This post was most recently updated on June 12th, 2013

Publisher: Soul Mate Publishing  (January 22, 2013)
Category: Women’s Fiction, Literary Fiction, Relationships, Touching on supernatural
Tour Date: Mid May, 2013
Available in: eBook, 180 pages

Sometimes the ties that bind people together can also tear them apart. In FINDING LILY, first-time novelist Lisa D. Ellis explores that delicate balance that exists in all relationships and tries to find meaning in a world that is sometimes kind and sometimes harsh.

Her narrator Claire, who is reeling after the unexpected loss of a newborn baby Lily, walks the fine line between love, loss, heartache and healing. Unable to cope with her grief, which seems magnified by her husband Jim’s colder coping style, Claire leaves Jim behind and runs away to live in a lighthouse she had fallen in love with as a child.

At first all Claire wants is an escape but slowly, the lighthouse sheds new light on her situation and helps her reimagine her life in a new way, sometimes with her feet on the ground and sometimes lifting up beyond the boundaries of reality to help her reconnect with Lily. Claire’s memorable journey to the lighthouse — and back again — is a story of hope and of possibility.

Readers will fall in love with Claire and with the rich images and rhythmic tones that Ellis masterfully weaves from the very first page through to the satisfying conclusion of FINDING LILY.

Praise for Finding Lily:

“In Finding Lily, Lisa D. Ellis offers up a lyrical–yet practical–first novel that so accurately depicts not only a woman’s first love, but her first loss as well.  As the narrator grapples with the death of her infant daughter, Claire slips between the surreal gossamer world of devastating grief and the unknown turf of the inevitable marital discord that accompanies the death of a child–as represented by that  “invisible line in the bed” between Claire and Jim.

Her husband is an attorney, she knows that–but she is still horrified that, even while her “arms still felt the shape of Lily in them,” Jim tells her to be “reasonable,” saying between forkfuls of homemade cake, “We can have another child soon.”

Although she is aware of what she calls “the grateful way he looks at me when he thinks I am asleep,” Claire’s anger incites her to retreat–alone–to the  lighthouse in the cold of winter.

Her thoughts and feelings about Jim are further clouded when she sees an image of Lily “suspended inches above the frozen sand in the cold air, like a dancer caught at the end of a leap from which she can never land.” The real question here is whether Claire’s grief–and the apparition of her daughter–will create another loss:  the loss of her marriage.         

In the end, Claire must decide whether her ethereal child is more real and permanent than the foundation of her marriage.  In so doing, Claire’s journey to the lighthouse resonates with the voices of women everywhere who simply want to love, and to be loved, even within the cold grasp of tragedy.  Like Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, a novel more concerned with lyrical introspection than predictable plot points, Finding Lily is a must-read for anyone who has ever pondered the vagaries of human existence–as defined by both men and women”. –Karen E. Peterson, Ph.D., author of WRITE:  10 Days to Overcome Writer’s Block 

About Lisa Ellis:

Lisa Ellis is a writer whose short fiction has appeared in a number of literary journals and magazines. FINDING LILY is her first novel. She has a master’s degree in journalism from Boston University and provides health content regularly for hospitals and websites in New England and the tri-state area.

Lisa’s Website

Lisa D. Ellis on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lisadellisauthor
Lisa D. Ellis on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LisaEllisauthor

Buy Finding Lily at:

Amazon
Barnes and Noble
SoulMatePublishing

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My Life One Story At a Time May 16 Guest Post & Giveaway
Mom in Love with Fiction May 16 Review & Giveaway
Peeking Between Pages May 17 Review
JoyStory May 21 Review & Giveaway
Bookworm  Brandee May 22 Review & Giveaway
A Booklover’s Library May 24 Guest Post
Reading With Tea May 24 Review & Giveaway
From Isi May 28 Review
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A Booklover’s Library May 31 Review
Rainy Days & Mondays May 31 Guest Post
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The Book Diva’s Reads June 4 Interview
I’d Rather Be At the Beach  June 5 Review & Giveaway
Midnight Musings June 6 Review
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