Guest Post by Elizabeth Loupas + Giveaway!

Passages to the Past is pleased to bring you a guest post by author Elizabeth Loupas in honor of the virtual book tour for her novel, The Flower Reader!

Thanks to Elizabeth I also have one copy of The Flower Reader and a beautiful, handmade flower bookmark to give away to a lucky winner!

Please welcome Elizabeth Loupas....

Childhood Books

There is no Frigate like a Book

To take us Lands away,

Nor any Coursers like a Page

Of prancing Poetry-

-Emily Dickinson

Childhood books live with us forever. I remember the Little Golden Books my mother read to us—there was one with a velvety flocked yellow duckling, and another with a spotted puppy, which I think was called The Poky Little Puppy. I still treasure a frayed and faded copy of The Road in Storyland by Watty Piper, full of fairy tales and wonderful old illustrations:

This one is from the story The Star Dipper, about how the constellation called the Big Dipper came to be in the sky. I always adored this image. Stars, a friendly doggie, and a kind-hearted little girl in an old-fashioned dress, plus the rich blue and green colors with splotches of red and pink—for me, the stuff of dreams. The illustrators of The Road in Storyland are credited as Lucille W. and H.C. Holling.

How I loved those stories as a tiny girl. My mother used to laugh about how she read them to us over and over until we had them memorized, and how we would correct her if she tried to hurry our bedtime by leaving anything out. And you know, my life has turned out to follow a road in, over, under, and through storyland—a road to telling stories.

In The Flower Reader, Rinette has a treasured childhood book as well, a hand-lettered and hand-painted book of French fairy tales that belonged to her mother, and from which her mother read to her when she was small. So art follows life. Rinette has more “mother issues” than I ever had, thank goodness, but she keeps the book, and later (I’m skipping over huge swathes of the story here, but I don’t want to include spoilers) Nico de Clerac, who was trained as an illuminator at the great monastery of Mont Saint-Michel in France (more swathes of the story skipped over) sets out to make a copy. He goes to great pains to make it as exact as possible, but still—it is a copy. In the story it is a symbol of Rinette’s new life, in many ways the same and yet in other ways different from her early life.

Symbolism in stories is all very well, but I usually prefer the originals of books I’ve loved, even when the originals are tattered and worn (The Road in Storyland is heavily water damaged from a long-ago flood in my mother’s basement but I would never give it up for anything). How do you feel about classic childhood books (or for that matter, adult books) being re-issued in new editions? Would you rather have a fresh new version, or do you cling to your ruined treasures?

About The Flower Reader

Publication Date:  April 3, 2012

NAL Trade

448p

{SYNOPSIS}

In the sweeping new novel from the author of The Second Duchess, dangerous secrets lead a passionate young woman into a maze of murder and conspiracy as Mary, Queen of Scots, comes home to reign in a treacherously divided Scotland….

With her dying breath, Mary of Guise entrusts a silver casket to Rinette Leslie of Granmuir, who possesses the ancient gift of floromancy. Inside the casket, and meant only for the young Mary, Queen of Scots, are papers the old queen has painstakingly collected—the darkest secrets of every Scottish lord and explosive private prophecies prepared by Nostradamus. Rinette risks her life to keep the casket safe, but she makes a fatal mistake: she shows it to her beloved young husband. On the very day the young queen comes home, Rinette’s husband is brutally assassinated.

Devastated, Rinette demands justice from the queen before she will surrender the casket. Amid glittering masques and opulent weddings, courtly intrigues and Highland rebellions, the queen’s agents and Rinette herself search for the shadowy assassin. They are surrounded by ruthless men from all over Europe who will do anything to force Rinette to give up the casket—threatening her life, stripping her of her beloved castle by the sea, forcing her to marry a man she hates, and driving her from the man she has reluctantly grown to love. In the end, the flowers are all she can trust—and only the flowers will lead her safely home to Granmuir.

About Elizabeth Loupas

 

Elizabeth Loupas lives near the Elm Fork of the Trinity River, halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas. She is presently a novelist, freelance writer and amateur historian. In other times and other places she has been a radio network vice president, a reference librarian, a business-to-business magazine editor, and a tutor in English literature.

One of her passions is the art and poetry of the Pre-Raphaelites. This led her to the Rossettis and the Brownings, and the project nearest and dearest to her heart--her novel THE SECOND DUCHESS, based on Robert Browning's poem "My Last Duchess."

She hates housework, cold weather, and wearing shoes. She loves animals, gardens, and popcorn. Not surprisingly she lives in a state of happy barefoot chaos with her delightful and faintly bemused husband (the Broadcasting Legend), her herb garden, her popcorn popper, and two beagles.

Giveaway Information

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- Giveaway ends on April 30th.