Book Synopsis In Jazz Age Chicago, Dot Rodgers sells hats at Marshall Field while
struggling to get her singing career off the ground. Independent and
feisty, she’s the life of the party. But underneath the glitter, she
doesn’t believe she’s worth the love of a good man. Why would a strong,
upstanding man want to build a future with a shallow, good-time girl
like her? Small-town businessman Charlie Corrigan carries scars from the Great
War. After all he’s been through, he wants nothing more than to marry
and start a family. But the woman he loves is a flamboyant flapper with
no intention of settling down. She’s used to a more glamorous life than
he can offer. As his fortunes climb with the stock market, it seems he’s
finally going to win her love. But what happens when it all comes
crashing down?
Author Bio With a passion for all things historical, Jennifer Lamont Leo
captures readers’ hearts through stories set in times gone by. She is
also a copywriter, editor, and journalist. An Illinois native, she holds
a deep affection for Chicago and its rich history. Today she writes
from the mountains of northern Idaho, where she shares her home with her
husband, two cats, and abundant wildlife. Visit her at A Sparkling Vintage Life and Miss Marjorie’s Jazz Age Journal, as well as on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Giveaway During the Blog Tour we will be giving away two signed copies and two eBooks of Ain't Misbehavin' AND an Ain't Misbehavin' Compact Mirror! To enter, please enter via the Gleam form below.
Giveaway Rules – Giveaway ends at 11:59pm EST on May 18th. You must be 18 or older to enter. – Giveaway is open to US & Canada residents only. – Only one entry per household. – All giveaway entrants agree to be honest and not cheat the systems; any suspect of fraud is decided upon by blog/site owner and the sponsor, and entrants may be disqualified at our discretion. – Winner has 48 hours to claim prize or new winner is chosen.
Ain't Misbehavin'
Dear Friends, I'm excited to share my Momma's favorite animated dog movie with you today. Of course, it is also a dog movie!
Lady and the Tramp is a 1955 Disney movie. It tells the story of a beautiful, refined Cocker Spaniel named Lady and a scruffy but lovable Schnauzer named Tramp. They become friends and find love in this movie. (Sigh!) Of course, the path to love is not smooth. Lady has a hard time after her people have a human baby and the aunt who is babysitting (and petsitting) takes a dislike to Lady. At one point both Lady and the Tramp end up in the dog pound. But, of course, this is a Disney movie, so they find their happy ever after with Lady's family -- with new puppies of their own.
Some trivia about Lady and the Tramp:
Disney writer Joe Grant started working on a story inspired by his English Springer Spaniel Lady in 1937. Walt Disney thought the story was too sweet. In the early 1940's, Disney purchased the rights to a short story "Happy Dan, the Whistling Dog," from Cosmopolitan magazine, and that character inspired Tramp.
The beginning of the movie, when Darling finds Lady wrapped in a hat box, was inspired by Walt Disney's own life. He gave his wife a Chow puppy that way at Christmas time.
Singer Peggy Lee provided several voices for this movie, including Darling Dear, the Siamese cats, and Peg the Pekingese.
Thurl Ravenscroft ("Tony the Tiger" from Kellogg's Frosted Flakes commercials) also provided a voice in this movie - Al the Alligator.
Darling and Jim Dear's faces are rarely seen; this is to help set the movie from a dog's perspective.
The setting for the movie was inspired in part by Walt Disney's boyhood hometown of Marceline, Missouri.
Tramp was not always called Tramp. In earlier versions of the script he was called Homer, Rags, and Bozo! Lady and the Tramp is the first Disney movie filmed in Cinemascope wide screen. Here is the original 1955 trailer for this movie. This is my favorite scene in the movie. Lady and the Tramp find love - and spaghetti! I also like the song "Bella Notte." (The video includes a short scene at the end from a Disney restaurant inspired by this scene.)
Have you seen Lady and the Tramp? I'd love to hear from you in the comments, below. Love, Abby xoxoxo
Book Synopsis Betsy and Ty Franklin, owners of Franklin Dairy Farm in southern
Alabama, have long since buried their desire for children of their own.
While Ty manages their herd of dairy cows, Betsy busies herself with the
farm’s day-to-day operations and tries to forget her dream of
motherhood. But when her free-spirited sister, Jenna, drops off her two
young daughters for “just two weeks,” Betsy’s carefully constructed wall
of self-protection begins to crumble.
As the two weeks stretch deeper into the Alabama summer, Betsy and Ty
learn to navigate the new additions in their world—and revel in the
laughter that now fills their home. Meanwhile, record temperatures
promise to usher in the most active hurricane season in decades.
Attending an art retreat four hundred miles away, Jenna is fighting
her own battles. She finally has time and energy to focus on her
photography, a lifelong ambition. But she wonders how her rediscovered
passion can fit in with the life she’s made back home as a single mom.
When Hurricane Ingrid aims a steady eye at the Alabama coast, Jenna
must make a decision that will change her family’s future, even as Betsy
and Ty try to protect their beloved farm and their hearts. Hurricane Season is the story of one family’s unconventional journey to healing—and the relationships that must be mended along the way.
My Review Hurricane Season tells the story of two sisters. Betsy, the older sister, is the "good girl" in the family who married a kind man, Ty, and lives with him on their family dairy farm in south Alabama. Jenna, the younger sister, is a free spirit who is a single mom living with her two young daughters in Nashville. When Jenna has an opportunity to go to an artists' retreat in a remote location in Florida, she drops her young daughters off with her older sister and heads off. The planned two week visit stretches on, and lives are changed over the long summer.
Lauren K. Denton's first book, The Hideaway, was one of my favorite reads of 2017 (my review here), so I was very eager to read Hurricane Season. I really loved everything about this novel. The heart of the story is the lives of the two sisters who are both seeking happiness and fulfillment in different ways. I found Betsy much more likeable and sympathetic. I loved her relationship with her husband Ty and the kind and mindful way that she lived her life on a daily basis on the farm. The farm details were lovely. Jenna, on the other hand, was much more selfish, and was very determined to follow her passion for photography no matter how much her impulsive actions inconvenienced her young daughters and her sister and brother-in-law. I stayed up late reading to see what would happen with these women and with the precious little girls who were left in Betsy and Ty's care. To say that this is an engrossing novel is an understatement! I also loved the Southern setting, the food, the iced tea, the long hot summer days, the casual Southern speech patterns. I am a native Southerner and have lived through many hurricane seasons; I found this aspect of the book very relatable. Lauren K. Denton has a way with creating characters who are distinct and well rounded. The chapters alternate, mostly Betsy and Jenna, but some from Ty's perspective too. This is very well done and added to my enjoyment of the book. The storytelling and descriptions are so graceful. This is a Christian novel but the faith message is subtle. It is all about grace and love. I really liked the following passage. Betsy has been gardening and a friend talks to her about the garden and the incoming storms: "As far as your garden, sometimes storms can be helpful. ... All that wind and rain shows you which plants are the strongest. Those are the ones you keep, plant more of next season. But the ones that break under the force of the storm -- well, you just toss those and pretend they never set foot in your garden in the first place. Eventually you learn to choose strong ones from the get-go. You know how it is around here. Everything needs to be strong. Plants and people" (p. 316). I rate Hurricane Season an enthusiastic five stars, and recommend it highly to fans of Southern fiction, women's fiction, and Christian fiction. It would be a perfect Summer read!
Author Bio
Born and raised in Mobile, Alabama, Lauren K. Denton now lives with
her husband and two daughters in Homewood, just outside Birmingham. In
addition to her fiction, she writes a monthly newspaper column about
life, faith, and how funny (and hard) it is to be a parent. On any given
day, she’d rather be at the beach with her family and a stack of books.
Book Synopsis Scotland, 1375: Muirteach MacPhee and his wife Mariota visit
Edinburgh Castle, assisting the Lord of the Isles in his negotiations
with King Robert II. A trading vessel arrives at the nearby port of
Leith from the far away Norse settlement in Greenland. The ship brings
unexpected diversion and carries coveted wares: gyrfalcons, unicorn’s
horns, and fine furs. Both King Robert and the Lord of the Isles desire
the rare birds, easily worth a king’s ransom. Muirteach and Mariota, unaccustomed to the sophistication of castle
life, initially find pleasure in the heady and flirtatious glamor of the
royal court. Then sudden and unexpected cruelty, followed by the
senseless death of a beautiful young girl, plunge the couple into a
murky sea of alliances and intrigue that stretches from Scotland across
the icy western ocean to the far northern lands of the Norse, leaving
trails of treachery and murder in its wake.
Author Bio A fan of historical fiction since childhood, Susan McDuffie spent
such vast amounts of time reading stories set in the past that she
wondered if she had mistakenly been born in the wrong century. As an
adult her discovery that Clorox was not marketed prior to 1922
reconciled her to life in this era. Susan’s childhood interest in
Scotland was fueled by family stories of the McDuffie clan’s ancestral
lands on Colonsay and their traditional role as “Keeper of the Records”
for the Lords of the Isles. On her first visit to Scotland she
hitchhiked her way through the Hebrides, and her initial visit to
Colonsay and the Oronsay Priory ruins planted the seeds for her medieval
mysteries. Those seeds have grown into the Muirteach MacPhee mysteries,
set in medieval Scotland during the Celtic Lordship of the Isles. The
series includes A MASS FOR THE DEAD, THE FAERIE HILLS (2011 New Mexico
Book Awards “Best Historical Novel”), THE STUDY OF MURDER (New
Mexico/Arizona Book Awards Finalist 2014), and THE DEATH OF A FALCON.
Susan frequently presents at workshops and conferences and regularly
reviews historical fiction books for the Historical Novel Society’s
“Historical Novels Review. Susan lives in New Mexico and shares her life with a Native American
artist and four cosseted cats. She enjoys taking flamenco dance classes
in her spare time. Susan loves to hear from readers and can be contacted
via Facebook or through her website.
Giveaway
During the Blog Tour we will be giving away 5 paperback copies & 5 eBooks of The Death of a Falcon! To enter, please enter via the Gleam form below.
Giveaway Rules – Giveaway ends at 11:59pm EST on May 11th. You must be 18 or older to enter. – Giveaway is open to US residents only. – Only one entry per household. – All giveaway entrants agree to be honest and not cheat the systems; any suspect of fraud is decided upon by blog/site owner and the sponsor, and entrants may be disqualified at our discretion. – Winner has 48 hours to claim prize or new winner is chosen.
Dear Friends, I am happy to be back to talk about another favorite dog movie this week. One Hundred and One Dalmatians is a movie my Momma has loved since childhood, and we have the DVD here, so it is one of my favorites too!
One Hundred and One Dalmatians is the story of Pongo and Perdita, a Dalmatian couple who have 15 puppies! They are living happily with their people, Roger and Anita, until a frightening villain named Cruella de Vil decides to steal the puppies for fur coats! After a long chase, the puppies do find their way back home and they have a happy reunion with their family. They bring along 84 other puppies that were also being held by Cruella. Roger and Anita decide to buy a farm so they can keep all 99 puppies -- which makes 101 Dalmatians along with Pongo and Perdita. One Hundred and One Dalmatians was a 1961 Disney movie. It was based on the children's book The One Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith. (Momma recommends the book as well!) Dodie Smith enjoyed the movie adaptation and said that she thought it improved upon her original story! The movie was both a box office and critical success. When it was released, this was the top grossing animated movie to date.
Some trivia about this movie: Author Dodie Smith actually had a Dalmatian dog who had 15 puppies! That was her inspiration for the original book. She also owned a Dalmatian named Pongo. The dogs in the movie have deeper voices than their owners so they are seen as having more power. Some of the dog sounds in the movie are provided by Clarence Nash, who was the voice of Donald Duck. A new type of animation involving Xerox was used in this movie, and it helped give the movie its distinctive look. Several characters from Lady and the Tramp make cameo appearances in this movie. Jock is seen barking through a drainpipe to a dog in an upstairs apartment. Peg and her bulldog friend are seen in a pet store. Lady and the Tramp are seen during the Twilight Barking scene. The boy puppies wear red collars and the girls wear blue. This is also true of Pongo and Perdita. Cruella de Vil was inspired by actress Tallulah Bankhead. Old time character actress Mary Wickes provided a live reference for Cruella de Vil. Author Dodie Smith said her favorite scene in the movie was the one near the beginning where Pongo is stretching out by a window. This is one of the only Disney movies to feature cigarette, cigar, and pipe smoking. This was the first animated Disney movie in a contemporary setting. Here is the movie trailer: The Twilight Barking is my favorite scene in the movie. This is how the dogs communicate at twilight, by barking to one another to spread the news. I often try to do this with friends in my neighborhood. My dear Momma says she likes the Twilight Bark more in the movie than in real life. When you watch this scene, be sure to look for the characters from Lady and the Tramp! Have you seen One Hundred and One Dalmatians? I would love to hear from you in the comments. Have a wonderful weekend! Love, Abby xoxoxo
