Patricia Sprinkle: HOLD UP THE SKY

In today's guest post, Patricia Sprinkle, author of Hold Up the Sky tells us how much her book club has meant to her and why she has taken a break from writing mysteries to write about real women and their struggles.
I cherish my book club. It forces me to read books I would never have opened and lets me share some of favorites with other readers. It exposes me to a variety of opinions I might never hear. Best of all, in book club I explore not only the lives of characters, but similar situations in my own life and in those of other club members.

That’s why I hope book clubs will read my new novel. In it I have departed from writing mysteries to tell the story of four women who each face a particular crisis that I think will resonate with readers. We all are or know somebody who has asked questions similar to these:

• What is the single mother of a handicapped child to do when her child support checks stop coming?
  
  
• What is the happily married mother of two, living in a lovely house, supposed to do when her husband says across the breakfast table, “I want a divorce. Oh, and by the way, we have to sell our house to pay off a home equity loan and we won’t get enough cash from the sale for either of us to buy another house”?
  
  
• What is an elderly woman to do when her doctor looks across his desk and says, “I’m sorry, your condition is beyond our ability to treat it”?
  
  
• What is a loving wife and daughter to do when asked to choose between the needs of her husband and the needs of her parents?

Women—and, yes, men—face crises like this every single day. A proverb states that “Women hold up half the sky.” In my experience, some people hold up far more than that. Mamie Fountain says in this novel, “I don’t see no men helping us—do you?”

I hope readers will enjoy this book and the story of how four strong women who don’t even like one another come together by the end of the story. Even more, I hope the novel and the discussion guide in the back will precipitate conversations around questions like:

“What keeps us from asking for help when we need it? How could we overcome that reluctance?”

“How can we better support one another through crisis?”

“Have I ever been supported by somebody else who was also in need, and discovered that we are stronger together than we are on our own?”

Let’s hear it for book clubs. They not only make us better educated, they improve our mental health.

--Patricia Sprinkle, Hold Up the Sky (www.PatriciaSprinkle.com)