THE VIRTUES OF OXYGEN

From the award-winning author of A Watershed Year (Lake Union, November 2013) comes a heartrending story of unlikely bonds made under dire straits.

Holly is a young widow with two kids living in a ramshackle house in the same small town where she grew up wealthy. Now barely able to make ends meet editing the town's struggling newspaper, she manages to stay afloat with help from her family. Then her mother suffers a stroke, and Holly's world begins to completely fall apart. Vivian has lived an extraordinary life, despite the fact that she has been confined to an iron lung since contracting polio as a child. Her condition means she requires constant monitoring, and the close-knit community joins together to give her care and help keep her alive. As their town buckles under the weight of the Great Recession, Holly and Vivian, two very different women both touched by pain, forge an unlikely alliance that may just offer each an unexpected salvation. SUSAN SCHOENBERGER has been a writer, editor, and copyeditor at newspapers including The Baltimore Sun and The Hartford Courant since 1984. She now works as a freelance writer, a writing coach, and a communications consultant. Her articles and essays have appeared in many publications, including the Courant's Northeast magazine and Reader's Digest. Her short stories have appeared in Inkwell and the Village Rambler, and she was a finalist in the New Millennium Writings contest. Her first novel, A Watershed Year, was originally published in 2011 and was re-released by Lake Union Publishing in November 2013.