Sydney Avey
Dynamic Woman — Changing Times
LOST SHEEP MAY BE RECOVERED. LOST TIME CANNOT. A BASQUE PROVERB
When Dee Moraga’s secretive mother dies in the 1950s, Dee gives up hope of ever learning her father’s identity. But a series of puzzling discoveries causes her to reconsider. Why did her mother send money every month to the Basque Relief Agency? Why is her own daughter so evasive about a book she is about to publish? And what does the Anglican priest who shows up at her door know about her cultural heritage that he isn’t telling?
Dee’s search will take her from California’s Valley of the Heart’s Delight, to the Central Valley town of Bakersfield, and across the world to the obscure Basque region of Spain. Shocking truths are revealed in measure to how much she really wants to know.
A tribute to the resilience of immigrant families, The Sheep Walker’s Daughter pairs one fractured family’s history of loss, survival, and tough choices with one lonely woman’s search for reconnection. As Dee uncovers the mystery of who she is, she will also discover why family history matters.
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Coming from Torchflame Books in February 2018.
WE LABOR IN THE DARK, NOT KNOWING HOW CLOSE WE COME TAPPING GOLD OR TRIGGERING DISASTER. ONLY GOD KNOWS.
When her parents marry off Kansas-born Nellie Belle to the ranch foreman, she never questions that motherhood will follow. But at the dawn of the progressive era, dissatisfied Nellie seizes an opportunity to move west and start a new life. Desperate to find a sense of self-worth, Nellie leaves behind her husband and son and takes her two daughters to the Northwest. She charges forward to become the first woman court reporter to travel the circuit in the region. But in the process she loses her daughters, one to death, and one to vaudeville.
In small-town makeshift courtrooms and growing cities boasting new halls of justice, Nellie touches many lives, independent-minded lawmen, enterprising women, hard working immigrants, a senator, a number of cads, and a cross-dresser. She earns the respect of a tight legal community with their own ideas of early twentieth century justice. But when her prodigal youngest returns home with a babe in arms, she must do what she can to pull together the remains of her scattered family.
Can Nellie rescue her broken-hearted daughter, and give badly needed direction to her headstrong granddaughter who is on a path to disaster?
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Literary fiction for Women.
A FEAST OF FAMILY CAN BE A PLATE LOAD OF PROBLEMS!
It’s the ’60s. Modernity and tradition clash as two newlywed couples set up house together. Dee and her daughter Valerie move with their husbands into a modern glass house Valerie built in a proudly rural Los Altos, California, neighborhood. When their young relatives start showing up and moving in, the neighbors get suspicious. Then a body is found in the backyard and the life they are trying to build comes undone.
Father Mike is back to guide Dee through a difficult time with humor and grace, even as his own life is unraveling. Now he’s going to have to take some of his own advice about love.
The sequel to The Sheep Walkers Daughter, The Lyre and the Lambs explores the passions that draw people together and the faith it takes to overcome trauma.
Now available in ebook and audio format on Amazon:
