Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Chasing the Wind by Pamela Binnings Ewen

Chasing the Wind by Pamela Binnings Ewen is part mystery and part romance and all about relationships and many kinds of love.  It is set in 1977 New Orleans with a cast of characters that are so real that you feel like you are living the story right along side of them.

New Orleans is a character in itself--a city that invites mystery and transactions of every kind--a fitting back drop for events and collisions to take place.

Amalise Catoir is a young lawyer who is recovering physically and emotionally from an abusive marriage, and is getting by with a little help from her friends-- Jude, her best friend from childhood and Rebecca, her lawschool pal who is now dating Jude.

When Bingham Murdoch, a larger than life businessman flies into New Orleans with a mega real estate deal to be handled by Amalise's law firm, she is put on the team to make it happen. Thrilled to be a part of this potential career launcher, she gives it her all--until she starts to realize how it will affect the old neighborhood destined for demolition.

Amalise must decide how far she is willing to go to remain true to her heart.

Chasing the Wind is about life, love, healing, and second chances. It is beautifully written and I look forward to reading more by this amazing author.

(Please read on for more information.)

This week, the
Christian Fiction Blog Alliance
is introducing
Chasing The Wind
B&H Books (August 1, 2012)


by
Pamela Ewen


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Until recently retiring to write full time, Pamela Binnings Ewen was a partner in the Houston office of the international law firm of BakerBotts, L.L.P., specializing in corporate finance. She now lives just outside New Orleans, Louisiana, with her husband, James Lott.

She has served on the Board of Directors of Inprint, Inc., a non-profit organization supporting the literary arts in Houston, Texas, as well as the Advisory Board for The New Orleans Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society, and currently serves on the Board of Directors of The Tennessee Williams Festival in New Orleans; Pamela is a co-founder of the Northshore Literary Society in the Greater New Orleans area. She is also a member of the National League of American Pen Women.

Pamela’s first novel, Walk Back The Cat (Broadman & Holman. May, 2006) is the story of an embittered and powerful clergyman who learns an ancient secret, confronting him with truth and a choice that may destroy him.

She is also the best-selling author of the acclaimed non-fiction book Faith On Trial, published by Broadman & Holman in 1999, currently in its third printing.

Although it was written for non-lawyers, Faith On Trial was also chosen as a text for a course on law and religion at Yale Law School in the Spring of 2000, along with The Case For Christ by Lee Stroble. Continuing the apologetics begun in Faith On Trial, Pamela also appears with Gary Habermas, Josh McDowell, Darrell Bock, Lee Stroble, and others in the film Jesus: Fact or Fiction, a Campus Crusade for Christ production.

Pamela is the latest writer to emerge from a Louisiana family recognized for its statistically improbable number of successful authors. A cousin, James Lee Burke, who won the Edgar Award, wrote about the common ancestral grandfathers in his Civil War novel White Dove At Morning.

Among other writers in the family are Andre Dubus (Best Picture Oscar nomination for The Bedroom; his son, Andre Dubus III, author of The House of Sand and Fog, a Best Picture Oscar nomination and an Oprah pick; Elizabeth Nell Dubus (the Cajun trilogy); and Alafair Burke, just starting out with the well received Samantha Kincaid mystery series.      

ABOUT THE BOOK

At 8:47 A.M. on Wednesday, October 12, 1977, new-to-town businessman Bingham Murdock flew his small plane into New Orleans, banking it in such a way that a ray of sunshine shot through the city at light speed.

Amalise Catoir saw the flash from her sixteenth floor law office window. Finally feeling alive after the death of her abusive husband, she imagined seeing the plane was a fate for her eyes only; a special connection between the unknown giver and she, the recipient of light.

But someone else saw it, a six-year-old Cambodian refugee in foster care for whom a sudden burst of brightness reminds him of artillery fire.

Destined to cross paths with the man and the child, Amalise doesn’t yet know the deeper spiritual lesson she will learn: that we are responsible not only for the things we do, but also for the things that we don’t.

If you would like to read an excerpt of Chasing The Wind, go HERE.


5 comments:

Michelle Wallace said...

Sounds like a great read. One word came to mind immediately - serendipity...
(I always associate New Orleans with good old-fashioned jazz...)

Dana said...

I love books set in the seventies. :)

Cheryl Klarich said...

Michelle--you are so right! After I wrote the review I thought of the word "serendipity" too!!
(Right on!)

Dana--Thank you for checking this out. I think you'd love this book!!

Jennifer Shirk said...

wow, sounds good, and what a different time period to choose too.

Cheryl Klarich said...

Hi Jennifer!
I loved this book--It had a touch of Grisham's novel The Pelican Brief (better!).

Bless you!