Love and Other Natural Disasters by Holly Shumas

About the Book:

Eve is eight months pregnant and in the middle of a Thanksgiving celebration when she discovers that her husband Jonathan has developed an intimate relationship with a woman over the past year. Jonathon asserts his innocence (an affair involves physical intimacy, and he didn't have any), while Eve feels deeply betrayed by the emotional connection he shared with someone else. What Jon has done seems so terrifyingly out of character that Eve finds herself questioning her entire reality. Did she ever really know Jon at all? Was their happiness together a lie? Is emotional intimacy more forgivable than sexual intimacy? And can their marriage survive?

Review:

This is a story about Jon and Eve, a couple who have been married for ten years. On Thanksgiving, Eve, who is eight months pregnant with their second child, finds out that her husband has been having an emotional affair with a woman named Laney for the past year. He condones his behavior with the fact that he and Laney have not had sex. They correspond through e-mails and have met on a couple of occasions. But Eve, none the less, is devastated and asks Jon to leave their home.

What follows is an interesting account of these two individuals finding out who they really are and what their marriage is based on. They both go through alot of soul-searching. At first, they only see "their" side of the story, but eventually they start to see each other's side as well.

This author takes a comprehensive approach to two people re-analyzing themselves and what brought them together in the first place. It helps the reader to also break down his or her own defenses and look at things from another angle. This is a very engaging book that is well written and definitely worth the effort to read.

About the Author:

My first novel, Five Things I Can’t Live Without, was a lighthearted look at the neurotic art of self-sabotage. The central premise was that my character, Nora, was looking for problems where there really weren’t any; she was thinking herself right out of happiness. For my second book, Love and Other Natural Disasters, I decided the main character might still have a whiff of the neurotic but I’d really give her something to worry about.

When I first sat down for the as-yet untitled Book #2, I didn’t know what Eve would find out (I didn’t actually know her name was Eve), but I knew it would happen on Thanksgiving. An affair seemed obvious (too obvious) until I realized it was an emotional affair rather than a physical one. The reason I’m using language like “find out” and “realized” is because for me, the process of writing novels is like that. There’s nothing better than that moment when your character surprises you.

As a practicing marriage and family therapist, the issues of emotional intimacy and fidelity are close to my heart. I’m convinced that one of the toughest things in the world is remaining emotionally connected to another person for the long haul, and it’s a subject that I love exploring in my writing, in my practice, and in my life. It’s a subject I’ll be exploring on my site, too, in both the “FAQ” and “Musings” sections.

If you’d like me to attend your book club, please contact me directly here. For press materials, review copies, and any other publicity-related requests, please contact my publicist at Grand Central Publishing, Elly Weisenberg, at Elly.Weisenberg@hgbusa.com. Thanks so much for visiting.

For more information you can visit the author at http://www.hollyshumas.com/