the world during 2020 and 2021. With an even paced and easy to understand dialogue, an interesting cast of characters dealing with real life conflicts this little treasure will appeal to a range of readers including fans of women’s fiction and inspirational fiction.

Roni Wright had it all- a globe-trotting successful executive for a travel company, married to her handsome architect husband Nathan a young daughter Kaitlin and young son Oliver. Then a global pandemic struck and suddenly both children had no school to go to, Nathan’s office closed but he now has more work than ever which leaves him floundering about where in this abruptly noisy house to set up shop and lastly there’s no more travel so no more travel industry leaving Roni, a fish out of water, in charge of everything at home but feeling incapable of handling anything at all. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg when some well-kept secrets come to light threatening the very foundation of this suddenly very imperfect family.

Author Bio:

Carin Fahr Shulusky was born and raised in west St. Louis County. She attended the University of Missouri, Columbia, where she received a B.J (Bachelor of Journalism). After college she worked in advertising for GE and Monsanto. She was the first professional woman in her division of each. After 25 years in Marketing, she created her own firm, Marketing Alliance. She was president of Marketing Alliance, from 2002 – 2014. She is a past-president of the Business Marketing Association of St. Louis. Carin Fahr is married to Richard Shulusky. They have two grown children and one marvelous granddaughter. Grandma Carin has a life long love of cooking, even writing her own cookbook. In 2014 Carin retired to devote full time to writing. Her first book, In the Middle was inspired by her own battle to care for her beloved mother, Dorothy Fahr. Many of the stories Carrie Young’s mother tells her in In the Middle came from Carin’s mother. Carin is a lifelong member of Pathfinder Church in Ellisville, Missouri, where she volunteers in early childhood.