“The Lavender Hour is brilliant, dark, and deep. Anne D. LeClaire writes with great compassion and insight, and understands the ways that lives intersect, the way one decision can change everything forever. The novel is luminous and devastating and I couldn’t put it down.”

Luanne Rice

Author, Sandcastles

Synopsis

There are moments that lie at the end of the day, as the sky is turning lavender, when we must decide the path we will take tomorrow.  The Lavender Hour explores the critical choices we make at critical moments in our lives.  Set on Cape Cod, it is the story of Jessie Long, a cancer survivor, who becomes a hospice volunteer, and the choices she makes that eventually lead to her standing trial, accused of assisting the suicide of her client, a forty-six-year old fisherman.

Inspiration

All novels are woven with the threads of imagination and memory.  The seed for this book was planted in my subconscious many years ago when I attended a lecture by Dr. Bernie Siegel in which he said, “We learn how to live from the dying.”  That one sentence was probably the genesis of the book although it took years for the other components to fall into place.  Certainly political questions generated by recent headlines played a role.  As did my reflections on love and the risks we take when we open ourselves to love.

 

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