Customer Reviews

The Road to Eden's Ridge

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This is a wonderful story which is actually two stories in one, about a girl from Maine, Lindsey Briggs, who literally leaves her fiance at the church (OK, she does go to the church and explains things to him) and goes off to Nashville to seek fame and fortune as a songwriter. Meanwhile she becomes part of a small group who finds some success. They get a gig at the Blue Bird Cafe (very famous, real venue in Nashville) where they meet Ben McBride, a famous country singer now pretty much in retirement who happened to serve in WWII alongside Lindsey's grandfather. There are two romances here -- one between Lindsey and Ben's attorney, Michael and one from the late 1940s between Ben and Lindsey's great-aunt, Lily. This is a wonderful story for everyone who loves a good romantic story and a doubly wonderful story for anyone who loves a good romantic story AND country music. One of my favorite country/Americana singers, Iris Dement, is mentioned several times. The writing is crisp and clean, the story compelling, and the setting described so that you not only want to book a flight to Nashville but also want to visit Edens Ridge in Maine. Highly recommended!

The fact that Lindsey left a sure thing behind to follow her dream is quite inspiring. It reminded me how important that is. It doesn't take a songwriter, singer or musician to be captivated by this intriguing story. This one will stay with you. Eden's Ridge needs to be on the big screen.

The Road to Eden's Ridge by M. L. Rose is a complex yet riveting family saga and romantic novel.

It tells the tale of a family from Maine, primarily through the eyes and experiences of Miss Lindsey Briggs. Lindsey is a vivacious and headstrong young woman who is standing up her fiancé at the alter as the novel opens to abandon the traditional life style and follow her heart and dreams by heading off to Nashville to try her hand at country music.

"Follow your heart" is pretty much the cornerstone of this novel and Lindsey's determination to do just that serves as the prism through which the twists and turns of this novel are reflected and refined. For it is the will and determination to block out all but her dream that brings Lindsey success-and great pain and heartache, as in the process of "following her heart" she loses track of the fact that it's a world with many roads and that one's heart may be destines to travel more than one of them.

Heartache has certainly been a facet of the character of her family members and the choices they have made. The whole middle section of the novel provides context for Lindsey's agony as she learns the truth about the previous experiences of the women in her family and the choices they have made and the heartache they have endured.

In the end Lindsey must decide whether her laser like focus on her dream is (as her country music mentor and long time family "friend", legendary country music performer Ben McBride wonders) Lindsey's greatest strength or her greatest weakness.

This is a richly constructed novel with an array of likeable and well-developed characters. It is realistic in its approach to the striving and struggles of musicians on the make and working to fulfill a dream as well as to the Nashville music scene in general. Most importantly, it is an honest and engaging love story that revolves around what feels to be real people with real emotions-a rarity in this day of mass manufactured "romance" novels consisting of cardboard characters of contrived circumstances that exist merely to titillate the reader and make a buck rather than communicate anything about love or life.

This is a novel that will move you and remind you of those bygone days when your own heart was so moved and so full of aching, longing and happiness at the same time. In other words, this is what a romantic novel is supposed to be.

This is a refreshing story for anyone who believes that we have souls that might be connected and that love exists as part of that connection. Not that Lindsey Briggs necessarily believes it. "No one is destined for anyone else," she tells her grandmother early in the story. But she does call off a wedding that just doesn't feel right and heads to Nashville to pursue an old urge, and as soon as she arrives she falls into a set of friends and a life that seems to be scripted by a fate Lindsay claims not to believe in. But fate, whether one believes in it or not, is a central character in this story. Or was it merely chance that Ben McBride walked into the Bluebird as Lindsey's band was beginning their thrid song. Was it merely chance that Lindsey, in order to relax in his presence, began to talk before she sang that song, unwittingly speaking the words that connected him to her in a way she didn't know.

This is a good story. There is an honest feel to the landscape. And the gentle conversation between Ben McBride and Lilly when they are looking at the sunsert and the flowers and talking about Emily Dickinson and birds is as good as it gets. How can one not believe in love and the connection of souls.

The road less travelled means that you delay gratification and tend to the tasks before you in life. It can also mean unrequited love. Love that is oh so close, yet so far from being fulfilled. That is how I see the novel THE ROAD TO EDEN'S RIDGE. M.L. Rose who wrote this love story is a pseudonym for Myra McLary and Linda Weeks, two friends and writing teachers. They have a knack for using words to portray human emotions. It is a love story over several generations. It is about country music and probably is a true story of a famous person in that venue. It took me several boxes of tissue to get through the novel in one night. A country song kept going through my mind the next day. Willie Nelson's song "To All the Girls I've Loved Before" could be the theme of this romantic novel. Academia on the East Coast and country music in Nashville are twin characters in the story. The ending is classic. You won't want to put the book down. These two writers are brilliant and deserve more exposure to the reading public. I love this tear-jerking,heart-warming romp in the snow, ride on a horse, intimate tale of passion and music set to both classical and country rhythms.

An absolutely wonderful read. As a Nashville resident, I'm in complete awe of how well the city is described and how perfectly the authors captured the spirit of those who come here trying to make it big. As for the love story, it elicited tears for all of the right reasons -- true love, missed opportunities, second chances.

I just finished reading The Road To Eden's Ridge by two southern women--Linda Weeks and Myra McLarey who write under the pen name M.L. Rose. The main character Lindsey, a twenty-something, intelligent, talented woman is our guide on four journeys: The first: The every man's/woman's desire to take a trip down music row. It is a fantasy held in the mind of the young, middle-aged and even a few elders--going on the road playing one night stands in honkytonks and cut and shoot bars, staying up late and composing country songs and living our lives in three quarter time hoping someone will sing along.

The second: The universal desire to discover which road to take to find out who we really are and then head for home. The third-- is the constant return to the cul-de-sac of our past and come to terms with that one love that got away and really finally understand what went wrong. And finally-- the path we all must take at sometime in our life that leads from fierce independence and the inability to trust others with our hearts and explore the unique kind of freedom that can only be attained when we finally let ourselves conquer our history and fears and let someone love us wholeheartedly.

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.

John Lee, author of When the Buddha Met Bubba

It was certainly not any love for country music that made me pick up The Road to Eden's Ridge -- the only singers named in it that I recognized were Willie Nelson and Roy Acuff. Instead, I was interested in the Maine angle. So often we natives are portrayed as stereotypical bumpkins who can't put together a complete sentence, but not in Eden's Ridge. The characters are distinct individuals so realistically drawn that I feel I've already met them. Lily, my favorite character, is the woman I want to be. Strong, independent, capable of dealing with whatever life throws at her, and yet deeply passionate.

The Western Maine setting, almost another character, is equally well-drawn. I certainly understand why Lindsay wanted to leave for a different life. Snow storms like the one that isolated Lily and Ben, allowing them to express their love for each other, really do happen -- frequently. But the book also captures the beauty of our summer sunsets, apple orchards, fields of wildflowers, lakes and mountains.

What I like best about the book are the many contrasts. It has urban Nashville and rural Maine, Grand Ole Opry and Frederic Chopin, blizzards and heat waves and love stories set fifty years apart. Somehow all these dichotomies come together like the warp and weft to make an intricately woven novel.

Oh, and one more thing. The lyrics of "If I Ever Write a Song," written by Lily for Ben, just might make me a convert to country music.

By all means, Take the Road to Eden's Ridge. The novel, by ML Rose, traces two compelling love stories over the course of generations, finding common lyrical themes in country/western and classical music. As a result its sympathetic characters have broad appeal for performers, songwriters, and fans (like me). It's got plenty of location appeal as well, from Maine to Tennessee: I can see a film in its future. Who can resist a story about second chances to fulfill youthful dreams that's crafted with such virtuoso flair? The Road to Eden's Ridge ends, of course, but its songs resonate.

A Customer

This book has just been released in trade paperback by Turner Publishing. It's a captivating book that kept me up all night until the last page. It's the story of a girl from the Northeast with an Ivy League education who chucks it all for a new adventure in Nashville that brings her life, her family's and those she meets along the way full-circle.