Nicole M. Miller

I had the pleasure of hearing Sarah Thebarge speak at the Writer’s Connection meeting recently, and I picked up a copy of her book, “The Invisible Girls.” If her stories at the meeting weren’t enough to stir my soul, her book drove me to near tears. Amazon’s description:  Twenty-seven-year-old Sarah Thebarge had it all – a loving boyfriend, an Ivy League degree, and a successful career – when her life was derailed by an unthinkable diagnosis: aggressive breast cancer. After surviving the grueling treatments – though just barely – Sarah moved to Portland, Oregon to start over. There, a chance encounter with an exhausted African mother and her daughters transformed...

Description: When Eve Marryat’s father is laid off from the Ford Motor Company in 1931, he is forced to support his family by leaving St. Paul, Minnesota, and moving back to his Ohio roots. Eve’s uncle Cyrus has invited the family to live and work at his Marryat Island Ballroom and Lodge. Eve can’t wait to leave St. Paul, a notorious haven for gangsters. At seventeen, she considers her family to be “good people,” not lawbreakers like so many in her neighborhood. Thrilled to be moving to a “safe haven,” Eve soon forms an unlikely friendship with a strange young man named Link, blissfully unaware that her uncle’s lodge is...

Description: Alone with her young daughter in 1881 Michigan, she has six months left to finish raising the money needed to pay back the land contract her husband purchased, and the land is difficult to toil by herself. She needs a husband. With unmarried men scarce, her father sends a letter to his brother in the Old Country, asking him to find Annalisa a groom. For nobleman Carl von Reichart, the blade of the guillotine is his fate. He’s been accused and convicted of a serious crime he didn’t commit, and his only escape is to flee to a small German community in Michigan where he’ll be safe. He secures...