The Scrapbook Series
When Gina’s son has a child out of wedlock and she learns that her deceased husband also fathered an illegitimate child, her carefully constructed family life is turned inside out. Gina’s longtime friend and sometime boyfriend suddenly seems completely uninterested in her latest turn of events. If she has ever needed a friend, it’s now.
Jo has her own set of issues. She’s confronted with revisiting her feelings for Paul Collections, the high school sweetheart she couldn’t make room for all those years ago. Jo also finds herself confronted with a sister that seems to be in the midst of a mid-life crisis and co-workers in the midst of a blossoming romance.
In The Unraveling, life’s plans seem to be quickly dissolving. They had a path they wanted to follow. They were making careful preparations for that path. Now, it seems that everyone and everything is conspiring to turn the most carefully constructed plans upside down! How did it all get so complicated?
Suddenly, finding a lost friendship seems like the easiest part of their lives.
If you like Before We Were Yours and The Sisters Café, you’ll love the Women of the Ozarks Scrapbook Series.
It’s the stuff you don’t see coming, that changes your life’s path.
Unraveling
Throughout your life you learn to plan, prepare, and plan some more. You learn to cope with the expected. It’s the stuff you don’t see coming that can be your undoing. Jo Felsenthal and Gina Ingram’s lives are no different.
What was supposed to be a short trip, turns into months away from their home in the Ozarks. Gina begins to feel the increasing tug of her responsibilities at home in Polk Ridge, but is reluctant to leave her never-ending vacation in the Golden State.
Jo, on the other hand, has finally come to the staggering revelation that she’s once again fallen in love with teen sweetheart Paul Collections. This time, though, Paul isn’t necessarily a free man.
As realities in their hometown of Polk Ridge, Arkansas keep calling, Jo and Gina find themselves trying to answer an age-old question: Is the grass really any greener on the other side?
If you like The Sometimes Sister and Beach House for Rent, you’ll love the Women of the Ozarks Scrapbook Series.
Recapturing love and a sense of adventure isn’t as freeing as you’d think…
The Other Side
Ready to take advantage of retirement, lifelong friends Jo Felsenthal and Gina Ingram plan a two-week trip to sunny California. In this new environment, far from home, the two women finally feel free to say and do what they want. Gina finds she’s rather fond of pot and Jo re-discovers her love of wine. They finally understand the phrase, California dreamin’.
Jo has rekindled a once-lost love and Gina has reconciled herself with life in the Ozarks. The girl who once had no idea which path to choose, has found that the path has chosen her. The mountains, the people, and the family Gina has fought so hard to hold together have given her the sweetest gift of all: enduring love.
Jo and Gina’s friendship has been tried and tested for almost half a century. Together, they have experienced girlish dreams and desires, love and loss, happiness and regrets. But most importantly they’ve grown into women who cherish a lasting friendship.
Then fate deals their enduring friendship one final blow…
Wait For Me, is the fifth and final book in the Women Of The Ozarks Scrapbook Series, and will share the poignant final stories of two women who have seen so much and found friendship through it all.
The Fates giveth, and the Fates taketh away…
Wait For Me
Almost a decade has passed since a fateful Facebook friend request brought childhood friends Jo Felsenthal and Gina Ingram back together after a life apart. The inseparable girls of ’76 are now older, wiser, and best friends again. They’ve shared tears and laughter, anger and happiness, trials and triumphs. They have stopped searching for the girls they used to be and found lasting friendship in the women they have become.
As these two women, now in their fifth decade of life, look back to see just how far they’ve come, they long for the friendship they once shared.
Having traveled the world for nearly forty years as a military officer and NSA liaison, Jo Felsenthal is now forced to take a step backward and return to her childhood home of Polk Ridge, Arkansas. Stepping back into this old (and mostly forgotten) territory comes with its challenges. Her mom’s health is failing, her career and personal life are in freefall, and she hasn’t connected with anyone in Polk Ridge in a lifetime.
Gina Ingram has spent a lifetime facing more adversity than she cares to recall. From teenage mom, to widow, to social worker, she has made her way and her life in Polk Ridge, one of the poorest towns in one of the poorest counties in Arkansas.
So when Gina decides unwind on her back porch after work, she’s more than surprised when a familiar, yet long neglected friend pops up in her Facebook feed. Yet there she is: Jo! Gina’s dearest childhood friend—now a complete stranger—is back in town. Her quick click on “friend request” is about to have lasting consequences….
Can these women find a way to bridge a lifetime of separation and recapture the friendship of their youth? They’ll soon find out if a bucket full of childhood memories is enough to reignite a once-treasured friendship long abandoned.
Set in a beautiful, close-knit Ozark community, Tomorrow’s Promise is a story of family and friendship. Through joy and despair, Jo and Gina will walk you down a nostalgic road and perhaps into a promising future.
If you like The Book Club and The Summer Girls, you’ll love the Women of the Ozarks Scrapbook Series.
Two separate paths. One enduring friendship.
Tomorrow’s Promise
Jo Felsenthal and Gina Ingram were girls of the ’60s and ’70s and grew into young women during one of the most turbulent social times in American history. The cultural forces of those tumultuous times had a tremendous impact on the choices they made and the women they became.
They’re different women with different ideals and different convictions. Gina has spent her life in their hometown of Polk Ridge, Arkansas, nestled in the Ozark mountains, as a counselor for the poor and drug addicted. She’s sympathetic and open-minded to others’ hardships. Jo, by contrast, has lived her life in the military—an environment with a single-minded purpose and a demand for rigid discipline.
For Jo, blending back into a community that distrusts the very government she has spent her life defending leaves her entirely at odds with the people Gina seems to adore. When Jo meets Gina’s friends, Max and Maxine, she’s thrown for a loop as these two conspiracy-driven hippies challenge her beliefs about the government and law—all of which have shaped her into the woman she is today. Her instant dislike of Gina’s friends suddenly threatens the newly reunited childhood friends.
In Crossing Yesterday, the second book in the Women of the Ozarks Scrapbook Series, Jo and Gina are forced to ask: Just how far apart can two people be and still find common ground?
If you like Beach House for Rent and The Book of Lost Friends , you’ll love the Women of the Ozarks Scrapbook Series.
How Much of Your Future Depends on Your Past?
Crossing Yesterday
After decades apart, childhood friends Jo Felsenthal and Gina Ingram spend their first summer together after more than forty years. A few weeks spent revisiting life as the girls they used to be and getting to know each other as the women they’ve become has shown them that time and circumstances have changed them both.
Jo Felsenthal and Gina Ingram were the closest of childhood friends back in Polk Ridge, Arkansas. Growing up in this beautiful, close-knit Ozark community, they were surrounded by love and laughter.
But as these girls grew into women, choices were made, and life took them in very different directions.
Now, they’re just hours away from a reunion several decades in the making. A out-of-the-blue Facebook “friend” request has snowballed into a face-to-face meeting. Both women are dealing with mixed emotions—excitement, nostalgia, and more than a little apprehension.
In Memories of Tomorrow, Jo and Gina weave their way through childhood memories and difficult life choices. They ponder how to cross over all their yesterdays to the girls they once were. Can they find anything in common after so many years spent living such different lives?
If you like The Sometimes Sister and Hurricane Season, you’ll love the Women of the Ozarks Scrapbook Series.