From Publishers Weekly
Lindsey Briggs leaves her fiance at the altar in her small Maine town and heads for Nashville to pursue her lifelong dream of being a country singer-songwriter in this quietly sentimental novel. After burying her musical inclinations under a Harvard education, 20-something Lindsey experiences an epiphany less than an hour before her wedding, standing in front of the mirror and listening to a recording of herself singing a song shed written half a lifetime before. She packs up her car and heads south, away from Eden's Ridge and the grandmother who raised her after her parents were killed in a car accident when she was a baby. Once in Nashville, armed with a guitar and a band of new friends, Lindsey encounters Ben McBride, the country singer who once visited her grandfather 50 years ago at his farm in Maine, and of whom she has an old photograph, a reminder of her grandfather's past and her own. What Lindsey doesn't know is the extent of McBride's involvement with her family and the secrets buried in her own life. Rose is the pseudonym for Myra McLary (Water in the Well) and Linda Weeks, who together breathe realism into their settings and life into their characters. Lindsey's lyrics, contributed by Nashville songwriters, leave depth and subtlety to be desired, but her passion for living and need to follow her heart make her a character with whom women readers will easily identify.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
Eden's Ridge provided the biggest unexpected cry in years- Amazing emotional turns. A must read. --Amy Grant
The Road to Eden's Ridge has the heart and soul of a good country song. Ben McBride is a soul mate to all of us who have traveled that road. --Willie Nelson
I finished The Road to Eden's Ridge (Iroquois Press an imprint of Turner Publishing) Sunday night and I sure wish I hadn't read it yet I wish I had it to look forward to. This is a novel with a heart. I tried, oh how I tried, not to cry. Every blurb I'd read about this book said you hold the book in one hand and a hankie in the other. I got to the last chapter dry-eyed, but then that fell apart. It's not that it's a sad book, really, it just evokes a lot of emotion at several levels. --JKS Communications
The author has a way with words
and the storyline was fast pace and never boring. When I thought I was in for an EXPECTED twist, I was pleased and surprised that it was not. I read fiction addictively and my personal sign
that a book has THE MAGIC is if I never put it down, never crease a page to hold my place or bend the spine because I just need a break.
The storyline is encouraging and I found it applicable to anyone who might have a dream yet unfilled. The book left me thinking that our destiny will reveal itself if we chase after our dreams no matter the twists, turns and bumps along the way. What a pleasure it was to read. My only challenge is that I can't wait to read this authors next book. I hope there will be more! --Sue, Fiction Fanatic Blog
In her testimonial blurb, music star Amy Grant notes that The Road to Eden's Ridge provides the biggest unexpected cry in years.
Indeed, the book is what Nashville songwriters sometimes call a weeper,
and it's not for nothing that Romantic Times has designated Eden's Ridge a Top Pick. The locally set segments of the book are smart and entertaining, with most of Nashville's familiar landmarks making appearances. Brown's Diner is a favored gathering spot, for instance, and Krispy Kreme donuts function as both peace offerings and tools of seduction. Recounting the misadventures of a musician on the bottom rungs of stardom, the authors convey the bright excitement of late nights in the music business and leave a whiff of autobiography in their wake. --Nashville Scene, Wayne Christeson
Reading The Road To Eden’s Ridge is like stepping into a well-crafted country song. The writing is lyrical and melodic and filled with the best kind of story-telling—simple, down-to-earth—the kind that has made country music so compelling to listen to even by hard core fans of Schumann’s “Reverie” or Debussy’s “Claire de Lune.” You will see why I made these classical references when you pick this novel up that you can plow through as fast as a well-tended field. -- dixiesunclaimedbaggage.blogspot
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
