Women's Hearts - Finding Truth in Fiction

Have you ever found yourself in a novel? Do you read to imagine yourself the heroine…or do you read because you are her…possessor of the deeper angst and motivations ready to find their way out in shared dilemmas and dreams, such as these…

Denying passion...love cannot be conjured where it isn’t, nor can it be successfully repressed: “Caging a heart – it couldn’t be done. Not a heart in full blossom of passion. Stopping a roaring river would be easier, or harnessing a violent hurricane with bare hands.” From “Love on a Train.”

Losing dreams to reality, when is it right to let them go and when is it wrong:
“Lana strained to see herself in the cracked mirror that leaned against the wall near Grandma’s cot. ‘You think your dress works good for a bride?’ Lana eyed the dress her grandmother was giving her, faded gray fabric with only a hint of white where tiny daisies had once been.
‘You’re going to be a wife, not a bride…’ Grandma muttered around her mouthful of pins, her needle and thread weaving in and out of the gathered waist. ‘Get silly notions about being a bride out of your head.’” From “Asked For.”

Being close to him, but not close enough:
“‘I miss you too,’ I answered, my cheek flat against his chest, my eyes staring across the room at a poster of Cincinnati’s baseball team. I did miss him but not in the way he thought. Even when he was near I still missed him, missed him in the lonely place he should be in my soul.” From “Mine to Tell.”

Longing for a true hero who knows what he wants, and it’s you:
“I had Regina on my horse in a second, seated in my saddle. I reached in front of her, grabbed the saddle’s horn, and sailed up behind her. ‘Let’s go. And this time, I’ll do the holding on.’ And I did, with both arms around the tiny woman I never intended to let go of.” From soon to be released “The Lady’s Arrangement.”

If an author is writing what he or she knows, they are writing your path. The pleasure is to escape to that path, or even escape from it as characters sort through what we sometimes can’t unravel. So, read. And enjoy. And when the pages reflect what you’ve always known, clasp the book close to your heart when you’re finished, and say, “amen.”

Colleen L Donnelly
 http://www.colleenldonnelly.com/