D'Amour Road

D'Amour Road is the story of two best friends who are turning 40. One of them goes missing, and the other joins a massive search to find her friend in conjunction with the police, her colorful women's collective, and a younger man whom she finds especially captivating. The book explores a number of themes including female friendship, violence against women, wrongful convictions, addiction, midlife crisis, and the painful phenomenon of unrequited love.

D'Amour Road is loosely based on the Louise Ellis story. Louise was a woman in Ottawa, Ontario who went missing in 1995. She was a member of my David Milgaard support group (David was a man who was wrongly convicted of murder) and I knew Louise fairly well, although we never met in person; we talked on the phone for two years. I have used some material from Louise's story because I wanted to keep her alive in my memory and in yours.

HOWEVER, D'Amour Road is entirely fictional. My main character, Lisa Campana, is nothing like Louise Ellis. Lisa, a drug counselor, and her family are solely figments of my vivid imagination.

WHAT READERS HAVE TO SAY ABOUT D'AMOUR ROAD

Dannye Williamsen, acclaimed co-author of IT'S YOUR MOVE, calls D'Amour Road an auspicious debut novel that is stunningly original.

Joan McEachern, Former Professor at Algonquin College, says that D'Amour Road is riveting and spellbinding. She started the book at 9 a.m. one morning and couldn't put it down, so she read all day until she finished at 7 p.m.

And Magnus Hardarson, Manager of Human Resources, in Mannval, Iceland, found D'Amour Road to be ravishing. He's never been to Ottawa and enjoyed the description of the Ottawa/Hull landscape. The novel is full of humor, although the story line is serious and melodramatic. The author is preeminently clever when it comes to defining human nature, Hardarson declared.

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Lisa Xing of the Charlatan, Carleton University's newspaper, has this to say about D'Amour Road:

"Sigrid Macdonald makes an astonishing entrance with her sophomore publication, D'amour Road. I've recently found it quite difficult to get through all of my existential philosophy reads and explanations into relativity, so it was refreshing, to say the least, when I picked up the book and couldn't put it down.Macdonald does an amazing job of setting the background for the action, especially in portraying Tara, a 40 year-old woman going through a mid-life crisis.

"With no sexual desire for her husband, she channels her frustration to the virile young man working at the local Loeb, Alain. She feels disconnected from her teenage son and has some serious reservations on her "older woman/motherly" image. Her life is thrown into turmoil when her best friend, Lisa, disappears suddenly.

"Tara's internal monologue and first person narration is entirely believable and realistic. Her bleak worries on her age and desire for Alain is hilarious, infused with sarcastic and almost cynical stream of consciousness that helps the reader identify with her. This makes her the perfect 21st century crisis-wreaked heroine."

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To read my reviews in their entirety, including the recent review by She Unlimited Magazine, and the legendary Stephen Haines , one of the top 50 Amazon reviewers, please click on the link to the right that says Sigrid's Reviews.

WHY D'AMOUR ROAD IS IMPORTANT

Every day, we turn on the TV and hear about one more woman or child who goes missing. During the summer of 2005, Natalee Holloway received extensive publicity because the 18-year-old from Alabama disappeared during a graduation celebration in Aruba. Natalee deserved that media attention but I worry about other girls and boys, or men and women who aren't quite so good-looking, do not have devoted, affluent or influential parents, and lack white skin like Lori Hacking and Laci Peterson.

Little Tamra Keepness disappeared from Regina in 2004. She was only five years old and has yet to be found. What kind of publicity is this disadvantaged, Native girl receiving compared to Elizabeth Smart of Utah, who at one point had 8000 seekers looking for her? Secondly, women just keep on disappearing!

Alicia Ross from Markham, Ontario was found dead one month after she went missing; her neighbor confessed to killing her. Right in my own home town of Nepean, Ontario an 18-year-old named Jennifer Teague disappeared on September the 8th, 2005. Her body was discovered 10 days later and no one has been charged with her murder to date.

D'Amour Road is informative. It has a social message but at heart, it's just a novel that is meant to help you to escape into another world for a few hours. Aside from the missing persons theme, the book deals with midlife crisis, unrequited love and addiction. I deliberately made my main character slightly neurotic in order to add levity to a serious topic. My favorite dramas always contain some humor!

HOW YOU CAN BUY D'AMOUR ROAD

You can purchase D'Amour Road directly from Amazon for $17.00/U.S. Just click on the links to the right. Or you can buy the book directly from me for $12/US or $13/CDN and $3.50 postage in Canada or $5.00/US to mail to the US. I accept checks and PayPal. Just send me an e-mail by clicking on the button that says Contact Me below my link section.

BUY THE E-BOOK through me for only $4.50/US. Read it right on your screen or print it out and read from the comfort of your easy chair.

Take a trip down the rocky road of love and don't forget to sign my guestbook to let me know that you were here. I value your feedback and will respond to your comments.

ABOUT ME

I am a freelance writer living in Ottawa, Ontario. My articles have been published in American periodicals such as the Women's Freedom Network Newsletter in Washington, D.C., Toastmaster International Magazine, and Justice Denied. In Canada, my works have appeared in the national newspaper, the Globe and Mail, as well as the Anxiety Disorders Association of Ontario's Newsletter and Carleton University Womyn's Center's annual magazine.

My interests are diverse but I am particularly drawn to women's issues and wrongful convictions. I've spent most of my adult life as a social activist in the women's movement, starting as the Political Action Coordinator and Legislative Task Force Leader of The National Organization for Women in Ridgewood, New Jersey.

My devotion to wrongful convictions stems from the work that I did with Joyce Milgaard to exonerate her son, David, who was wrongly imprisoned for 23 years and later found to have been innocent based on DNA evidence. I was the co-coordinator of the Milgaard Support Group in Ottawa and was also a member of the Association in Defense of the Wrongly Convicted.The Milgaard Inquiry began in January of 2005. Since David's case is considered to be one of the worst instances of injustice in Canadian history, it is important to discover what went wrong, and what kind of prophylactic measures we can implement in order to prevent this kind of tragedy from happening to other innocent people. Check out my blog at http://milgaardinquiry.blogspot.com/

In addition, I am an advocate for patients and have written extensively about alcoholism, hypoglycemia, hypothyroidism, menopause, invisible disabilities, social phobias, panic disorder and joint replacement.My first book is a patient's guide to hip surgery. GETTING HIP: Recovery from a Total Hip Replacement traces my personal story following hip replacement, which I required after being injured by a drunk driver. I also interviewed 10 people around the world in order to gain a broader perspective on different types of recoveries and hip implants. You can read more about GETTING HIP on Sigrid's Recovery at http://sigridsrecovery.blogspot.com/

Of course, I blog about issues related to D'Amour Road like missing women such as Natalee Holloway, Jennifer Teague, Alicia Ross, Laci Peterson, Lori Hacking, and Tamra Keepness; the effect of race and class on the way police conduct investigations for missing women; the plight of sex trade workers and the question of legalizing prostitution (many women who have gone missing in Canada over the last 10 years have been sex trade workers); unrequited love; turning 40 and coming to terms with the aging process. The D'Amour Road blog is located at http://damourroad.blogspot.com/.

I am also book coach, helping people to organize their thoughts in order to write their first book and to market their material, and I am a copy editor. Please send me an e-mail if you are interested in my editing services.And don't forget to make comments on the blogs or in my guestbook! I am always thrilled to hear from readers and I answer all of my mail. You can write to me by clicking on the link that says CONTACT ME.

Thanks so much for stopping by.
Sigrid Macdonald

Hope I Die before I Get Old -- a Book Review Exit Ghost by Philip Roth

Following prostate surgery, 71-year-old Nathan Zuckerman is left both impotent and incontinent. There's a possible solution for the latter but none for the former, leaving our sex-obsessed protagonist in a state of bittersweet agony when he becomes infatuated with a young woman who has swapped homes with him, along with her husband. Predictably, Nathan fantasizes about Jamie and Roth creates two different types of dialogue -- one that Nathan has with her in real life and the other that he has with her in his head, or rather in his journal.

The young woman is contrasted with Amy Bellette, the lover of Manny Lonoff who Nathan found entrancing when she was a young girl in The Ghost Writer. He coincidentally encounters the adult Amy in Manhattan; he's shocked and saddened by her terrible appearance and the toll that brain cancer has taken on her.

Meanwhile, a brash young journalist friend of Jamie's contacts Nathan, determined to solicit his help in writing a biography of Lonoff. This "bio," Zuckerman soon learns, consists of a dreadful exposé about a supposed sordid incident in Lonoff's life. Nathan launches into a long diatribe with his long-lost friend Amy about what constitutes good literature and questions the right of authors to peer into the private lives of other authors. He goes one step further, suggesting that book groups and classrooms should stop analyzing books (I don't think Nathan would appreciate this review, which I just crossposted on Amazon !!!), but he certainly poses interesting and important questions for us to consider.

Having been a rabid fan of Philip Roth's for the last several decades, I read as many books of his as I can. This one was good -- not fantastic because it dragged on in certain parts, but he did a beautiful job of describing the way that the body eventually gives out over time, but the heart continues to hunger for love, passion, recognition and the ability to make a significant contribution to the world.

When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Go to the Hairdresser

Yesterday I spoke to a friend of mine who's having a terrible time with her mother. Her mother has Alzheimer's and is starting a rapid decline, which is heartbreaking for my friend and so sad for me because I've known them both for a decade or more. We talked about her mom for about a half hour and towards the end of our conversation, she casually mentioned that she had colored her hair ORANGE.

Allow me to say that my friend is not a punk rocker! She is just not an ORANGE type of person, so I knew there was a problem. When I probed further, she said that it was like a Lucille Ball red but then she'd put something else on top of that which had turned it orange, and now she was searching for yet a new color to add to the mix.

I was thinking of all of the Benadryl cream that I had to put on my poor scalp when my father had leukemia. During a period of a year or so, I colored my hair brown, added reverse highlights, bleached it back to blonde, and cut it off in a "short, chic" cut that made me look as though I had just enlisted in the military. By the time my dad died, I was almost bald!

It was just a distracting coping mechanism. I couldn't control my world and there sure as hell was nothing I could do to help my father. It was so awful to watch him, a medical doctor, suffer mercilessly through 30 transfusions. Every time he'd have one, I'd look in the mirror and think there was something wrong with my hair. It was an area where I could take action. And then when my hair looked horrible, I could obsess about it and make new plans to fix it.

I gave this characteristic to Tara, the main character in my novel. So if you wonder why she's a little odd, it's because she lives by the philosophy, "hair today, gone tomorrow."

Sigrid Mac
Author and Editorhttp://damourroad.blogspot.com/

MEET ROBYN DEMBY -- AUTHOR OF WHAT THE STORYTELLER BRINGS

SIGRID: Welcome, Robyn. Thanks for being here.

ROBYN: My pleasure.

SIGRID: Can you give me a description of your novel, What the Storyteller Brings?

ROBYN: Sure, here's a brief summary: Meet Rosaline, a young girl in high school who calls herself the storyteller. Every Tuesday, she and her friends meet in her room for girl talk. Then they move on to more exciting things like storytelling. In these tales of adventure, she even uses real life characters like her friends and this boy on which she has a crush. In one story, fifteen students get kidnapped. Her listeners keep coming back for more as they wonder what will happen as the women are herded through the woods like animals. It’s all just for fun at first, until bad things and people begin merging into reality—like one of the kidnappers. Now, Rosaline must get to him in her story before he gets to them in real life.

SIGRID: Sounds fantastic! What an original idea. What inspired you to write The Storyteller?

ROBYN: This novel was originally written when I was fourteen. It was my fantasies about a boy I had a crush on written down in this orange notebook that I would carry around with me. Every week, I would write a few pages and bring it to school where my friends and classmates couldn't wait to see what would happen next. They’d get mad whenever I showed up at school without an added chapter!

Ten years later, after joining the Air Force, I received a phone call from my sister in Virginia. She found a box of short stories and other English assignments in my old room. She began reading them to me over the phone and suggested that I do something with my writing. So the next time I went home on leave, I went through that box. I ended up coming across that old orange notebook, and as a twenty-four year old looking back on what she wrote as a fourteen-year old, this adventure about getting kidnapped with my crush sounded like a low budget movie. As I dusted off the old pages handwritten by a “love sick” teenager, I decided that with some major revisions, I could rewrite that book and submit it for publication.

Although the contents of that orange notebook weren't originally about a storyteller, I thought back to when I would get threats from my friends when I didn’t bring it to school. That compelled me to insert a character who had her friends come over for storytelling hour. I kept the part about her getting kidnapped with her crush. As I continued to copy the pages from that notebook into my word processor, I asked myself, why not have situations in her stories merge into their lives and see how they handled them?

It took about fourteen years to get that novel to where it is today, and even now, I still compare myself to the storyteller. She says that once she begins telling her stories, she never knows where it will take her. The same is with my writing. Once I start typing, my imagination takes control and propels me into some surprising places. That’s what happened with my novel as I detoured from the rest of that orange notebook and let my imagination lead me. What the Storyteller Brings sounded like the perfect title for a girl who, through her stories, wreaked havoc into the real lives of those around her.

SIGRID: Having read the book, I can see how it could have taken that long to develop. It's a moving, complicated, really enjoyable tale with suspense and a moral. Do you have a particular message for young girls in their relationships?

ROBYN: Yes I do, and it’s a message I am very passionate about. The negative consequences of sex extend beyond sexually transmitted diseases and teen pregnancy. Emotional baggage also involves its pain and suffering. That is my main message in general. My novel illustrates a very ugly side to premarital sex and girls need to know from the beginning the kind of behavior that can propel them into a vicious cycle of failed relationships. What gets girls in trouble is that just like the character, Rosaline, they like affection, cuddling, and the idea of having a boyfriend. They let their fantasies run away with them as they let boys tell them they are satisfied with cuddling but too often, most boys are just looking for sex. I don’t feel that this makes guys some separate evil entity; it’s just that they’re more sexually charged than girls. The problem with girls is that they think they can control a situation when they are alone with a guy and things begin moving in the wrong direction. Girls have this false sense of trust in themselves and sometimes in the guy as they think they can stop things before they go too far. Sadly, this false sense of trust pushes them into sex.

What I’d like to say to young girls is this: Sex is a powerful force in our lives and is not to be taken lightly. Abstinence gives us the power to take charge and not let the consequences of premarital sex control our lives. Women of all ages need to stop sending mixed messages and take responsibility for our actions. Recognize sexually charged situations in time to move away from them. Cuddling, making out, or doing things you feel will satisfy a guy is not telling him no. It’s telling him that you will eventually have sex with him. Show him through your actions when you’re not ready for sex. Even if it may involve breaking up with him, say no and mean it—don’t dance around it!

SIGRID: I hear you, woman! That's controversial advice nowadays because so many teens are sexually active. In many ways, this is a fallout from the women's movement which advocated free love and equal rights for women as well as men. I've always believed that SHOULD be the case; however, in reality, men and boys in particular are built different biologically. They also seem to be more into the game, the hunt, and once the hunt is over, might wish to move on. That's painful enough for grown-ups but devastating for 15-year-old girls. What you're recommending is a set of behaviors that will protect young girls from being hurt. Actually, your message is very much like that of a book geared towards adult women, The Rules. It can seem kind of old-fashioned at first, but at heart, its main goal is for females to attain relationships rather than one night stands or end up in situations where they might be used, and for them to feel good about their involvement with guys rather than lie awake at night crying on their pillow over some guy who said he would call but didn't.

Do you have plans to write a sequel?

ROBYN: My fingers are itching to get started on the sequel! It’s not only because What the Storyteller Brings just hit the market and it’s still fresh in my mind, but it’s also because there is so much more that has happened to Rosaline that I couldn’t contain it all in that first book. I already have the first twenty pages written and must warn my readers that drama is jumping from the first page—so strap on your seatbelts! Even though I’ve begun already, I have to pause as I work on the finishing touches of Triangle of Revenge, which will be released in the winter or early spring of 2008. Also fiction, this novel is about a pastor who fell away from the church when tragedy compelled him to turn his back on God. Then I expect to complete the sequel to What the Storyteller Brings in the fall of 2008.

SIGRID: I can't wait. I enjoyed the first book so much and the Triangle of Revenge sounds awesome too. Thanks again for taking the time to do this interview, and I'd like to inform my readers that Robyn Demby is a native of Chesapeake, VA. She received her Bachelor’s Degree in Religion from Mount Olive College, North Carolina. Retired from the Air Force, she currently resides in Goldsboro, NC where she writes full time. What the Storyteller Brings is available on Amazon.com, so grab your copy now. Also, you can visit Robyn on My Space at http://www.myspace.com/demby6. Don't forget to add her to your friends’ list.

D'Amour Road has been accepted by the Braille Institute

D'Amour Road has been accepted to be part of the permanent collection of the Braille Institute. I'm very excited about that because they are selective about the books that they put on tape and they don't accept everything by a long shot.

Also, my sister is visually impaired from a degenerative retinal condition called retinitis pigmentosa and she has never been able to read my book. Once it's on tape, she'll be able to hear it and offer her criticism ;-)

Unfortunately, they can only put it on tape cassette rather than CD because they give a certain type of cassette player to the blind and visually impaired. I would have preferred it on CD but I'm thrilled that people with limited or no vision will be able to hear my story about female friendship, midlife crisis and unrequited love.

Sigrid Mac

New review of D'Amour Road by the author of Equal Partners

What I liked about D’amour Road

I finally managed to find the time to read D’amour Road. The book is well written and carefully edited. But of course I would expect nothing less from Sigrid Macdonald. What I want to include here is the outstanding features. They are not listed in order of importance.

1. The story unfolds in Ottawa and surrounding areas. As an Ottawan, I found myself in a familiar environment. If you’re not from Ottawa, the book may tempt you to come and pay us a visit.

2. Without apologies, the author serves us a “slice of life.” It’s all there: addiction; unrequited love; greed; entrapment in an unsatisfactory job, marriage, etc.; confronting middle age and of course our own mortality; our obsession with looks and youth; and many other human flaws.

3. The book kept my attention from the first sentence to the last. I was tempted to peek at the last pages; good thing I didn’t. I would have missed out on a really surprising resolution.

4. Dialogues are never easy for a novelist. But Sigrid makes it look easy. The dialogues are vivid; the characters seem to be talking in my presence, like in a play.

5. The epilogue is unusual. It includes the “About This Book” as part of the book. It reminds us that reality and fiction are not clearly delineated. A clever device; I am sure the author won’t mind if she is imitated.

6. The novel opens a small window into the female mind through which males can peer! Other female writers have done that; but it was done quite effectively in this case.

7. The book does not mention it, but Evolutionary Psychology (E.P.) figures prominently here . E.P. deals with old instincts that we still carry from our primitive days. The woman who starts a relationship with a former prison inmate, or an abuser, is responding to an instinct as old as the world. In primitive times a woman chose the toughest male she could get. She had a better chance of surviving if her mate was as vicious as possible. Hers was a world inhabited by frightening beasts and even more dangerous humans. While not needed anymore, such an instinct is acted upon by some modern women. E.P. applies to men as well but in different ways.

Roland Ezri, author of Equal Partners
http://www.equalpartners.ca

Signs (2004 on DVD)

Signs is a sci-fi thriller about a family who discovers ominous crop circles in their fields. It's written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, who was brilliant in The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and The Village.

Graham Hess (Mel Gibson) is a reverend who lost his belief in God after his wife was killed in a tragic car accident. His brother, Merrill Hess(Joaquin Phoenix), thinks the circles are simply a hoax whereas Graham's children, played by Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin, are convinced that aliens have finally reached Earth and they may not be friendly.

This hypothesis is supported by newscasts which indicate that crop circles are popping up all over the world, and actual aliens are caught on film.

The movie revolves around the family's struggle to barricade themselves from a potentially hostile force, but the larger picture has to do with religion, faith and spirituality. What do we believe in? Is there a higher power that will protect us? Is there a purpose to death and can those who've lost their belief in God regain it?

If this sounds like a movie with a lot of depth, it's not. It's slow-moving and the acting is quite wooden from everyone except for scene stealer Abigail Breslin who wooed the film world in Little Miss Sunshine two years later. Gibson, ordinarily above average, gives a completely emotionless performance and Phoenix is, at best, subdued. Culkin is cute but slightly annoying.

Moreover, the plot itself has huge holes in it. Gibson and Phoenix are brothers although in real life there are at least 18 years between them. Depictions of the aliens are so ridiculous that they seem juvenile and their Achilles heel, which I won't mention here as a spoiler, is so absurd as to be laughable.

The truth IS out there but you won't find it in Signs; if you're truly interested in extraterrestrial life, rent Contact with Jodie Foster based on the last book that astronomer Carl Sagan wrote before he died.

Sigridmac

Joaquin and Liv

This is such a romantic video -- had to post it!! Joaquin Phoneix is sensational and it's so clear that he and Liv Tyler are infatuated here in Inventing The Abbots.

Sigrid

When You Say Nothing At All