Please join me in welcoming Linda Rondeau to the blog this week. She has a great book she’s going to be sharing about, Second Helpings. Before we get into what inspired her to write it, let’s hear a little about the book.
Today is Jocelyn Johnson’s 45th birthday. Unhappy with her marriage of 22 years, the parenting talk show host has planned a noonday tryst with her cohost. A phone call from her college daughter, a peek into her teenaged son’s journal, a sick preschooler, a Goth daughter’s identity crisis, a middle-school son’s prank, and her husband’s inflamed suspicions, not only interfere with her hopeful birthday plans but throw her family into more chaos than a circus on steroids.
In desperate need of counsel, Jocelyn invites a Christian to dinner, her guest from her morning talk show segment. However, the evening holds little promise of calm. In the midst of bedlam, a forgotten faith rekindles causing Jocelyn to rethink her life and her marriage.
You will laugh and you will cry from the first page to the last as you journey through the day’s events and Jocelyn’s search for Second Helpings.
That sounds so good, Linda. What inspired you to write it?
When I first set out to write Second Helpings, I envisioned writing a story about a harried housewife with a passel of kids. I thought of my mother who went around hands outstretched to heaven saying, “Lord, give me strength.” Words she uttered each time we kids did something wrong, which was quite often. I envisioned my own version of, “Please Don’t Eat the Daises.”
The movie came out in 1960 and starred Doris Day and David Niven, a comedy about a university professor who leaves his job to become a theater critic, creating problems with his family and friends. There’s an iconic scene where the harried housewife rescues her toddler who tries to climb out of the barred windows. One wonders, can this marriage be saved?
As the story evolved, I saw a larger picture than a madcap comedy. I asked myself, what would happen if a woman who ran a radio show about parenting found herself in a marriage about to fall apart because she anticipated having an affair? Since the woman, at the outset of the story, is not a Christian, what might cause the affair not to happen? What driving force might be greater than her unhappiness? And why was she so unhappy in her marriage in the first place?
The answer came. She was a mother first. What problems might her children have to make her think twice about an affair? Then I envisioned a mother whose oldest child seemed destined to make the same mistake the mother thought she’d made years ago.
When Jocelyn receives a phone call from her college-aged daughter, her plans for a tryst suddenly change. Lisette announces she is coming home tonight. Jocelyn guesses her worst fears for her daughter. She is pregnant. Jocelyn does not want Lisette to make the same mistake Jocelyn made, marrying her baby’s father, feeling there were no other options.
She must discuss the situation with Larsen before her daughter arrives. This sets the stage for twelve hours of bedlam. Serious situations creating a comedy of misunderstanding and nuances against the backdrop of a failing marriage begging to ask the question, “Can her marriage be saved?”
A veteran social worker, Linda Wood Rondeau is also a wife, mother, and grandmother. She is no stranger to family bedlam. Her stories of encouragement and hope come from the heart. She resides in Hagerstown, Maryland with her husband of over forty-years. When not writing, the author enjoys the occasional round of golf. She also enjoys theater and is actively involved with her local church. Find more encouraging words in her blog, Snark and Sensibility, found on her website, www.lindarondeau.com. Click on website to signup for the author’s newsletter.
Visit her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.
Buy Link: https://www.amazon.com/Second-Helpings-Humorous-Contemporary-Novel-ebook/dp/B087C744HZ/
Social Media Links
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/lindawoodrondeau/
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/authorlindawoodrondeau/
Linda is giving away an ebook copy of another one of her books, Hosea’s Heart. Follow the directions below to enter.
Thanks so much for joining us, Linda!
I don’t have kids of my own, but I have 10 nieces and nephews, and 13 great nieces and nephews, with numbers 14 and 15 due in September and January!!
This story line sounds really interesting, touching lots of issues.