Location: United States
Member Since: July 03, 2011

Laura McHale Holland


Biography

Laura McHale Holland is the author of the award-winning memoir, Reversible Skirt. Her stories, essays and feature articles have appeared in such publications as the Every Day Fiction Three, the Vintage Voices anthologies, NorthBay biz magazine, the Noe Valley Voice and the original San Francisco Examiner. A member of both Redwood Writers and the Storytelling Association of California, she has been a featured teller at The Lake Tahoe Storytelling Festival. To keep up with her, please visit http://lauramchaleholland.com.

Where to find Laura McHale Holland online

Website: http://lauramchaleholland.com
Facebook: Facebook profile
Blog: http://lauramchaleholland.com

Where to buy in print

http://www.amazon.com/Reversible-Skirt-Laura-McHale-Holland/dp/0982936508/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1309751161&sr=1-1

Books

The Ice Cream Vendor's Song    by Laura McHale Holland
Price: $2.99 USD. 16370 words. Published on December 2, 2012. Fiction.
(4.00 from 14 reviews)
The Ice Cream Vendor's Song introduces a new side of Laura McHale Holland, whose memoir, Reversible Skirt, won a silver medal in the 2011 Readers Favorite book awards. In this richly nuanced collection of very short fiction, the author tilts the everyday and spins characters in surprising directions, revealing worlds haunting yet tender, all rendered with emotional clarity and exquisite prose.
Reversible Skirt    by Laura McHale Holland
Price: $4.99 USD. 78890 words. Published on July 3, 2011. Nonfiction.
(5.00 from 3 reviews)
Reversible Skirt recounts the heartrending decade after one young mother’s suicide, as seen through the eyes of her youngest child, Laura, who was a toddler at the time of the tragedy. It also reveals what Laura and her sisters discovered that led them out of darkness and into productive adult lives.

Laura McHale Holland’s tag cloud

collection of flash fiction    collection short stories    fiction    flash fiction    flash fiction collection    flash fiction single author    memoir    memoir childhood    memoir family    orphan    sisters    suicide   

Smashwords book reviews by Laura McHale Holland

  • Snapshots...Growing up Behind the Iron Curtain on Sep. 05, 2011
    star star star star star
    I connected with Eva Kende, author of Snapshots...Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain, on Facebook and was intrigued enough by what she had to say about her life and work to buy her ebook. I was a bit apprehensive because I’ve bought books by a few other authors I’ve met online and have been disappointed to the point where I couldn’t even finish the books, let alone review them. Luckily, this is not the case with Eva’s eye-opener of a book. The author’s conversational style, eye for detail and ability to capture the unique quirks, good and bad, of the folks who mattered most to her during her tumultuous childhood drew me right into her story. She was born in Budapest, Hungary, in the midst of World War II and lived there until the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, at which time she and her mother escaped and ultimately settled in Canada. This is not a literary memoir or a traditional autobiography. It is a series of recollections honestly conveyed. The book begins with Eva’s memories of her grandmother, an eccentric and highly successful necktie-maker and shopkeeper, and continues through the many adjustments required of Eva and her extended family as they lived amid the city’s ruins and survived the upheavals brought by foreign occupation and communist rule, including losing their livelihoods, their homes and many people they loved. When I’ve thought of what life must have been like for people behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War, I’ve tended to picture bleak scenes in black and white, glum people suffering in the cold, hungry people in bread lines. This book brings home how incomplete that picture is. Eva’s narrative shows how ordinary people adapted with ingenuity and pluck, and lived with dignity and hope. Dealing with so much loss, people still loved, laughed, worked, played—and there was much for a spirited child like Eva to learn among friends of all ages she made during her adventures in and around Budapest. There was great hardship, certainly, but the human spirit soars in Eva’s book. I think it’s worth every penny of the pittance it costs to download. I imagine people who read this book will not only gain a new perspective on life in Eastern Europe after World War II, but they will also feel a good deal of admiration for the author when they turn the last page.