Peeking Between the Pages

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Guest Post: Katherine Center, Author of Everyone is Beautiful & GIVEAWAY

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I am very pleased to have Katherine Center, author of Everyone is Beautiful here today at Peeking Between the Pages. Her blog tour with Pump Up Your Book Promotion has just been great and her book is wonderful. You can read my review of it here. Now, let’s read on to hear more about a recent trip Katherine got to take with her mom and sisters…

I just got to fly to Dallas, Texas, with my mom and two sisters for a reading.

We were going to hear an essay I’d written performed at the Dallas Museum of Art’s Texas Bound Reading Series, and as we waited to board the plane, I felt something close to giddy.

It had been a long time since we’d all gone anywhere together like that. Jobs, husbands, and children all pull us in different directions now that we’re grown up. We all live about five minutes from each other, but it’s still remarkably hard to get together. Life gets in the way.

And so, a trip. We all signed on as soon as we heard the essay had been chosen for the program. It was a great excuse to get together, and go stay in a hotel, and order room service. Plus, the essay is all about how great my mom is, and how I endeavor every day to take care of my own children as well as she took care of us. We all wanted to stand up and cheer for that.

I can’t remember the last time we took a family vacation, just the four of us like we used to be. My parents divorced when I was young, and that feeling of belonging to a house full of girls still lingers with me. Even though the house itself is long-sold. Even though the girls themselves have grown up.

On the plane ride up and back, I sat next to my little sister. I watched her hands as she gestured and spoke, and I couldn’t believe how much they still look like the hands she had when she was a little girl. I can still remember her four-year-old hands—I can see them in my mind: how soft they were, the curve of the fingernails.

Of course, when you’re young, you define yourself in opposition to your family. If your sister is a cheerleader, you have to be something else. When you live in the close quarters of a family home, sometimes all you can see is how the people around you are not the same.

But then you go out into the wide world. And those freckles your sisters have, or that particular tilt to the eyebrows, or that manner of walking—these things aren’t out there in the quantities you might have assumed. You start to miss them. You start to miss all the things about your childhood home that you cannot get back. Once you’re out, you wish you could back in.

But you can’t. Instead, you take trips and order room service.

This morning at breakfast we constructed elaborate plans to take a girls’ weekend—just the four of us—every year. Just to reconnect. Just to get a little taste of home. Who knows if we’ll actually do it? But one thing was clear to me this weekend, as we walked with our rolling bags through the concourse: Sometimes you have to go away to get home.

__________

ABOUT THE BOOK:
Lanie Coates’s life is spinning out of control. She’s piled everything she owns into a U-Haul and driven with her husband, Peter, and their three little boys from their cozy Texas home to a multiflight walkup in the Northeast. She’s left behind family, friends, and a comfortable life–all so her husband can realize his dream of becoming a professional musician. But somewhere in the eye of her personal hurricane, it hits Lanie that she once had dreams too. If only she could remember what they were.

These days, Lanie always seems to rank herself dead last–and when another mom accidentally criticizes her appearance, it’s the final straw. Fifteen years, three babies, and more pounds than she’s willing to count since the day she said “I do,” Lanie longs desperately to feel like her old self again. It’s time to rise up, fish her moxie out of the diaper pail, and find the woman she was before motherhood capsized her entire existence.

Lanie sets change in motion–joining a gym, signing up for photography classes, and finding a new best friend. But she also creates waves that come to threaten her whole life. In the end, Lanie must figure out once and for all how to find herself without losing everything else in the process.

Katherine Center’s Everyone Is Beautiful is a hugely entertaining, poignant, and charming new novel about what happens after happily ever after: how a woman learns to fall in love with her husband–and her entire life–all over again.
__________
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Katherine Center’s second novel, Everyone Is Beautiful, is featured in the March issue of Redbook. Kirkus Reviews likens it to the 1950s motherhood classic Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, and says, “Center’s breezy style invites the reader to commiserate, laughing all the way.” Booklist calls it “a superbly written novel filled with unique and resonant characters.” Katherine’s first novel, The Bright Side of Disaster, was featured in People Magazine, USA Today, Vanity Fair, the Houston Chronicle, and the Dallas Morning News, among others. BookPage named Katherine one of seven new writers to watch, and the paperback of Bright Side was a Breakout Title at Target. Katherine recently published an essay in Real Simple Family and has another forthcoming in Because I Love Her: 34 Women Writers on the Mother-Daughter Bond this April. She has just turned in her third novel, Get Lucky, and is starting on a fourth. She lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband and two young children.
You can visit her website at http://www.katherinecenter.com/.
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Thanks so much Katherine for stopping by to visit us at Peeking Between the Pages. I look forward to reading your first book and keeping my eye out for what you have up next.
__________
GIVEAWAY:

Because I think this is such a wonderful book I’d love to share my gently read ARC copy with one of my readers. All you have to do is leave me a comment on something to do with this lovely guest post from Katherine Center and your email address (no email, no entry). The giveaway is open internationally and I’ll draw for the winner on Monday, April 6.

Good luck everyone!
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Comments

  1. Katherine, what a sweet story! I don’t get to connect with some of my sisters nearly enough, either, so i would love to do a girl’s getaway with them. This post makes me appreciate the times I do get to see them.
    Margay

    Margay1122 (at) aol (dot) com

  2. Katherine (my first-born’s name, btw) – plan the girls’ getaway soon. Two of my sisters and I did that for the past four years (plus we took 3 of our daughters). We visited the city where my youngest went to college and stayed at a fabulous hotel. Just 2 nights but what fun we had. Now since my daughter has graduated college, and the whole economy plunge – we skipped this year. And we all miss it. We may have to plan something soon.

    At any rate, I love (and totally identify with) what you wrote about sisters, and how we look at ourselves re: family. So true.

    Dar, please enter me in the giveaway. Thanks for hosting Katherine. Great post!

  4. I’d sure like a nice trip :)We’ll see this summer
    Enter me, I would love to read this book

    blodeuedd1 (at) gmail (dot) com

  5. I have to say that Katherine is right, you do sometimes have to get out of the family and return to it via vacation to see what you are missing. Having a family getaway years later sounds like a great idea. My brother recently came down to visit without my parents and it was more entertaining than I thought it would be.

    This sounds like a great book. Thanks for the review and guest post.

  6. One of the best gifts my sister and I ever gave my mom was a trip for the 3 of us. We all have wonderful memories of the weekend. Great post.

  7. Ahhh, hands. I recently reconnected with an uncle I had not seen in about 15 years. I was struck by how much his hands resembled my deceased father’s. I kept asking to look at his hands! And at the other end . . . with every baby born into our family, I check for the “family toes.” I’d love a chance to read Katherine’s book — thank you for the giveaway!
    geebee.reads AT gmail DOT com

  8. Aww loved her essay about her little sister! So sweet.
    One of these days I’ll take time to smell the flowers, if I could only get my kids to do so also without fighting for position.
    Dar, Please enter me in the giveaway! Thanks for the post.
    MarieBurton2004
    (at) yahoo.com

  11. I have three younger sisters and though we all have families of our own now, we still identify ourselves with who we were when we were four little girls sharing the same room. Katherine’s mother must be so proud — an essay in her honour!

    No need to enter … just wanted to say how much I enjoyed reading this guest post.

  12. a yearly girls weekend is a brilliant idea. that is such a sweet story

    sports dot erikalynn at gmail dot com

  13. Life does get in the way. I think that all the time. Even when we do get together it seems like our minds are elsewhere.

    bridget3420(at)yahoo(dot)com

  14. No need to enter me — I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed this post! 🙂 Just finished Everyone Is Beautiful two nights ago and have been raving about it since. Wonderfully written and so sincere. Good luck to all the entrants!

  15. Hey, babe! (and hi to Ms. Center, too)

    I’m just dropping in to say this sounds awesome. Thanks for the e-mail, I think; I did post it at Win a Book but this is one I’d like to keep for myself…

  16. I would love to be entered Dar. I often go back to my childhood home and stay in my old bedroom which really makes the memories of the past flood back.

    Here is my email.
    vivienne_dacostaathotmaildotcom.

  19. Katherine, thank you so much for the wonderful post..when I turned 18 my Mom took me on a weekend trip to Sharon, PA for shopping and to stay at "Tara" a lookalike b&b …it was such a special time for us and I hope we can do it again soon! I would love the opportunity to read this book!
    castellanoamy@yahoo.com

  21. I have been exactly where this character in the book is–packing it all up in a Uhaul and heading to somewhere new. BTW my sisters name is Katherine. I would love to read this book.

    rubymoonstone at gmail dot com

  22. I just ordered the audio from the library on this one, but please enter me for the hard copy! My e-mail is rnawrot at cfl dot rr dot com!

  24. How sweet, this post is and it makes me think of my sister-in-laws, for I do not have sisters. We really do need to spend more time together!
    Thanks so much,
    Darby
    darbyscloset at yahoo dot com

  25. Katherine’s post is so beautiful, makes me want to have a sister! I’ve always wondered what I missed by being an only child.

    jgbeads AT gmail DOT com

  27. What a wondeful guest post. I don’t have sisters so I haven’t experienced this type of getaway. I did get to go to Germany with my mother as an adult as she grew up there and it was one of our best times together.

    I’d love to read this book!

    redladysreadingroomATgmailDOTcom

  29. Wow!! Thanks so much everybody for all these great comments!!! It is so terrific to read all these kind words!! What a pleasure to hear from everyone. Thank you!!!

  30. I have a mom and two sisters also – and this would be such a cool idea to have a getaway with just them! The premise of her book also sounds like it might hit a little close to home – as for losing myself once I had a family.

    Please enter me in the drawing!

    kherbrand at comcast dot net

  31. I can really relate to this guest post. My mom and sisters and I have only had one afternoon like that and it was about three years ago. All of the guys watched the kids and my mom and sisters and I picked blackberries behind our house for a few hours. It was just like we were kids again but without all of the fighting.

    akreese (at) hotmail (dot) com

  33. I would love to read this book as well. At the moment, I live in the country, while raising three boys (we moved here when I was pregnant with the third, so that I could stay home with them). Blogging has been my primary link to retaining some semblance of the me behind the role. It also helps me process the role.

    Yorkie524@aol.com

  34. I would love to be entered. I think this is a character I can really relate to.

    carolsnotebook at yahoo dot com

  35. I am the oldest of 3 girls and as we got pulled in different directions I always thought a trip together would be a great idea. But as they say, life, or in the case death, sometimes gets in the way as I lost one of my sisters last year. Since then I’ve tried especially hard to keep close with the other. signed, another Katherine.

  37. hey Dar,

    Dont enter me. just wanted to drop by a quick hi and to say that i have this book and hate putting it down. Lovely reading.I have only got to the 25th page. cant wait to finish it. I am not a mom either but love reading it so far. i am tempted to read ur review bt wont. I like my suspense!! 🙂 have a lovely day.

  38. Hi everyone, I just wanted to pop in and say how much I’ve enjoyed reading your comments on your own families or getaways. Really, really great comments. Thanks.

    Katherine, thanks for popping in. The comments have been awesome.

  41. I just finished her other book, The Bright Side of Disaster, and just loved it! I would love to read this one, also. A girls’ getaway is a great idea, anybody want to come??? Dar, you have an award at my blog, come check it out:)
    http://julyso4463.blogspot.com/